Brutally Honest

"Planned Parenthood has a vested interest in hooking the next generation on sex"

That and more via Tina Korbe at HotAir, who brings us something definitely NSFW.  Hell, something you'll not want to watch at home if your kids are around... and for me, that advice would include my two grown boys:

Recently, American Life League came out with a six-minute exposé of Planned Parenthood that was so appalling that I would have had a hard time believing it was true had it not been about Planned Parenthood. The video included clips and images from PP educational materials — cartoons and the like — and the gist of the clips was that teens should learn to pleasure themselves and each other as soon as possible.

...

“Enjoy” isn’t exactly the right word, so … be appalled:

If, after that, you're still someone who thinks Planned Parenthood to be innocuous, you should seriously have your head examined.

Crossposted at Wizbang.

"These statistics are bogus"

That's the conclusion of Lydia McGrew at What's Wrong with the World as she looks at the Guttmacher study claiming that 98% of Catholic women use contraception:

Recently I received a phone call from my non-Christian (as far as I know) philosopher friend Neil Manson who, because he has an active and fair mind, had been exercised over what seemed to him the high FQ (Fishiness Quotient) of the statistical meme presently going around to the effect that "98% of Catholic women use birth control." Or something. Maybe "98% of Catholic women have used birth control." The former is obviously ludicrous, as it would seem to include elderly Catholic women, of whom it seems plausible that there are more than 2% among Catholics. Anyway, Neil wanted to know if I had read anything debunking the statistic.

Well, I had to admit that I hadn't. This is mostly because the relevance of the claim to the HHS's mandate is, to put it mildly, obscure. If a large percentage of Jainists are chowing down on hamburgers on the side, it hardly follows that an expressly Jainist charitable organization should be forced by the federal government to fund a plan that buys free hamburgers for its employees. If a bunch of Quakers turn out to have gun licenses, employees of an expressly Quaker organization are not therefore entitled to have their fees paid to a shooting range or their ammo. provided at no cost through an employer plan. There is this commonsense notion that organizations that are explicitly identified as religious are allowed to uphold the actual doctrinal and behavioral standards of their respective religious bodies. Whether the rank and file membership of that religious body follow those standards in daily life should be irrelevant.

Still, it has proven rather interesting to look into the statistical claim.

And look she does, with a fine tooth comb.  Read the entire piece and then really tick off your Catholic bashing friends by passing it on.

Watch 'em froth at the mouth.

Damned liars.

Crossposted at Wizbang.

Did Obama really cave to the Catholic Church? (UPDATED)

I'm not so sure... I mean, isn't he still mandating what it is Americans can or can't do without due process?

President Obama is scheduled to announce Friday afternoon a revamp of his contraception policy requiring religious institutions to fully pay for birth control, changing the onus on who pays for contraception from employers to insurance companies.

Sources tell CBS News the White House will not back off the administration goal to provide increased access to birth control for women, but it will provide religious institutions additional details on how to comply with the law.

Senior administration officials tells CBS News the new policy will mean female employees of religious institutions will get free contraceptive coverage from health insurers, without employers having to pay for it.

Religious institutions don't have to cover it, don't have to pay for it, and they don't have to refer women to it. It is the insurance companies' responsibility, per the Obama administration.

I agree with Professor Reynolds:

My advice to the bishops: He’s on the run — don’t settle for his opening bid.

The focus needs to be liberty. Period.  Religious or otherwise and this administration's attempt to circumvent what our forefathers died on battlefields to give us.

He's still mandating, to religious organizations and all others, what Americans must purchase, must possess.

The man and those who think like him are still a threat.

Father Z references the words of his good friend Roman Fabrizio to spell it out:

Where am I going with all this?

It’s good  to see such a massive reaction  - albeit only a verbal one so far –  by the US bishops. But if they think that all they have to aim to is for Obama and his Kommissars to drop the contraception mandate they’re in for bitter surprises down the road, and they would prove that they are completely missing what’s at stake here (but some bishops gave me hope with what they wrote).

What I mean is that it is inherent to the very idea of socialized medicine that the state gets to tell you what to do and what to pay for and how much.

It’s all about the delusional thought that unhindered “planning” done by “experts” who “know” is what will make the magic machine work. They may back down on secondary provisions for political/electoral reasons, but the principle they want to enshrine is  that the state is the ultimate and basically the sole provider of healthcare. What it does is bring to completion the utter distortion of the relationship between the individual, the family and all “intermediate bodies” of society and the State. In other words, the contrary of subsidiarity, which is the XX century Catholic name for the originally Catholic concept of “limited government”. Once it’s in place, you can kiss the Declaration of Independence and the whole Land of the Free business goodbye. You’ll be forever a glorified European Union.

Sooner or later, because of the invitable rationing that comes with centralized healthcare, they won’t even need to mandate that you perform abortions or give away condoms. You’ll simply lose all hospitals and schools because there is no way a large independent health provider can survive in such a system. Why do  you think so many Italian hospitals, founded centuries ago, with names of saints and popes, are nowinn the hands of the Sistema Sanitario Nazionale, directly or indirectly? Why do you think there is hardly a Catholic school that is affordable anymore and which teaches anything different from what kids would hear at the Liceo Statale A. Gramsci or what have you?

The contraception/abortion coverage mandate is immoral, we all agree on that, but getting Catholics – and anybody who’s not in the service of the State – out of the healthcare system is PRECISELY what the goverment wants. If they can force you to accept it now, that’s good for the State, they take over indirectly.  If you go the principled way and shut down or sell facilities, that’s good for the State, they take over directly. If you manage to obtain an exemption, that’s still good, the principle of the State running the asylum will still be there and it will become unstoppable before too long and you’ll have to cave in anyway.

You can't help but wonder if we've been played.

America needs to see this man and his minions for what they are.  A threat to our liberty.

Crossposted at Wizbang.

UPDATE: Mark Shea calls today's move a head fake from our tyrant King:

Don’t be a sucker. No compromise. This assault on religious liberty must be utterly defeated and salt sowed in its smoldering ashes. This man is an enemy of the Church and is acting with malice.

Read the whole thing.

"Computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause"

Don Surber is airing some most inconvenient facts:

16 actual scientists have joined 1973 Nobel-winning physicist Ivar Giaever in calling global warming concerns overblown. In a letter published in the Wall Street Journal today, the scientists called for everyone to remain calm — and mocked the alarmism by UN bureaucrats over global warming and carbon dioxide.

They recommended that the world do nothing about global warming for the next 50 years.

“The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant,” the scientists wrote in their letter, which the Wall Street Journal headlined: “No Need to Panic About Global Warming. There’s no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to ‘decarbonize’ the world’s economy.”

The letter went on to explain that warming may actually benefit life on Earth: “CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas, exhaled at high concentrations by each of us, and a key component of the biosphere’s life cycle. Plants do so much better with more CO2 that greenhouse operators often increase the CO2 concentrations by factors of three or four to get better growth. This is no surprise since plants and animals evolved when CO2 concentrations were about 10 times larger than they are today. Better plant varieties, chemical fertilizers and agricultural management contributed to the great increase in agricultural yields of the past century, but part of the increase almost certainly came from additional CO2 in the atmosphere.”

The scientists did not dismiss entirely the idea that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases may be increasing temperatures. The scientists simply said there is no proof that the globe is warming.

“The lack of warming for more than a decade — indeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections — suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause,” the scientists wrote. “Faced with this embarrassment, those promoting alarm have shifted their drumbeat from warming to weather extremes, to enable anything unusual that happens in our chaotic climate to be ascribed to CO2.”

The scientists made many of the same points skeptics such as Anthony Watts and cynics like me have made: Global warming alarmism is an industry that has enriched many, many people.

The 16 scientists made a grand suggestion: Do nothing.

There's more and it's worthy.

Doing nothing however is something I'll disagree with vehemently.  What needs to be done is being done but we need more rigor and vigor.  

What must be done is the continued unmasking of the fakery that is the global warming movement.  May many more scientists have the courage to stand as these 16 have done.

Crossposted at Wizbang.

"The president seemed very earnest..."

Archbishop Timothy Dolan gets a bit of an education as to this President:

In the wake of Presdent Obama's controversial decision to mandate that religious groups pay for contraceptives for their employees, much of the coverage focused on how the president had disappointed progressive allies by giving religious groups an extra year to comply.

But the decision also had New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, feeling personally betrayed.

"I have to say, there's a sense of personal disappointment," Dolan said Tuesday after he gave a lecture on "Law and the Gospel of Life" at Fordham Law School.

Last November, amid deepening tensions between the bishops and the administration over the pending contraception mandate and other issues, Obama invited Dolan to the Oval Office, where the two men shared what Dolan called a productive and "extraordinarily friendly" meeting.

"The president seemed very earnest, he said he considered the protection of conscience sacred, that he didn't want anything his administration would do to impede the work of the church that he claimed he held in high regard," Dolan recalled on Tuesday. "So I did leave a little buoyant."

That optimism ended last Friday, however, when Obama phoned Dolan to tell him that he was not expanding the conscience exemption to include religious institutions — such as Catholic hospitals, universities and social service agencies. In a bid to appease critics like Dolan, the White House gave church organizations an extra year to find a way to comply with the mandate that all health insurance plans provide free contraceptive coverage.

"I had to share with him that I was terribly let down, disappointed and disturbed, and it seemed the news he had given me was difficult to square with the confidence I had felt in November," Dolan said.

I have tremendous respect for Archbishop Dolan.

I hope he uses this as a teachable moment.

"Obama’s curt treatment of Brewer came the day after he used his State of the Union speech to call for a reduction in partisan rancor" (UPDATED)

What?!  Obama as hypocrite-in-chief?  If you think as much you must be a racist:

A day after he called for an end to perpetual political confrontation, President Barack Obama and his deputies publicly snubbed Arizona’s Republican governor when she welcomed him at the Pheonix airport.

Gov. Jan Brewer met him at first stop of his five-state campaign swing with a hand-written letter asking him to visit the state’s southern border, which is a hotbed of illegal immigration and drug trafficking.

But Obama suddenly turned cold, claiming that her Nov. 2011 book mischaracterized their previous White House meeting in June 2010. He then quickly walked away.

Shortly after, Obama’s press aides released a statement claiming Obama said she “inaccurately described the meeting.” The three-sentence statement ended curtly, saying that “the President looks forward to continuing taking steps to help Arizona’s economy grow.”

...

Obama visited Arizona as part of his re-election campaign. His campaign officials say he may be able to win the state in 2012 because of the state’s growing Hispanic population.

The president’s decision to snub Brewer may help him spur Hispanic support, partly because Brewer championed the state’s immigration reform law. In 2010, polls showed the law was supported by more than 70 percent of Arizonans, but only by a quarter of Hispanics.

Since then, the law has been loudly slammed by Obama’s lawyers at the Department of Justice and their allied Hispanic ethnic lobbies, immigration law groups, and various progressive groups.

Obama’s curt treatment of Brewer came the day after he used his State of the Union speech to call for a reduction in partisan rancor.

Better government can’t “happen unless we also lower the temperature in this town.” he declared. “We need to end the notion that the two parties must be locked in a perpetual campaign of mutual destruction; that politics is about clinging to rigid ideologies instead of building consensus around common-sense ideas.”

Brewer’s book is titled “Scorpions for Breakfast: My Fight Against Special Interests, Liberal Media, and Cynical Politicos to Secure America’s Border.”

In the book, she described Obama as patronizing during their 2010 meeting when she asked for his help in curbing illegal immigration. His reaction, she wrote, “was though President Obama thought he could lecture me, and I would learn at his knee.”

At the airport, Obama said he “didn’t feel that I had treated him cordially. I said I was sorry he felt that way but I didn’t get my sentence finished” before he walked away, Brewer said.

“He was a little thin-skinned,” Brewer said during an later interview on a local radio station, News/Talk 92.3 KTAR. “I was a bit taken aback by his stance and his attitude” on the tarmac, she said, adding that Obama walked away from her “[as] I was trying to make a point that I thought that my book was right and correct.”

Let there be no mistake.

A reduction in partisan rancor means agree with Obama.  Period.

He is The Won... until November.

UPDATE:  As if on cue, the race-baiters appear.  This from a guy named Stephen over at Wizbang:

Damn uppity negro. Who does he think he is, lecturing a white woman...

Yeah, I guess to bigots like her a conversation with a black man would feel foreign.

Did she ask him for his papers?

Predicted.

Then again, it's like predicting water to be wet.

What will Marianne Gingrich say?

Drudge blares the headline 'Newt Ex-Wife Unloads', Politico picks up the story and expounds:

Matt Drudge first broke news that Marianne Gingrich, Newt Gingrich's second wife who he left after a lengthy affair with his current wife, Callista, has given an interview to ABC News, which appears to mark only the second time she's spoken this cycle.

My colleagues Dylan and Keach report that the interview is likely to air tomorrow night, which would coincide with the final debate before the South Carolina primary vote on Saturday.

Marianne Gingrich has barely spoken this campaign cycle, and the fact that Gingrich has a messy personal past is well known.

But based on her comments in the past about their relationship - Marianne Gingrich has said her then-husband called to ask for a divorce by phone while she was visiting her mother for her birthday in Ohio, and while he was leading the charge against Bill Clinton over Sexgate - it seems unlikely that this is going to be a positive thing for Gingrich at a time when his candidacy is surging.

Gingrich's daughters have reacted preemptively:

In an open statement to the network Wednesday, Kathy Lubbers and Jackie Cushman suggested that whatever she has to say may not be accurate.

“Anyone who has had that experience understands it is a personal tragedy filled with regrets, and sometimes differing memories of events,” said the adult daughters.

“We will not say anything negative about our father's ex-wife. He has said before, privately and publicly, that he regrets any pain he may have caused in the past to people he loves.”

The women are the Georgia Republican’s children from his first marriage.

All this while polls show the race in SC tightening.

Coincidence?

I'll report, you decide.

Crossposted at Wizbang.

The co-opting of the Girl Scouts can now be considered complete

There are many stories out there chronicling the Girl Scouts embrace of values that many would call out of the mainstream.  Just google Girl Scout controversies and see them for yourself.

But this one in the eyes of some may be the proverbial nail in the coffin for the GSA:

In 2010, the Girl Scouts of the USA published a book called “MEdia.” The publication, designed for girls in grades six through eight, is a guide that apparently offers insight into how young people should process and understand the media messages surrounding them.

Considering the pervasive nature of popular media, this seems like a viable tool. However, there’s a problem — the book refers young readers to Media Matters for America as one of the primary sources for debunking lies and deceit.

...

Under the headline, “Consider the Source,” text encourages girls to go to the George Soros-funded Media Matters for America web site to clear up any media misinformation they might encounter. It reads:

The Internet is a breeding ground for “urban legends,” which are false stories told as if true. Next time you receive a txt or e-mail about something that seems unbelievable, confirm it before you spread it.

The fact-checking site snopes.com investigates everything from urban legends to “news” articles and posts its findings. Media Matters for America (http://mediamatters.org/) gets the word out about media misinformation.

In case you missed the reference, the Girl Scouts are suggesting that the George Soros funded Media Matters for America be the go to place for combatting media misinformation.

Imagine the outcry if the Boy Scouts Handbook guided members to Rush Limbaugh or Newsbusters for guidance on media veracity... you think there'd be a bit of an outcry?

I'm thnking so.

But this story... will be ignored by your regular outlets for news and information. 

Just doesn't fit the meme.

Crossposted at Wizbang.

Occupy death toll now at 9

The Tea Party was villified and mercilessly set upon by the media on the basis of false and/or trumped up accusations of racism and extremism. Juxtapose that with the 9 deaths now being reported at Occupy protests across the country, deaths very few people know anything about.

Have you heard about this outside of the blogosphere?

Yesterday more than 30 people gathered for a vigil to remember 54-year-old Rich Youngblood of Florence who was murdered at the #Occupy Eugene camp. Herald.net reported:

More than 30 people gathered for a vigil to remember a man who died after a fight in the Occupy Eugene camp.

Occupy Eugene leader Kristen Carpenter told KVAL-TV, “We’re sorry we couldn’t have stopped the violence in the system sooner.” She said the Friday night vigil was not just for 54-year-old Rich Youngblood of Florence but also for all victims of street violence.

Police said Youngblood was beaten and choked at the camp on Monday. Authorities are still investigating.

The City Council ordered the camp be disbanded.

With the Eugene beating death, the #occupy death toll stands at 9. This does not include the #Occupy Raleigh protester who shot up a food store injuring three people then committed suicide.

We've seen rioting, fires, rapes, general chaos and mayhem and now 9 deaths... you'd think we'd see more about that on ABC, CBS, NBC, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and other outlets... but... you'd be wrong.

Doesn't fit the meme.

And it's all about that meme now isn't it?

Image stolen from The Jawa Report.

Crossposted at Wizbang.

Obama/Holder go after Climategate leaker(s)

They join British authorities who were already on the hunt:

I have seen apparent proof that the United States Department of Justice (DOJ), Criminal Division, is working with United Kingdom police to pursue the leaker of the 2009 and 2011 “Climategate” emails. 

I have learned that last week DOJ sent a search-and-seizure letter to the host of three climate-change "skeptic" blogs. Last night, UK police raided a blogger’s home and removed computers and equipment.

The leaked records derailed “cap-and-trade” legislation in the U.S. and, internationally, as well as talks for a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. The emails and computer code were produced with taxpayer funds and held on taxpayer-owned computers both in the US and the UK, and all were subject to the UK Freedom of Information Act, the U.S. Freedom of Information Act and state FOIA laws.

They also were being unlawfully withheld in both the UK (by the University of East Anglia) and the U.S. (Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), including stonewalling me for two years, and three other requesters for longer).

The hunt involving U.S. and UK law enforcement agencies is now escalating. On Wednesday night UK time, six detectives with the UK police (Norfolk Police Department) raided the home of at least one blogger, removing his equipment to look for clues to the identity of leaker “FOIA 2011.”

On December 9, DOJ sent a preservation letter under 18 U.S.C 2703(f) to the publication platform (website host) Wordpress. This authority authorizes the government to request an Internet Service Provider (ISP) to preserve all records of a specific account for 90 days while the feds work on a warrant.

Norfolk PD affirmed to the subject of at least one of their raids that this international law enforcement hunt is for the leaker, meaning not for those whose acts the leaker exposed by making public emails containing admissions in their own words.

In the U.S., the academic and political Left have had fits about Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli exercising even more specific, anti-fraud authority to seek further records from University of Virginia in following up on indications from the first Climategate release of possible fraud against the taxpayer.

Apparently, that represented an abuse of the police power. No word yet if they are outraged by DOJ’s current foray or that of the UK raiding team.

The wizards behind the global warming curtain are doing their level best to propagate a falsehood by concealing the truth.

There's simply too much at stake.