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.

"I think it's awful how the Grammy's made fun of Muslims..."

... by using their religious rituals and religious images in a mocking stage show. I particularly think it was unacceptable for them to keep shouting out "Mecca."

Oh...that didn't happen???

It was a stage show making fun of Catholics and their religious rituals and images? And the refrain was "Roman"?

Well, never mind.

It's only Catholics, so who cares?

-Peter Sean Bradley

Mr. Bradley has video of the garbage at his place.

Anyone care to ask Ms. Minaj why she chose not to mock Muslims?

Obama's priorities

Two stories I thought might be worth juxtaposing if only to help us all see more clearly as November approaches.

First up, Obama to cut combat pay:

Service members now will receive imminent danger pay only for days they actually spend in hazardous areas, Pentagon officials said here today.

The change, which took effect yesterday, was included in the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, which President Barack Obama signed into law Dec. 31.

“Members will see the prorated amount in their Feb. 15 pay records,” Pentagon spokesman Navy Capt. John Kirby said.

The act called for DOD to pay service members imminent danger pay only for the time they spend in areas that qualify for the pay. In the past, service members received $225 per month if they spent any time that month in an area where the pay was authorized. “This is a more targeted way of handling that pay,” Kirby said.

Next up, Obama to send nearly a billion dollars to 'Arab Spring' Islamic radicals:

President Barack Obama proposed a $770 million aid package Monday for Arab countries undergoing democratic revolutions.

If approved, the “Middle East and North Africa Incentive Fund” will "incentivize long-term economic, political and trade reforms -- key pillars of stability -- by supporting governments that demonstrate a commitment to undergo meaningful change and empower their people."

The money is listed in the Fiscal Year 2013 budget (which starts this October) for the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, which is responsible for economic development and humanitarian assistance.

The aid package would be on top of the $1.3 billion in annual military funding that the U.S. already sends Egypt, which remained unchanged in the budget proposal.

Cut combat pay.  Increase funding to radicals in the Middle East.

Hope and change anyone?

Crossposted at Wizbang.

Bishop in Ireland accused of "incitement to hatred"

How far are those opposed to religious liberty willing to go?

In Ireland, pretty damned far apparently:

A HOMILY delivered at Knock shrine by the Bishop of Raphoe, Philip Boyce, is being investigated by the Director of Public Prosecutions following a formal complaint by a leading humanist who claims the sermon was an incitement to hatred.

The gardai have confirmed to former Fine Gael election candidate John Colgan that they have prepared and forwarded a file to the DPP after he made allegations that the address by Dr Boyce was in breach of the Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act, 1989.

The homily, entitled: "To Trust in God" was delivered to worshippers during a novena at the Marian shrine in Co Mayo last August and subsequently reported in the media, including The Irish Times, under the headline: "'Godless culture' attacking church, says bishop."

Mr Colgan, a retired chartered engineer and economist from Leixlip, Co Kildare, referred in his formal complaint to two key passages in Dr Boyce's homily which he believes broke the law.

One of the passages referred to the Catholic Church in Ireland being "attacked from outside by the arrows of a secular and godless culture".

A second passage, which was included in the complaint, stated: "For the distinguishing mark of Christian believers is the fact they have a future; it is not that they know all the details that await them, but they know in general terms that their life will not end in emptiness."

Mr Colgan, who was a leader in the 'Campaign to Separate Church and State' in the late 1990s, said in his complaint: "I believe statements of this kind are an incitement to hatred of dissidents, outsiders, secularists, within the meaning of the [Incitement to Hatred] Act, who are perfectly good citizens within the meaning of the civil law. The statements exemplify the chronic antipathy towards secularists, humanists etc, which has manifested itself in the ostracising of otherwise perfectly good Irish citizens, who do not share the aims of the Vatican's Irish Mission Church."

...

In his complaint, Mr Colgan said he attributed this prejudice to "hostile propaganda disseminated in school and chapel in the main by or for the institutional churches, for there is no rational or temporal reason". In a statement to the Sunday Independent, Martin Long of the Catholic Communications office said: "Bishop Boyce's homily 'To Trust in God' is available for anyone to read at catholicbishops.ie.

"I advise any person to read it and judge it for themselves. It is clearly a reasonable, balanced, honest -- and indeed self-critical from a church perspective -- analysis of the value of the Catholic faith. Bishop Boyce is a good and holy man and much loved by those who know him."

The entire sermon can be read here and ought to be.  First, because it's a great sermon.  But more importanly, because it'll become quite obvious that it is most absent of anything a rational person would call hatred.

To see an incitement to hatred in anything written in that sermon is to have given oneself over to delusion. John Colgan is someone who is in dire need of prayer.

Then again, I guess that act in and of itself would also be seen by him to be an incitement to hatred.

H/T to Deacon Greg.

"It lessens the historical saliency of King for younger kids"

Have you wondered why you don't hear Martin Luther King's speech much on the airwaves?

Wonder no more:

It is the time of year when students are taught about the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech, so passionately delivered that his call for freedom changed U.S. history. Once heard, it is impossible to forget.

But many students won't get to hear it -- and most who do will hear only snippets, educators and historians said. And that, they said, is affecting the legacy of the preeminent civil rights leader, whose life will be honored tomorrow with an annual federal holiday.

"It lessens the historical saliency of King for younger kids," said Robert Brown, assistant dean of undergraduate education at Emory University in Atlanta who specializes in African American politics. "It is one thing to read King and another to see him. Hearing him is so much more powerful than reading it."

...

All of King's speeches and papers are owned by his family, which has gone to court several times since the 1990s to protect its copyright; King obtained rights to his most famous speech a month after he gave it. Now, those who want to hear or use the speech in its entirety must buy a copy sanctioned by the King family, which receives the proceeds.

...

Clayborne Carson, director of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute and a history professor at Stanford University, said the institute "would like to make it as widely available as possible. However, I respect the King family's point of view that this is private property and there has to be a balancing of the public need versus the family need."

When King was killed, his family was left without much money. The family earns income from licensing his image and charging fees for the use of his speeches. Some of his papers are free for researchers to look through. The King family did not respond to queries for this article.

Joseph Beck, an attorney for the King family and an expert in intellectual property rights, said, "The King family has always supported providing access to the speech and to the video for educational purchases and encourages interested persons to contact the King Center in Atlanta." According to the family's Web site, videotapes and audiotapes of the speech can be purchased for $10, but one copy often is not enough for an entire school, and many schools don't know what materials are available.

Many schools use the text -- often taken in violation of the copyright from the Internet. The King family, however, wants teachers to use the speech and has not pursued legal action against educators, Carson said.

Critics of the King family's decision not to put the speech in the public domain say the poorest children are the most deprived.

I had no clue.

You?

Crossposted at Wizbang.

"It takes a special kind of mentality to be offended by a polite and voluntary request to a higher being"

The Marin (San Francisco area) Catholic Youth Organization sponsors a variety of kid's sports leagues in the community, to include basketball.  It's a private organization, as the name clearly implies, but boys and girls of any faith can join and play and they do.  Recently, the CYO decided to gently suggest an opening prayer before each basketball game and some in the community, known by its clamoring for tolerance and diversity, were outraged.  

I'll let Bookworm pick it up from here:

It takes a special kind of mentality to be offended by a polite and voluntary request to a higher being asking for character development, sportsmanship, parental love and fair play. Fortunately for blogging fodder, here in Marin we have those special mentalities.  While some understand that a private organization sponsored by the Catholic church is within its rights to ask people to join it in a prayer, others are up in arms.  Some merely express discomfort — a la “religion has no place in sports” — but some are much more aggressive in their hostility to the idea:

A decision by Catholic Youth Organization leaders to ask young athletes to pray before basketball games has touched a nerve among residents of the San Geronimo Valley.

“I understand that if we rent to one religious group, we have to rent to them all. But I still don’t like it,” said Richard Sloan, a trustee of the Lagunitas School District, which co-owns the San Geronimo Valley Gym. “I’m going to put up a sign in front of the gym: ‘If you don’t pray in my school, I won’t think in your church.’”  (Emphasis mine.)

At least Sloan is honest about his incredible prejudice.  Others are trying different tactics, including the claimthat many parents had no idea the Catholic Youth Organization was actually Catholic; that no one needs to ask God for help with pushy parents because there are only a few of them out there in West Marin; and that West Marin’s varying faiths are so delicately balanced against each other that no end of chaos could result because of this bland little prayer for good sportsmanship.

In a funny way (or maybe it’s not so funny at all), this secularist hostility and its aggressive efforts to shut down all forms of privately expressed faith in the public square reminds me of a problem I’ve always had with Islam:  namely the Islamists’ incredible fear that their religion can’t compete, so that the only way to preserve the faith is to kill (really kill, with sword, stone, hangman’s rope and bomb) the competition.

I like having a marketplace of religion.  This marketplace is not one in which practitioners of one religion coerce, kill, harass, humiliate, stone or demean members of other faiths.  Instead, it’s a marketplace in which various religions generously and often lovingly make their activities and rituals available to others, secure in the belief that there’s a viable product, one that builds, rather than destroys.  I’d be a lot happier if the secularists would have the same approach, rather than aping the Islamists, by trying to shut everyone else down.

Bookie has the offending prayer that was suggested by CYO leaders.  Go now and read it... and ponder the lengths to which the secularists are going today.

There are simply no boundaries

Rick Santorum will have to expect more of this if he continues to garner support:

During the question and answer portion of Rick Santorum’s second to last campaign event of the day, a voter brought up a painful memory from the former Pennsylvania senator’s past.

At a Pizza Ranch restaurant in Newton, Iowa,  a member of the audience asked Santorum to react to a controversial attack leveled by liberal Fox News contributor Alan Colmes, who called the Santorum family’s approach to grieving for their dead baby boy, who lived for only two hours after his birth in 1996, “crazy.”

In a Fox News interview on Monday, Colmes characterized Santorum’s decision to bring the deceased child home an example of “some of the crazy things he’s said and done.”

But in Iowa this afternoon, Santorum explained that it was important for his other children to “know they had a brother.”

Santorum’s wife, Karen, who was at the event and listened to her husband talk about the experience, began to weep.

“It’s just so inappropriate,” she said as tears streamed from her eyes.

Earlier on Monday, Colmes criticized Santorum’s handling of the death of the child, Gabriel Michael Santorum.

“Get a load of some of the crazy things he’s said and done, like taking his two-hour-old baby when it died right after child birth home and played with it so that his other children would know that the child was real,” the liberal pundit said in a Fox News interview.

Colmes later apologized and Santorum, as many would expect, was gracious in accepting that apology:

Earlier today, Alan Colmes made headlines by making an unseemly comment about Rick Santorum– namely, about his child who died hours after being born. Colmes let his Twitter followers know that he did his part to apologize to Santorum, and the latter responded to that apology on air today with Sean Hannity, explaining his actions with his child and his acceptance of Colmes’ apology.

Hannity brought up that Colmes had said he had apologized to Santorum and brought the audience to speed on his comments, or at least the subject matter therein. Santorum responded that “there’s a lot of nasty stuff out there on the internet, and I’m sure Alan Colmes reads a lot of that stuff from the left.” He then explained what he had done with the child– remain with him for the night and show him to his siblings after he had passed, as a way to “recognize the dignity of that life”– and added that “it was a tremendously healing experience,” though “I can understand why people may want to do something differently.”

As for his conversation with Colmes, Santorum explained that he accepted. “I know Alan is a very good person at heart,” he told Hannity, “He made a mistake, he admitted the mistake… we all say things and do stupid things.” He did note, however, that it was “part of the culture” for people to make mean comments and impossible to avoid them. “They do say those things, but please, don’t repeat them.”

Sadly, people will, incessantly.  I hope Santorum and his wife will prepare themselves for the nastiness that will come, especially if he does as well as polls are indicating he will today in Iowa.

Crossposted at Wizbang.

Ladies and gentlemen, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee

By tim, The Godless Heathen

Via The Gateway Pundit:

"We saw what happened when Iran took hostages in 1979. A president lost his re-election. The prestige of the United States was challenged."

"I am not going to be taken hostage again to extend the Bush tax cuts when every economist says that it’s absolutely absurd forever and points to the fact that no jobs are necessarily created by extending the Bush tax cuts, at least on the top one percent of Americans, and when the top one percent population polled have said that they have no problem with losing that ludicrous benefit forever and ever. And then, when everyone understands the question of mutual sacrifice, benefit and sacrifice, with all of our soldiers coming home we’re now going to talk about being held hostage to the Bush tax cuts forever."

(Emphasis mine)

I have so much to say, yet…I’d rather hear what you, gentle reader, think of that.

Channeling James Carville (UPDATED)

Remember when James Carville smeared Paula Jones, saying you'll never know what you'll find "when you drag a hundred dollar bill through a trailer park."

Remember the criticism he rightly received from conservatives for saying such garbage?

I'm not sure who Michael Barron is frankly but I tripped over a piece he published yesterday and felt the need to respond.

Someone tell me how Mr. Barron today is any different from James Carville then: 

So Ginger White, self proclaimed mistress of Herman Cain and the latest pawn in the great demo destructo machine, now has remorse. She proclaims sorrow and asks for forgiveness from Mrs. Cain. She says she "never wanted any of this to happen". Really? So that is why you went to a lawyer and held a news conference and plastered your sordid tale all over the land. But you didn't want to hurt anybody. Yeah right. Well, lookaround Ms White as they drag the dead Mr. Cain from the battleground all at your hand. You struck the dagger. You were complicit with the poison and you created the maelstrom which now lives on in Mr. Cain's life long after you have spent your 30 pieces of silver.

Unless Mr. Barron, she really did have an affair with Herman Cain... and if she did, it takes two to tango.  And Ms. White has said that she came forward before others got wind of the story, that investigations were already underway, that it was already out there... but it doesn't fit the meme to leave that detail out now does it?  Her story, as we know it now, is no more true nor no more false than any of Herman Cain's denials at this juncture.  After all Mr. Barron, withholding information from your wife is as much a lie as telling a falsehood, and if Cain can lie in that manner, he can lie in any manner, but that just doesn't help the story line and the smears now does it Mr. Carville Barron?

He goes on:

Like all Judas', after the irrevocable act, they feel remorse and sorrow. Too late. You don't feel bad for Mr. Cain. You feel bad for you. Who knows if anything you said was even true. It doesn't matter. The world heard "affair" from your lips and nothing else matters. You even got to play out the stereotype of a black man with a white woman. Oh, you did him in alright and your masters in Chicago are toasting you tonight with theircognac and cigars. "What a coup!" "Can you believe she did it?" Yep, that's your legacy. You skewered a decent man. A man running for President of the United States. A man who committed himself to a genuine quest to make America a better place. A man who sought to provide opportunity to those who had only been given welfare. A chance to join the economic opportunity afforded all Americans. Yes, Ms White, that's what you took, not only from Herman Cain, but from all of us who supported those ideals. You didn't just destroy Herman Cain. You destroyed us.

Here you identify the root problem with your defense Mr. Carville Barron... the truth to you doesn't matter.  What does matter is that Ginger White is tarred and feathered, that her reputation is smeared irrevocably, that she is painted as a money grubbing whore who now takes her place next to Judas... apparently because Herman Cain is your Jesus, is that correct Mr. Carville Barron?  

You state that she skewered a decent man but does a decent man do things without his wife's knowledge... for 13 years?  Cain's admitted to that has he not?  And Mr. Carville Barron, Ginger White hasn't destroyed me, and she didn't destroy Herman Cain... in fact, just ask Cain yourself if he's been destroyed...  and while you're asking him, ask him why, if these allegations are as you're portraying them to be, why in hell is he quitting?  Do decent men quit when confronted with lies?  Do decent men simply give up when liars go on the attack?  Or... might the man's decency actually be giving way to the notion that he is as complicit as Ginger White in what has taken place and that the decent thing to do is turn back to his wife, seek her forgiveness, and mend what he himself has torn apart?  That to me is a decent thing to do.

Mr. Carville Barron, Herman Cain's decency may very well have manifested itself now and not before.  And Ginger White coming forward may very well have led to that manifestation.  But what do I know Mr. Carville Barron, after all, anybody with any sense knows that she's trash, a Judas who has betrayed your Christ... correct?

Mr. Carville Barron, concludes:

So now you can take your place among the other Judas' in history. Do you know how they turned out? Everybody knows you now and what you did. Read your bible. You're gonna need it because where you are going, even God can't help you. 

Your God may not be able to help her Mr. Carville Barron... but my God, the God of Scripture, the God of tradition and history, the God whose Son is Jesus Christ and whose Holy Spirit dwells amongst us even now, seeks out the Ginger Whites of this world and helps them immensely.

It's the Carvilles and the Barrons out there, putting their ideology above all else, who may be placing themselves outside the reach of God's help, to God's great sadness and chagrin.

God have mercy on them.

God have mercy on us each.

Crossposted at Wizbang.

UPDATE: The Anchoress links and adds as only she can:

The worst thing about politics — the very worst thing about it — is how our political enthrallments help us to become everything we hate.

And so very quickly, and deceptively. It’s hate that feels like love.

The most insidious part of this Borg-like hate collective is how easily one can slip into its influence through the simple error of attaching real but disproportionate feelings of love onto things which are often illusory and ultimately temporary. I love my politics so much that I must hate you for your policies; I love my church so much that I must hate you for not loving it as intensely; I love the promise of my pension plan so much that I must hate you for pointing out that it is unsustainable; I love my opinions so much that I must not allow you to have opinions of your own.

Hatred is a twisting perversion of paradoxes wherein one can claim a love for God so fervent that it justifies hating another, even as God hates your hate, because it has been born of the absolute idol one has made out of one’s professed love.

They want their cake...

... and they want you and me to eat it too:

An Iowa baker who politely declined to provide a wedding cake for two lesbians based on her Christian values may face legal action from the couple.

...

On Tuesday KCCI 8 Des Moines interviewed Trina Vodraska and Janelle Sievers, who said they were “shocked” when a local wedding cake business owner declined to provide the confection for their ceremony.

“It was degrading, you know, it was like she chastised us for wanting to do business with her,” said Vodraska.

Victoria Childress, who runs the business from her home, said she told the couple that she was unable to give them a cake based on her Christian convictions. Both she and the couple say the conversation was cordial.

“I didn’t do the cake because of my convictions for their lifestyle. It is my right as a business owner. It is my right, and it’s not to discriminate against them,” said Childress.

“It’s not so much to do with them, as it’s to do with me, and my walk with God and what I will answer (to) him for,” she added.

“They thanked me for being honest with them. They were very pleasant. I did not belittle them, I did not speak rudely to them. There were no condescending remarks made, nothing.”

The news station reports that the couple is unsure whether to file a civil rights complaint with the state. However, the couple has since reportedly released a statement calling Childress a “bigot,” and the baker says she has been deluged with hate mail that she has stopped reading.

“It’s really hard to read things like that,” she told FOX News. “I’m a pretty quiet, soft-spoken person. But when I stand up for my convictions against things, I’m very strong when it comes to that.”

You'll need to be strong Ms. Childress.  You're about to suffer the wrath of those who don't want you simply to be tolerant.  They want your affirmation.  And they'll sue to get it.