Its 6 days before the election. I am pro-life as you may have read in my other blogs. I had planned to drop it, but I thought this video was powerful from America's Choice Now in which videos of Barack Obama himself declaring his not only pro-choice stance but his abortion extremism is obvious. The video is safe for work and safe for kids.
At 1:45, Barack declares the first thing he will do in office is sign the Freedom of Choice Act. That link is to a pro-choice website, so you don't think I am offering just pro-life interpretations of that act. If you think that was taken out of context, look at this statement from his own website in which he says (my emphasis added):
"Throughout my career, I've been a consistent and strong supporter of reproductive justice, and have consistently had a 100% pro-choice rating with Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America.
"When South Dakota passed a law banning all abortions in a direct effort to have Roe overruled, I was the only candidate for President to raise money to help the citizens of South Dakota repeal that law. When anti-choice protesters blocked the opening of an Illinois Planned Parenthood clinic in a community where affordable health care is in short supply, I was the only candidate for President who spoke out against it. And I will continue to defend this right by passing the Freedom of Choice Act as president.
For those who pro-life decisions are a priority we can not waiver on, Barack cannot be our candidate.
I am finding this political season interesting for many reasons. First, because this is the first time in a while I don't feel strongly about one candidate or the other....either positively or negatively. Second, because numerous people I would have typically cast as socially conservative are breaking their lines and going to a candidate who is anything but. In my short political following career, I have never seen so many people break from what they would have considered their values.
The greatest example I have to give are the pro-life constituency inside the US. Most of the time, pro-lifers are adamant about choosing pro-life candidates, particularly in the presidency where their selection of Supreme Court justices have the most influence on candidates. However, many of the pro-life people I know have moved to being a Barack Obama supporter. This is particularly odd since as the Washington Post points out in this article, Barack Obama is not only pro-choice but an Abortion Extremist. What does that mean? Well, for example, he feels that partial birth abortions are "okay" and the Supreme Court should have not allowed them to be banned. Even worse than that, he opposed multiple laws which require a baby who was attempted to be aborted but born alive to be given medical treatment to try to keep them alive. You can see this website, bornalivetruth.org, for more details on that. Yes, the website is probably slanted...but if you don't want to read it you can click through to the actual links to the Illinois governments voting records to show you Barack's records. You can avoid the text if you want and just use the links to get to the meat of how he votes.
So, why are pro-lifers breaking from their values? Here is what I have heard: 1) George W Bush, George H W Bush, and Ronald Reagan "did nothing" to advance the pro-life cause and therefore the president vote doesn't seem to matter much. 2) Other social injustices seem more relevant today such as poverty, health care, and war mongering. 3) Barack Obama is the furthest thing from Bush.
If you have another reason, I would love to hear it...but this is what I have been hearing. Here would be my responses, urging pro-lifers not to give up this value of theirs: 1) I can see the argument...but when legislation has been done from the supreme court bench (Roe v Wade) than the only way we can affect that legislation is to elect people to power that will put Supreme Court justices who believe in the sanctity of life. 2) If the person is a Christian, I would respond with Matthew 25:40, "I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me." I would argue that while these other issues are important, there is none less than a helpless child. Have you held a newborn baby? Are they not the most helpless and therefore least? 3) I can't say anything to this aside from should we give up our values in this election? This isn't just pro-life to pro-choice...this is pro-life to "abortion extremism"...as pointed out by the Washington Post.
Unfortunately, my choices in this election are very limited since I am sticking to my pro-life values...at least in so far as to avoid the abortion extremism. The choice comes down to McCain or no one...a choice I don't like very much. But, at least I will be able to sleep at night.
Raise your hand if you were born in your mom's third trimester! Yea, that's what I thought...you are the type to raise your hand when reading a blog. Regardless, most of of us were born in the third trimester. Some even born in the second trimester are alive and well today. Unfortunately, its this issue that totally has made it no way that I can vote for Barack Obama.
If you missed it this weekend, Obama and McCain were interviewed at Saddleback church by Pastor Rick Warren, author of the famous Purpose Driven Life book. Overall, Obama danced around most questions and didn't give very many clear answers. This combined with his relatively short record in public politics make a lot of his positions unknown. But, he was clear on one issue. Around 2:16 of the clip below he is alright with late term abortions and says he is in favor of limiting late term abortions. To me, since there are some who are alive and well born at 22-26 weeks....considered the second trimester and not the third. Want to see proof? You can read here about a baby who was born in January and living at 24 weeks. I find that those who don't believe that life starts at conception will sway towards pro-choice. But, do you continue to support "choice" when otherwise the baby would live?
For the record, I wanted to like Obama. In my opinion, he had a better health care plan and a better view on the environment. More importantly, I thought he would shake up things more and I felt like we needed a political change.
However, my concerns have started outweighing his positives. His speeches across Europe made it sound like he was pandering to that European audience. I have no desire for our president to be pandering to a European audience. His position on abortion is irreconcilable against my beliefs. And he has too many grey areas where I cannot draw a conclusion as to what his stance is. This Saddleback forum showed that to me.
In contrast, McCain has been clear. You may not like his positions, but there is no doubt as to what they are. McCain's health care plan has come around. Its not just a $5000 tax credit but provisions for those who have pre-existing conditions that make their insurance much higher than $5000.
McCain has not won my vote yet but I think Obama has lost it due to his stance on abortions. Here is more on Obama's stance on abortion. He even voted against banning partial birth abortions when an exception for the mother's health was made. Here is the definition of partial birth abortion, sometimes called late term abortion which Obama talks about in the video below, from wikipedia:
In the U.S., a federal statute defines "partial-birth abortion" as any abortion in which the fetus is extracted "past the navel [of the fetus] . . . outside the body of the mother," or "in the case of head-first presentation, the entire fetal head is outside the body of the mother," in order to cause death of the fetus. [...] Removing a dead fetus does not meet the federal legal definition of "partial-birth abortion," which specifies that partial live delivery must precede "the overt act, other than completion of delivery, that kills the partially delivered living fetus."[27] Additionally, a doctor may extract a fetus past the navel and then cut through the neck.
So, thats a baby that is extracted alive from the mother and then killed purposefully. Obama has continually voted against banning those.
Here is his position on abortion from his own mouth. He even mentions late term abortions which can be another term for partial birth abortions. Although he claims to support "limiting" late term abortions, he has voted against banning them even when there are exclusions for the mother's health.
Three market conditions are associated with predatory lending, Musto and his colleagues found: There is little competition among lenders, property owners are sitting on lots of equity and borrowers are poorly informed about risks. In casual conversation, predatory lending usually means a loan that is bad for the borrower. "But this begs the question: How do such loans arise in the first place, when borrowing is voluntary?" Musto and his colleagues write.
To many people, loans with extraordinarily high interest rates constitute predatory lending. Critics often cite payday loans, which charge the annual equivalent of more than 100% for loans in advance of a worker's next paycheck. Loans putting borrowers at high risk of default also are often called predatory. This would include "negative amortization" mortgages that allow borrowers to make very low monthly payments, causing the outstanding balance to grow over time rather than get smaller.
The first article makes the claim that the free market has corrected itself:
When bad loans are made, both borrowers and lenders are punished--and must correct course. Observe that Wall Street financial firms and direct lenders who engaged in lax lending are suffering huge losses (such as Merrill Lynch's (nyse: MER - news - people ) $8 billion loss) and internal upheaval--and have changed their practices accordingly. The number of subprime, adjustable-rate mortgages has declined by 50% this year. As for the middlemen who tried to make (and often succeeded in doing so) a quick buck on dubious loans, their reputations are sullied and their business has dried up.
While I believe that it is the case that the market has corrected itself for now, what is to prevent it from getting back this way. These practices have cost everyone in the US money as taxpayers are bailing out the mess that the commercial lenders created. How can we ensure that we do not again get in a situation that our taxes will be used to bail out predatory lenders? The only way I can figure to do that is through legislation. Maybe this legislation isn't the right legislation, I must confess to not having read through it, but I don't again want to pay for these bank's mistakes.
After reading this NY Times article and seeing these quotes from presidential candidate Barack Obama, he went from someone interesting on my list to someone I would absolutely never even consider voting for. Specifically, it was this statement:
“You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them,” Mr. Obama responded, according to a transcript of the fund-raiser published on Friday on The Huffington Post Web site.
“And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not,” Mr. Obama went on. “And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or antitrade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
As my friend John summarized this comment, "So they are gun bearing hate mongers because the area has no jobs."
I am not going to say anymore but maybe we are seeing who Barack Obama really is now with these sort of comments...
I have heard a lot of arguments over the past about the fact that I am a male especially means I don't have the right to tell a woman what to do with her body. And, I have never tried to disagree with those...but words my wife spoke last night have been echoing in my mind as the glaring reason to be pro-life when taking religion out of it. Here is roughly how the conversation went with my wife, Heather, who is 25 weeks pregnant:
Heather: -- painful sigh -- Erik: What's wrong? Heather: Just the baby kicking. Erik: Does it hurt? Heather: It often doesn't hurt, but its just very unexpected. Not being able to prepare for the kick always causes a little reaction.
This conversation reminds me that the unborn baby has its own brain and moves itself. The woman is not able to control the baby like she can the rest of her body. Our baby girl is 25 weeks old...still the age that abortions are legal. But, from Heather's statements like this one, the baby obviously has a mind of its own. When we saw her on an ultrasound at 8 weeks, she was moving on her own and had a heartbeat that is unique from Heathers. She had her own body parts, heart, and movements.
I think having gone through the father side of now Heather's second pregnancy continually reiterates my belief that the unborn baby is a unique creation from God and it is our responsibility to protect him or her. I am not trying to tell the woman what to do with her body, but protecting the unborn baby's life. My religious beliefs further reiterate the sanctity of life.
Following other family bloggers lead, I tried this Candidate Calculator. Its a useful tool for people who don't have time to weed through each candidates position, which normally is made clear in a 14 page essay! At the bottom I left it Undecided so that it would not take my current preferences into account on anything but the issues. Here are my results:
Mike Huckabee - 74.00% match
Your Other Top Matches California Representative Duncan Hunter (R) - 68.00% Businessman John Cox (R) - 67.00% Colorado Representative Tom Tancredo (R) - 66.00%
Middle of the Pack Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney (R) - 61.00% Arizona Senator John McCain (R) - 60.00% Kansas Senator Sam Brownback (R) - 56.00% Delaware Senator Joseph Biden (D) - 55.00% New York Senator Hillary Clinton (D) - 54.00% Former North Carolina Senator John Edwards (D) - 54.00% Illinois Senator Barack Obama (D) - 53.00% Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd (D) - 52.00% Ohio Representative Dennis Kucinich (D) - 50.00% Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) - 49.00%
Bottom of the Barrel Former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel (D) - 47.00% Former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson (R) - 44.00% New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson (D) - 41.00% Texas Representative Ron Paul (R) - 33.00%
Party Results Republican - 53.24% Democrat - 46.76%
I think the most amazing things to me were 1. 46.76% Democrat? Wow..I never have sided with a democrat in my 10 years of voting. 2. How low Giuliani, Thompson, and Paul were? 33% with Paul? thats crazy!
