Items of Interest

Dear Friends:

Here are a few issues I wrestled with last week that I thought might be of interest to you. I hope you find them helpful.

Blessings,
Barrett
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DEMONIZING THE PROLIFE COMMUNITY

This article by Michelle Malkin, http://michellemalkin.com/2009/06/03/mapping-the-climate-of-hate/, discusses the differences in the reporting of the murder of George TIller and the murder and shooting of two soldiers in Arkansas. What first drew my attention to the nature of the reporting on Tiller was a story that described his murder as an "assassination." It seemed strange to me that someone would call it that. The other day, I mentioned this to a strong prolife advocate I work with in DC and he brought it all into focus. He said the word suggests that Tiller's murderer was "under orders." In other words, by calling it an "assassination" Tiller's killer is labeled as part of a larger movement. He simply becomes the agent of the movement rather than a lone actor. The murder of George Tiller was an abominable act, a complete violation of the very principle of the sanctity of human life, but to call it an assassination is not only irresponsible, it will certainly inflame hatred and could potentially lead to acts of violence against innocent prolife advocates. Now, compare the response to Tiller's murder with the response to the murder of Private William Long. The press and the White House both downplayed, nearly to the point of ignoring, his murder by a muslim convert. One could argue that the liberal press and the liberal White House believe that the army's "chickens are coming home to roost." President Obama himself declared the Iraq war a war of "choice." Most liberals seem to think of the military as an unwanted necessity, at best. So the silence of some of them could be explained from that perspective. Possibly, other members of the press, and hopefully the White House, limited their response to the murder of an army private by a muslim convert because they didn't want to give muslim extremists any press. That would be helpful, and would certainly be something new for many of them, considering how they seemed to revel in reporting the activities of muslim extremists in Iraq during all the Bush years. But, if they have changed their attitude about reporting these kinds of atrocities in order to deny muslim extremists the publicity they seek, I consider that to be helpful. The publicity will only encourage our enemies and potentially lead to more acts of violence. But then the question arises, Why did the press and the White House respond so differently to these two heinous acts? The only conclusion I can come to is that they relished the opportunity to demonize the prolife community and cared little about the potential hatred toward prolife advocates they might inflame.

LOSING FRIENDS AND ENCOURAGING ENEMIES

Much has been said about President Obama's speech in Cairo. I appreciate some of what he said. It was not a one-sided bashing. He had some very strong words for some of the world's worst actors, but I also agree that he deserves a lot of the criticism he has gotten. His numerous attempts of moral equivalence were certainly in error. Now, I understand what the President was trying to do. He was trying to bring the worst of the world's thugs to the table. You can't get someone to see things your way if you're busy poking him in the eye. Unfortunately, it appears that the President believes that his comparisons are morally equivalent, and that is where much of the danger lies. Obama thinks he needs to admit that the grievances our enemies have against the US are valid and that he needs to apologize on our behalf. Unfortunately, while he is empathizing with our sworn enemies, he is alienating our sworn allies. The condescension and preachiness came across clearly. From his high moral position, the President wants to serve as the conscience of the world, pointing out for all of us the error of our ways and telling us what we need to do to fix them. In doing so, he is alienating our allies and may very well be emboldening our enemies. Consider the growing distance between Obama and Israel and Germany's Angela Merkel and France's Nicolas Sarkozy as evidence of the alienation of our allies on the one hand, and the increasing militarism of North Korea as evidence on the other hand. Amir Taheri has written a thought-provoking piece on this. He concludes, "In trying to prove that he is not George Bush, Barack Obama has committed big mistakes on key issues of foreign policy. His Cairo address, and his “one-size-fits-all” Islam policy, is just the latest. It encourages Islamists and ruling despots, discourages the forces of reform and change and, ultimately, could produce greater resentment of the United States among peoples thirsting for freedom, human rights and decent governance." http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6410051.ece. You can add to this the President's decision to fund abortion overseas once again with the cancellation of the Mexico City Policy. Prolife countries are now complaining that the United States is actively engaged in efforts to undermine their prolife policies.

THE GROWING BODY OF COMPLAINTS

This Heritage blog, http://blog.heritage.org/2009/04/30/fact-checking-obama/, provides some useful insight to a number of President Obama’s claims. What is especially useful is a comment posted in the blog by M.L. in Pennsylvania. It provides a great reminder of what we have already witnessed during these 100+ days of the Obama administration. I wish I had seen this last month, but it is so compelling, I thought it worth bringing to your attention. I copied it below.

M.L., PA writes:

This is TORTURE.

The first 100 days that MSNBC does not focus on:

Undermining Our Values

1. Calling for the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act on the White House website.
2. Calling on the White House website for the expansion of federal hate crimes to include homosexual behavior.
3. Calling on the White House website for policies like the “Fairness Doctrine” that could silence conservative and Christian talk radio.
4. Repealing limitations on taxpayer-funding of human embryonic stem cell research.
5. Repealing limitations on taxpayer-funding of abortions overseas.
6. Pledging $50 million to the United Nation’s Population Fund, which supports China’s draconian one-child policy.
7. Proposing new rules to gut conscience clause protections for pro-life doctors and other medical personnel who don’t want to be forced to perform abortions or other procedures that violate their values.
8. Proposing increased funding for the nation’s largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood.
9. Calling on the White House website for “mandatory volunteerism”).
10. Inviting homosexual families to the White House Easter Egg Roll.
11. Allowing his attorney general to call for the reinstatement of Clinton-era restrictions on the Second Amendment.
12. Breaking his promise not to appoint lobbyists to his administration. He hired 17 in his first two weeks.
13. Breaking his promise to sign legislation only after a five-day period of public comments. (Stimulus package bill had NONE; legislators were only given a few hours to read over 1,000 pages)
14. Asking that the monogram for Jesus Christ be covered up during a televised speech at a Catholic university in which Obama quotes the Sermon on the Mount.

Undermining Our National Security

15. Apologizing for America in Europe and Latin America.
16. Bowing before the Muslim king of Saudi Arabia.
17. Pledging to base America’s foreign policy toward Iran on “mutual respect” in a video to the Iranian people and Iran’s Holocaust-denying dictator.
18. Returning the bust of Winston Churchill given to George Bush after 9/11 by our British allies.
19. Giving British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the leader of America’s most loyal ally, a box of DVDs that don’t work in British DVD players.
20. Ordering Guantanamo Bay closed without any idea of where to send the terrorist suspects held there.
21. Suggesting that some of those terrorists now at GITMO may kill again, but may also be released onto U.S. soil and set up with welfare benefits.
22. Caving to communist Cuba by relaxing travel restrictions and remittances for Cuban Americans before any Cuban political prisoners have been released.
23. Shaking hands with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez.
24. Sitting silently though a 50-minute anti-American diatribe by Nicaragua’s communist president, Daniel Ortega.
25. Releasing Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the suspected of masterminding the 2000 suicide bombing of the U.S.S. Cole.
26. Releasing classified CIA memos outlining our interrogation techniques.
27. Telling our CIA agents not to be discouraged when he acknowledges their “mistakes.”
28. Declaring a new openness to “truth commissions” and prosecuting intelligence officials involved in enhanced interrogations of terrorists.
29. Proposing to send a $900 million foreign aid package to Palestinians in Gaza.
30. Asking Congress to relax the law so that some of that money could go to the terrorist organization Hamas.
31. Calling for the U.S. to eliminate its nuclear weapons.
32. Telling Russian President Demitri Medvedev that America’s commitment to missile defense is negotiable.
33. Dropping the term “enemy combatants” for GITMO detainees.
34. Dropping the term “terrorism” for “man-made disaster.”
35. Dropping the term “Global War on Terror” for “overseas contingency operations.”
36. Giving his first interview as president to the Arab language network Al-Arabiya.
37. Telling the Muslim world that his “job” was to communicate “that the Americans are not your enemy,” when it’s Muslim extremists who have declared war on us.
38. Proposing that military veterans use private insurance for the cost of a service-related injury before they would be eligible for coverage through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Undermining Free Enterprise

39. Signing the trillion-dollar plus so-called “stimulus” bill, which the Congressional Budget Office said would actually hurt long-term economic growth.
40. Saying Caterpillar wouldn’t lay off workers if his trillion-dollar stimulus bill passed Congress. Obama signed the bill on Feb. 17th. On March 17th, Caterpillar laid off nearly 2,500 workers.
41. Hosting a “Fiscal Responsibility Summit” one week after signing the trillion-dollar “stimulus” bill.
42. Railing against “outrageous recklessness and greed” of AIG bonuses that were legally protected in the so-called “stimulus” bill he signed four days after it passed, not five as he promised.
43. Breaking his promise on earmark reform by signing the $410 billion “omnibus” spending bill with billions in earmarks.
44. Proposing a $3.6 trillion budget that doubles the national debt in five years and triples it in ten years.
45. Proposing a “carbon cap and trade” scheme that will raise energy taxes by hundreds of billions, even trillions, of dollars.
46. Burning more than 9,000 gallons of jet fuel to fly to Iowa for Earth Day to promote “wind power.”
47. Proposing $634 billion in higher taxes for socialized health care.
48. Proposing to raise taxes on small business owners.
49. Saying the White House is open to the idea of taxing employer-sponsored health care benefits as income.
50. Signing a massive expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, calling it “a down payment on my commitment to cover every single American.”
51. Establishing the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research to give bureaucrats the power to ration health care and tell your doctors what care you can and cannot have.
52. Signing the 2009 Omnibus Public Land Management Act, which the Sierra Club praised specifically because it “will safeguard millions of acres … from oil and gas leasing.”
53. Suggesting he has found $1.5 trillion in bogus “savings” by not spending money in Iraq that we were not planning to spend years from now.
54. Ordering his Cabinet to “cut” $100 million in spending in 90 days, after proposing nearly $5 trillion in spending in his first 90 days.
55. Proposing to limit tax deductions for home mortgage interest.
56. Proposing to limit tax deductions for charitable donations.
57. Refusing to allow banks to repay TARP money.
58. Bailing out AMTRAK with a 10% increase in its taxpayer subsidies.
59. Bailing out the United Auto Workers Union with billions of taxpayer dollars to GM and Chrysler.
60. Bailing out the United Auto Workers by giving it a majority ownership stake in Chrysler. Yes, the union will own the company.
61. Bailing out Big Labor by issuing an executive order mandating that infrastructure projects paid for with “stimulus” funds must use union labor, guaranteeing higher costs for the taxpayer.
62. Bailing out Big Labor again by repealing regulations requiring the disclosure of how union dues are spent. So much for “transparency.”
63. Saying, “The United States government has no interest in running GM,” then vowing that the government will back auto warranties.
64. Saying, “The United States government has no interest in running GM,” then firing the CEO of General Motors.
65. Allowing states to set their own fuel efficiency and emissions standards, making it harder for struggling auto makers to compete.

Personnel Is Policy

66. Nominating Timothy “The Turbo Tax Evader” Geithner as Treasury Secretary to oversee the IRS.
67. Nominating as attorney general Eric Holder, who urged Bill Clinton to pardon tax evader Marc Rich and 8 FALN terrorists.
68. Nominating David Ogden, a prominent attorney for the pornography industry, to be Deputy Attorney General.
69. Nominating Tom Daschle, who owed more than $140,000 in back taxes, as Health and Human Services Secretary.
70. Nominating Kathleen Sebelius, who is ardently pro-abortion and owed $8,000 in back taxes, to be HHS Secretary.
71. Nominating Janet Napolitano, who said, “crossing the border is not a crime per se,” as Homeland Security Secretary.
72. Nominating Steven Chu as Energy Secretary. Last September, Chu said, “Somehow, we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe,” which at that time were roughly $8.00 a gallon.
73. Nominating Ron Kirk, who owed more than $6,000 in back taxes, as Trade Representative.
74. Nominating Bill Richardson, who was embroiled in an ethics scandal, as Secretary of Commerce.
75. Nominating Nancy Killefer, who also owed back taxes, to be the government’s “Efficiency Czar.”
76. Nominating Rosa Brooks, a leftwing acolyte of George Soros, as an advisor to the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy.
77. Nominating Harold Koh, an ardent supporter of using international law in the interpretation of our Constitution, to be the top legal advisor to the State Department.
78. Nominating Carol Browner, who was a member of the Socialist International, to be “Climate and Energy Czar.”
79. Nominating John Holdren, an environmental extremist and advocate of population control, as the White House Science Advisor.
80. Nominating Dawn Johnsen, who is so pro-abortion she once compared pregnancy to slavery, to to direct the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department.
81. Nominating Charles Freeman, an anti-Israel, pro-Arab apologist, to be head of the National Intelligence Council.
82. Nominating Tony West, who represented American Taliban John Walker Lindh and exposed the Bush Administration’s terrorist surveillance program, to the Justice Department’s Civil Division.
83. Nominating Annette Nazareth to be Deputy Treasury Secretary, who withdrew after a month-long probe into her taxes.
84. Trying to nominate pro-abortion Catholics to be ambassador to the Vatican, a move even John Kerry opposed.
85. Appointing Ellen Moran of the pro-abortion group Emily’s List as his White House communications director.
86. Appointing Melody Barnes, a board member of Emily’s List and Planned Parenthood, as his director of the Domestic Policy Council.
87. Appointing Harry Knox of the Human Rights Campaign (the largest homosexual rights lobbying group) to the White House’s Faith Based Advisory Council.
88. Appointing Adolfo Carrion as Director of White House Office of Urban Affairs, even though he is under investigation for kickbacks in a scandal nearly identical to one that cost GOP Senator Ted Stevens his election.
89. Nominating David Hamilton as his first appointment to a federal appeals court. Judge Hamilton has issued a number of controversial rulings, including prohibiting the Indiana House of Representatives from opening sessions with prayers in the name of Jesus.

Other Obama Outrages

90. Telling congressional Republicans to stop listening to Rush Limbaugh.
91. Coordinating attacks on Rush Limbaugh, Rick Santelli and Jim Cramer out of the White House.
92. Hosting weekly parties at the White House, serving up $100-a-pound Waygu beef during what Obama called, “the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.”
93. Laughing it up on 60 Minutes as the country is mired in a recession.
94. Allowing Air Force One to buzz the Statue of Liberty and lower Manhattan, creating panic in New York City.
95. Disparaging Special Olympians on the Tonight Show.
96. Allowing his Department of Homeland Security to issue a report accusing pro-life, smaller government conservatives and returning Iraq/Afghanistan veterans of being “rightwing extremists.”
97. Promising to push for comprehensive immigration reform, i.e., amnesty.
98. Killing the school voucher program in the District of Columbia, while sending his two daughters to an elite private school, rather than D.C.’s public schools.
99. Moving the Census out of the Department of Commerce and into the White House.
100. Relying too much on his teleprompter.