If President Obama wants to win in 2012, and the race has already begun, he desperately needs some new friends. I would like to suggest four who like him and who have supported him: the senators from Virginia, Mark Warner and Jim Webb, and Dave “Mudcat” Saunders, who advised them; and Toby Keith.Implied racism notwithstanding, what makes Quigley think that Mark Warner is any less of a “white guy from central casting” than Biden? If Quigley wants a “conservadem” on the 2012 ticket, which Warner and Webb have become as a matter of political survival (and God almighty, why on earth are we talking about that now??!!), then Quigley should just say so.
When Hillary quits in six months to run against him, Obama should replace her as secretary of State with China secretary Jon Huntsman Jr. And ditch the white guy from central casting standing in at VP, Joe Biden. Replace him in the 2012 campaign with Warner.
And Toby Keith as an advisor to Obama – ROFLMAO!!!
Quigley also invokes “Cheech and Chong” liberals and claims that Paul Krugman is Obama’s “economic front man” (would that that were true) and he should be replaced with Niall Ferguson, which is indeed interesting because Ferguson is a Harvard historian who, as noted here, once compared Obama to Felix the Cat (see, because Obama is so “lucky” – yeah, if you believe that inheriting two wars, an imploding economy, a melting planet, and a hopelessly compromised federal government overrun by Bush cronies in perhaps the same way ants at a picnic would overrun a basket full of Lorna Doone cookies has anything whatsoever to do with luck!).
Oh, and just to let us know that he’s still “opining” away, Quigley tells us here that Sarah Palin is “a political genius.”
My guess is that Bernie’s has been out in those gorgeous New Hampshire woods just a tad too long.
President Obama made much of the Executive Order he signed last March. It was supposed to stop federal funding of abortion. It was given as a fig leaf to formerly pro-life Democrats who had voted for ObamaCare and enabled it to pass, narrowly, in the House of Representatives.Umm, not quite; as noted here…
Most pro-life Americans knew the Obama order was a charade. We have had this administration pushing vigorously for abortion-on-demand from the first day they took office. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had hardly taken her oath of office before she told a House Foreign Affairs committee hearing early in 2009 that “sexual and reproductive rights and health” were a major goal of the Obama administration. She assured House members she would do all in her power to help overturn foreign countries’ pro-life laws. The Obama administration may not want to protect democracy demonstrators in the streets of Tehran. That would be, they say, “meddling.” But they are more than willing to trample the sovereignty of other nations to advance the Planned Parenthood agenda.
Take Kenya, for example. Kenya suffered terrorist attacks back in 1998 because of their close ties to the U.S. You would think that this East African ally would get a special measure of respect, especially because Barack Obama’s late father, and many of his relatives, hail from Kenya. Think again.
Added Bill Ryerson, president of the Washington-based Population Institute: "There were so many areas in which the U.S. slid back during the Bush administration"...And as noted here…
"The gag rule (that banned U.S. government money from going to international family planning groups that either offer abortions or provide information, counseling or referrals about abortion) alone led to closure of one-third of the family planning clinics of Kenya. As a result, the birth rate went back up, which has badly affected women's lives."
(AP) Nairobi's sprawling Kibera slum is far from America but not from America's battle over abortion.And do you want to know what happens when “the Planned Parenthood agenda,” as Blackwell so ridiculously puts it, is ignored, and right-wing ideologues dictate government policy? Real-world misery, that’s what, such as this…
Aid workers and experts say President Barack Obama's decision to allow aid money to flow again to international groups that offer abortion counseling will help restart programs desperately needed in Africa, the continent hardest hit by (the) "gag rule."
Dr. Walter Odhiambo, the country director for Marie Stopes Kenya, said his family planning organization had been limping along on European aid because of the U.S. rule Obama overturned on Jan. 23 in one of his first presidential acts. Now, Odhiambo said, he would be applying for U.S. funds he hoped to use to expand counseling and other services, particularly in rural Kenya.
"Family planning was not given the prominence it needs," Odhiambo said.
Marie Stopes Kenya, which does not offer abortions, closed two slum clinics after losing its USAID funding because of its association with Marie Stopes International, one of the world's largest family planning organizations.The story from CBS News tells us that “even without the U.S. policy, abortions would be controversial here. They are illegal in almost all African countries, many of which have conservative Christian or Muslim populations _ one of the reasons women interviewed about their abortions declined to give their full names.”
Odhiambo, the country director for Marie Stopes Kenya, said it was likely that women who would have used his group's contraceptive services became pregnant instead and joined the 300,000 Kenyan women that Marie Stopes says seek dangerous, illegal abortions each year.
Two years ago, Joyce and her cousin Carolyne went to a Kibera slum clinic for a contraceptive injection. Because supplies were low, the doctor shared one between the two. Joyce, then a shy 18-year-old high school student, became pregnant. Her boyfriend deserted her and she had an illegal abortion.
"The fetus came out but she did not stop bleeding," recalled 29-year-old Carolyne. By the light of a small kerosene lamp, the two women used every sheet and towel in Carolyne's small house to try to stop the blood. Joyce spent the night twisting in pain on the floor, crying out for God to forgive her and screaming for her mother.
At dawn the two women went to a government hospital and had to plead with doctors to treat Joyce without informing police of the abortion.
And given the fact that sub-Saharan African women have had to endure such immense hardship because of typical Bushco bungling, Blackwell and his pals have no grounds whatsoever for criticizing anyone of denying “a special measure of respect.”
Besides, if Obama really were as bad on choice as Blackwell alleges, he would have pushed for the Freedom of Choice Act to pass out of Congress (remember that one?).
Rather than reform our campaign finance laws and provide increased transparency, the DISCLOSE Act advances the political agenda of the majority party and special interests in an effort to gain a tactical and political advantage little more than 100 days before an election. No matter how one feels about McCain-Feingold, at least that was an honest attempt to reform campaign finance laws that would not have gone into effect until after the next election cycle. The DISCLOSE Act does the opposite – it changes the rules in the middle of the game to provide a tactical advantage to the majority party.I wonder if Scott’s nose grew an inch or so longer as he typed that second paragraph. It should have, because, as Ben Smith of Politico via fdl tells us here, there is no “carve out” for big donors to labor unions.
Even more astonishing, this bill does not treat all organizations equally and does not apply to everyone. For example, not all the disclosure requirements apply to labor unions and other special interest groups – despite these groups being among the most active political organizations. Labor unions and their political action committees spent more than $450 million to help their allies in 2008, and they have already pledged to spend upwards of $100 million in the midterms. Yet they would be carved out of this legislation and not face the same regulations that would apply to everyone else.
Also, Brown disingenuously tries to side with the ACLU in his opposition; in reality, that group’s concerns are diametrically opposed to his. As the ACLU tells us here…
Just to kick us while we were down, the House included a provision that would protect anonymity for the largest political groups because they feared the Democrats beholden to the gun lobby, a.k.a. the Blue Dogs, would otherwise not support the bill. Members worked with the National Rifle Association on an amendment that would exclude organizations from the disclosure requirements, but only when they have more than 1 million members, have been in existence for more than 10 years, and have a presence in all 50 states. This means that new organizations like the gay rights groups of the 1960s, pro-life groups of the 1970s and drug law reform groups of today would be forced to reveal their supporters, while the associational rights of the members of well-established and mainstream groups are protected. This makes no sense, and provides the direct opposite effect of the protections the court upheld in the NAACP case (in which Alabama, in response to the Montgomery bus boycott, tried to ban the NAACP from any further business in the state and issued a subpoena that would have forced them to disclose their membership).And for anybody out there who thinks that individual donors to labor unions on behalf of political campaigns, for example, wouldn’t be punished, read this story about what happened when management at a million-square-foot distribution center for Rite Aid Corporation in Lancaster, California changed hands (the employees rejected a Teamsters offer to unionize in 2002, and came to regret it…and speaking for myself, I once worked for a Philadelphia freight-forwarding company around the time Bill Clinton was elected president, and I heard the CEO say in the elevator one day that he would fire every Democratic Party supporter who worked for him in response).
Oh, and one more thing, Scott; the unemployment rate has nothing whatsoever to do with disclosing campaign contributions.
On balance, I support the DISCLOSE Act, though it definitely has some bugs to be addressed (and as noted here, Scott has some "DISCLOSE-ing" to do of his own).
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