What will we hear by January?
Friday, October 31, 2008
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
NRO's Mark Hemingway on Obama Infomercial
...As for the format of the special itself, aesthetically it was a bit nauseating with all the soft focus and generically uplifing music constantly swelling in and out. As for the content: I'm sorry . . . it's not that I don't care about those experiencing hardship — quite the contrary — but the last thing that should be driving America's voting habits is a half-hour of Manipulative Portraits of Downtrodden Victims of Shadowy Governmental Forces. Whatever our problems are right now, America is not one big breadline. To be fair, all politicians exploit these anecdotal cases but I think Obama's special really pushed the boundaries of my bile duct here.
Just as one particular example, I was struck by the guy at the Ford plant; it noted that his father and grandfather had worked at Ford and retired with full benefits. And now he's only paid to work every other week. Is he suffering currently because of the state of the economy and George Bush's economic policies, or because his dad and grandad's union extracted exorbitant benefits and retirement packages that mean Ford is now saddled with crushing financial obligations?
Trade-offs and moral hazards don't seem to exist in Obamerica and his policy proposals reflect that. There's tax relief in the form of "refundable tax credits" that might as well be welfare subsidies because you get them regardless of whether you're one of the bottom 40 percent Americans that already pay no income tax; he says with a straight face that creating affordable insurance at the same time you dictate who insurance companies must cover is somehow attainable — without destroying the private insurance market; and he talks earnestly about education reform when your party is in the pocket of the NEA and is currently controlling Congress. And again, I was struck by how craven it was that he was adopting a foreclosure freeze that not that long ago he correctly said was a bad idea.
If you really think that Obama's policy perscriptions for our most serious problems are grounded in what is practical, let alone attainable, well then you really are voting for hope — and nothing else.
Link here.
Just as one particular example, I was struck by the guy at the Ford plant; it noted that his father and grandfather had worked at Ford and retired with full benefits. And now he's only paid to work every other week. Is he suffering currently because of the state of the economy and George Bush's economic policies, or because his dad and grandad's union extracted exorbitant benefits and retirement packages that mean Ford is now saddled with crushing financial obligations?
Trade-offs and moral hazards don't seem to exist in Obamerica and his policy proposals reflect that. There's tax relief in the form of "refundable tax credits" that might as well be welfare subsidies because you get them regardless of whether you're one of the bottom 40 percent Americans that already pay no income tax; he says with a straight face that creating affordable insurance at the same time you dictate who insurance companies must cover is somehow attainable — without destroying the private insurance market; and he talks earnestly about education reform when your party is in the pocket of the NEA and is currently controlling Congress. And again, I was struck by how craven it was that he was adopting a foreclosure freeze that not that long ago he correctly said was a bad idea.
If you really think that Obama's policy perscriptions for our most serious problems are grounded in what is practical, let alone attainable, well then you really are voting for hope — and nothing else.
Link here.
Limbaugh's Pre-Buttal to Obama Infomercial
Rush Limbaugh's "Pre-Buttal" the 30-minute Obama Infomercial:
Here's the text link.
Here's the audio link.
Here's the text link.
Here's the audio link.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Obama's Government Plan to Redistribute
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
PRUDEN: A game-changer by Obama
Wesley Pruden of the Washington Times
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
If your toilet is stopped up by something really big and smells really bad, you'll probably need a plumber. Joe the Plumber, as it turns out, diagnosed the trouble, and yesterday we learned what it was. It smells really bad.
The tape recording of an interview that Barack Obama gave to Radio Station WBEZ in Chicago in 2001 surfaced, and in that interview Mr. Obama, then a law professor and a state senator, lays out how he would redistribute the wealth. He sounds like a man with a plan.
The interview explains a lot, beginning with the attempt, abetted by a mainstream media that no longer tries to hide its slavish obeisance to the Democratic campaign, to destroy Joe the Plumber and shut down discussion of the implications of what the candidate said.
Mr. Obama doesn't think much of the Constitution, or even of the Supreme Court justices who have rewritten it over the years to accommodate notions of "social justice." The Warren Court, which wrote finis to public-school segregation with its unanimous Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, has been decried since as radical, but it wasn't radical enough. Earl Warren only pretended to be a soldier of the revolution.
One of the "tragedies of the civil-rights movement," Mr. Obama says, is that the Supreme Court did not address redistribution of wealth, probably because of the inherent difficulty of achieving such goals through the courts. The Supreme Court did not break from the restraints of the Constitution and "we still suffer from that." Mr. Obama is not "optimistic" that the Supreme Court can achieve redistribution of wealth - of taking from the workers to give to the deadbeats - but he obviously thinks he knows how to do it. A president with a compliant Congress, which he expects to be in January, can do it through legislation and "administration."
The Barack Obama of this interview clearly does not think much of what the Founding Fathers bequeathed to us: "The Constitution reflected the enormous blind spot in this culture that carries on to this day. The framers had that same blind spot ... the fundamental flaw of this country."
Mr. Obama is a gifted politician, with the smarts to understand that this could be the "game-changer" that leaves his campaign, almost picture-perfect until now, in ruins. He understands that he has to fly under the radar for now. That's why his campaign apparatus moves swiftly to dismiss questions about the Obama paper trail, such as it is, and to crush anyone bold and foolish enough to inquire into the real Barack Obama.
Joe the Plumber learned the hard way what happens to such questioners, and when a television reporter in Florida asked Joe Biden whether his running mate is a Marxist economist, good old Joe, usually eager to talk about everything, acted as if the interviewer had accused him of serial killing or child molesting. Some things just aren't to be talked about, not now. Not Barack Obama's radical notions about redistributing the wealth - which is, after all, the essence of Marxism. Not about how he intends to replace fundamental American values with values that most Americans, if they knew about them, would regard as alien and hostile.
If John McCain wants to change the game over the next seven days, he'll have to break through the media screen to spell out, clearly, often and in detail, the implications of what Barack Obama actually means when he talks about how to redistribute the wealth. To redistribute wealth, you first have to confiscate it from those who earned it with hard work, and the way to do that is with confiscatory taxes. Then you give it to those who didn't earn it. Such explanations, made with cool detachment, once would have been the work of the newspapers and even the television networks. But not this year. Mr. McCain can expect real grief from the media when the polls tighten.
There's nothing ambiguous about Mr. Obama's radical views, as revealed in this interview. He clearly thinks the Constitution was a "tragedy," that the men who wrote it were not the revolutionary heroes plain Americans regard them to be, and their work must be corrected by the surviving radicals of the '60s and their progeny. Anyone who listens to this interview, available on YouTube.com, understands why Michelle Obama was never proud of her country until she thought the opportunity was at hand to destroy the country to save it, and why Barack Obama could spend 20 years comfortably listening to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright exhort God to damn America.
Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The Washington Times.
PRUDEN: A game-changer by Obama
Wesley Pruden of the Washington Times
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
If your toilet is stopped up by something really big and smells really bad, you'll probably need a plumber. Joe the Plumber, as it turns out, diagnosed the trouble, and yesterday we learned what it was. It smells really bad.
The tape recording of an interview that Barack Obama gave to Radio Station WBEZ in Chicago in 2001 surfaced, and in that interview Mr. Obama, then a law professor and a state senator, lays out how he would redistribute the wealth. He sounds like a man with a plan.
The interview explains a lot, beginning with the attempt, abetted by a mainstream media that no longer tries to hide its slavish obeisance to the Democratic campaign, to destroy Joe the Plumber and shut down discussion of the implications of what the candidate said.
Mr. Obama doesn't think much of the Constitution, or even of the Supreme Court justices who have rewritten it over the years to accommodate notions of "social justice." The Warren Court, which wrote finis to public-school segregation with its unanimous Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, has been decried since as radical, but it wasn't radical enough. Earl Warren only pretended to be a soldier of the revolution.
One of the "tragedies of the civil-rights movement," Mr. Obama says, is that the Supreme Court did not address redistribution of wealth, probably because of the inherent difficulty of achieving such goals through the courts. The Supreme Court did not break from the restraints of the Constitution and "we still suffer from that." Mr. Obama is not "optimistic" that the Supreme Court can achieve redistribution of wealth - of taking from the workers to give to the deadbeats - but he obviously thinks he knows how to do it. A president with a compliant Congress, which he expects to be in January, can do it through legislation and "administration."
The Barack Obama of this interview clearly does not think much of what the Founding Fathers bequeathed to us: "The Constitution reflected the enormous blind spot in this culture that carries on to this day. The framers had that same blind spot ... the fundamental flaw of this country."
Mr. Obama is a gifted politician, with the smarts to understand that this could be the "game-changer" that leaves his campaign, almost picture-perfect until now, in ruins. He understands that he has to fly under the radar for now. That's why his campaign apparatus moves swiftly to dismiss questions about the Obama paper trail, such as it is, and to crush anyone bold and foolish enough to inquire into the real Barack Obama.
Joe the Plumber learned the hard way what happens to such questioners, and when a television reporter in Florida asked Joe Biden whether his running mate is a Marxist economist, good old Joe, usually eager to talk about everything, acted as if the interviewer had accused him of serial killing or child molesting. Some things just aren't to be talked about, not now. Not Barack Obama's radical notions about redistributing the wealth - which is, after all, the essence of Marxism. Not about how he intends to replace fundamental American values with values that most Americans, if they knew about them, would regard as alien and hostile.
If John McCain wants to change the game over the next seven days, he'll have to break through the media screen to spell out, clearly, often and in detail, the implications of what Barack Obama actually means when he talks about how to redistribute the wealth. To redistribute wealth, you first have to confiscate it from those who earned it with hard work, and the way to do that is with confiscatory taxes. Then you give it to those who didn't earn it. Such explanations, made with cool detachment, once would have been the work of the newspapers and even the television networks. But not this year. Mr. McCain can expect real grief from the media when the polls tighten.
There's nothing ambiguous about Mr. Obama's radical views, as revealed in this interview. He clearly thinks the Constitution was a "tragedy," that the men who wrote it were not the revolutionary heroes plain Americans regard them to be, and their work must be corrected by the surviving radicals of the '60s and their progeny. Anyone who listens to this interview, available on YouTube.com, understands why Michelle Obama was never proud of her country until she thought the opportunity was at hand to destroy the country to save it, and why Barack Obama could spend 20 years comfortably listening to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright exhort God to damn America.
Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The Washington Times.
Objective Journalism Loses
Election 2008: Objective Journalism the Loser
By Michael Graham | Tuesday, October 28, 2008 | http://www.bostonherald.com
Did you see that amazing video obtained by the Los Angeles Times of Sen. Barack Obama toasting a prominent former PLO member at an Arab American Action Network meeting in 2003? The video in which Obama gives Yasser Arafat’s frontman a warm embrace, as Bill Ayers look on?
You haven’t seen it? Me, neither. The Los Angeles Times refuses to release it.
And so an incriminating video of Obama literally “palling around” with PLO supporters becomes one more nail in the coffin of “objective journalism.”
Alas, the obit for objective reporting has been buried - along with the stories about Obama’s 2001 support for court-imposed “redistribution of wealth” and Joe Biden’s latest gaffe.
For the record (that’s J-school talk for “I actually know what I’m talking about for a change”), I am not a journalist. I’m an opinion writer and talk show host. But I admire reporters tremendously. I married one. My oldest son is named for the great H. L. Mencken.
So it is particularly heartbreaking for me to see the death of objective journalism. And believe me - it is stone cold dead. Sacrificed on the altar of service to Barack Obama.
Former New York Times [NYT] columnist and veteran newspaperman Michael Malone knows it.
“I’ve begun - for the first time in my adult life - to be embarrassed to admit what I do for a living,” he said.
Malone is disturbed by the “shameless support” journalists have been giving the Obama campaign. Where’s the hardball coverage for Obama they give McCain? Instead, journalists are “actively serving as attack dogs for the [Obama/Biden] ticket.”
“That isn’t Sen. Obama’s fault,” Malone points out. He blames the media, whose job it is to give Obama a thorough vetting “and has systematically refused to do so.”
This is hardly news to regular readers of the Boston Globe-Democrat, or viewers of MS-We-Hate-Bush. But when the Associated Press starts adding Kool-Aid at the water cooler, we readers are in real trouble.
Jay Newton-Small, a longtime AP reporter, points out in a column in the Washington Post that her old employer has begun practicing “accountability journalism,” which is a media euphemism for “picking the good guys and the bad guys.”
“Some of the most eyebrow-raising stories this presidential-election cycle have come from a surprising source: the stodgy old AP,” Newton-Small wrote.
The AP, once the gold standard of unbiased “hard news,” is now just another voice in the Spin Room.
Newton-Small asks:
“When the news organization entrusted with calling elections sets off down the slippery slope of news analysis, it’s hard not to wonder: Is the journalism world losing its North Star, the one source that could be relied upon to provide ‘Just the facts, ma’am’ ?”
Facts? Who needs ’em, when we’ve got Obama’s magic tax plan to promote and an uppity Alaska governor to trash?
At the risk of violating union rules, allow me to do a bit of reporting: A new study by the Pew Research Center found that, while 71 percent of Obama’s recent media coverage has been “positive” or “neutral,” almost 60 percent of McCain’s coverage over the same period has been “decidedly negative.”
And how much positive coverage did the media give McCain? Fourteen percent.
The American people have figured this out.
“By a margin of 70 percent to 9 percent,” another Pew study reported, “Americans say most journalists want to see Obama, not John McCain, win on Nov. 4.”
The percentage of Americans who rate reporters as objective and not favoring either candidate? Eight percent.
My friends in the Partisan Press, your reputation has now fallen lower than both President Bush (25 percent) and the Democratic Congress (18 percent). Journalistic integrity now ranks along side communicable diseases and nuclear mishaps.
Obama will likely be the next president. He will use that power to do things both good and bad. But when Americans look for tough, honest journalists to challenge him, where will we find them?
By Michael Graham | Tuesday, October 28, 2008 | http://www.bostonherald.com
Did you see that amazing video obtained by the Los Angeles Times of Sen. Barack Obama toasting a prominent former PLO member at an Arab American Action Network meeting in 2003? The video in which Obama gives Yasser Arafat’s frontman a warm embrace, as Bill Ayers look on?
You haven’t seen it? Me, neither. The Los Angeles Times refuses to release it.
And so an incriminating video of Obama literally “palling around” with PLO supporters becomes one more nail in the coffin of “objective journalism.”
Alas, the obit for objective reporting has been buried - along with the stories about Obama’s 2001 support for court-imposed “redistribution of wealth” and Joe Biden’s latest gaffe.
For the record (that’s J-school talk for “I actually know what I’m talking about for a change”), I am not a journalist. I’m an opinion writer and talk show host. But I admire reporters tremendously. I married one. My oldest son is named for the great H. L. Mencken.
So it is particularly heartbreaking for me to see the death of objective journalism. And believe me - it is stone cold dead. Sacrificed on the altar of service to Barack Obama.
Former New York Times [NYT] columnist and veteran newspaperman Michael Malone knows it.
“I’ve begun - for the first time in my adult life - to be embarrassed to admit what I do for a living,” he said.
Malone is disturbed by the “shameless support” journalists have been giving the Obama campaign. Where’s the hardball coverage for Obama they give McCain? Instead, journalists are “actively serving as attack dogs for the [Obama/Biden] ticket.”
“That isn’t Sen. Obama’s fault,” Malone points out. He blames the media, whose job it is to give Obama a thorough vetting “and has systematically refused to do so.”
This is hardly news to regular readers of the Boston Globe-Democrat, or viewers of MS-We-Hate-Bush. But when the Associated Press starts adding Kool-Aid at the water cooler, we readers are in real trouble.
Jay Newton-Small, a longtime AP reporter, points out in a column in the Washington Post that her old employer has begun practicing “accountability journalism,” which is a media euphemism for “picking the good guys and the bad guys.”
“Some of the most eyebrow-raising stories this presidential-election cycle have come from a surprising source: the stodgy old AP,” Newton-Small wrote.
The AP, once the gold standard of unbiased “hard news,” is now just another voice in the Spin Room.
Newton-Small asks:
“When the news organization entrusted with calling elections sets off down the slippery slope of news analysis, it’s hard not to wonder: Is the journalism world losing its North Star, the one source that could be relied upon to provide ‘Just the facts, ma’am’ ?”
Facts? Who needs ’em, when we’ve got Obama’s magic tax plan to promote and an uppity Alaska governor to trash?
At the risk of violating union rules, allow me to do a bit of reporting: A new study by the Pew Research Center found that, while 71 percent of Obama’s recent media coverage has been “positive” or “neutral,” almost 60 percent of McCain’s coverage over the same period has been “decidedly negative.”
And how much positive coverage did the media give McCain? Fourteen percent.
The American people have figured this out.
“By a margin of 70 percent to 9 percent,” another Pew study reported, “Americans say most journalists want to see Obama, not John McCain, win on Nov. 4.”
The percentage of Americans who rate reporters as objective and not favoring either candidate? Eight percent.
My friends in the Partisan Press, your reputation has now fallen lower than both President Bush (25 percent) and the Democratic Congress (18 percent). Journalistic integrity now ranks along side communicable diseases and nuclear mishaps.
Obama will likely be the next president. He will use that power to do things both good and bad. But when Americans look for tough, honest journalists to challenge him, where will we find them?
Friday, October 24, 2008
Need Donations to Support Prop 8 Now!
"According to the Baptist Press,
Having been out-fundraised by more than 6-to-1 this month in large donations, supporters of a California constitutional marriage amendment are warning they will lose on Election Day unless they receive a heavy influx of donations in the next week.
Thanks mostly to money from Hollywood, homosexual activist groups and the California Teachers Union, opponents of Proposition 8 have raised $14.6 million this month, supporters $2.3 million, according to data on the California secretary of state's website. This week alone, from Sunday through Thursday (Oct. 19-23), opponents raised $3.8 million to supporters' $844,000. The state data includes only donations of $1,000 or more."
Having been out-fundraised by more than 6-to-1 this month in large donations, supporters of a California constitutional marriage amendment are warning they will lose on Election Day unless they receive a heavy influx of donations in the next week.
Thanks mostly to money from Hollywood, homosexual activist groups and the California Teachers Union, opponents of Proposition 8 have raised $14.6 million this month, supporters $2.3 million, according to data on the California secretary of state's website. This week alone, from Sunday through Thursday (Oct. 19-23), opponents raised $3.8 million to supporters' $844,000. The state data includes only donations of $1,000 or more."
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Either He Bankrupts Social Security, or We Get Socialism
By J. KENNETH BLACKWELL
Signing Social Security into law: FDR said the program should never become a charity — but Obama's "rebate" plan starts transforming it into just that.
Posted: 4:17 am
October 23, 2008
THANKS to Joe the Plumber, we now know for sure that Barack Obama wants to "spread the wealth around." But the Democratic candidate still hasn't come clean on just how much of a European-style socialist he is.
Look at the "tax cut" he says he'll give to 95 percent of Americans. In fact, this is simply a government check he'd hand out - including to millions who don't pay income taxes, since each year 38 percent of Americans already get a full refund.
In other words, his "rebate" is a welfare plan, plain and simple.
When called on this, Obama's answer is that those 38 percent still pay payroll taxes, so he's rebating part of those payments. But that actually puts him deeper into the socialist hole. Here's why.
Payroll taxes go to fund Social Security and Medicare - the main US social-insurance programs. The taxes are dedicated because these are insurance programs - you're paying so that you'll be covered when you hit retirement age.
But, down the line, these programs face a financial crisis even worse than the housing mess that we're in now. They need literally trillions more dollars (above what they're set to take in) to meet their current obligations. By federal law, absent those new funds, every retiree will automatically have his or her benefits cut.
If Obama means to rebate those payroll taxes from the Social Security/Medicare funds, he's accelerating the bankruptcy of those programs. If not, he's still transferring money from people who pay income taxes to those who don't.
There's more: Either way, Obama is effectively changing these cores of American retirement from social insurance programs to European-style social welfare programs: Instead of each of us paying into the fund, and later collecting on that basis, some people will be paying in less to collect the same benefit.
That's a flat-out repudiation of President Franklin Roosevelt's vision in founding Social Security, and of the promise that's always underlain Medicare. Neither was ever supposed to become a charity program - but Obama's pointing down just that road.
The Obama double bind is either bankrupt our nation's retirement programs or put the nation on the path to European-style socialism. Which is it?
No wonder Obama is so popular is Europe: The Europeans finally found an American who thinks like they do. (And they won't mind in the least when we start suffering the sky-high unemployment and lack of economic growth that socialism has given them.)
Of course, Obama knows that the term "socialist" would kill his plan, so he calls it a "refund" instead. But there's no way it's not socialist; he's either:
* Giving a "refund" on taxes people never paid to start with,
* Moving us drastically closer to the day Social Security and Medicare go bankrupt, requiring a massive bailout by other sources of taxation,
* Or outright turning the core federal retirement funds into welfare programs.
So, which is it? Of course, the mainstream media won't force him to answer that question - they're shamelessly in the tank for him.
So it's up to voters to force Obama to answer - to explain how his tax plan is (somehow) neither socialism nor a deadly blow to Social Security and Medicare.
The deficit now runs hundreds of billions of dollars per year. Yet Obama proposes almost $1 trillion of new spending - and promises to also give "rebates" to the 38 percent of us who pay no income tax. Where is that money coming from?
He's put himself in a fiscal box.
J. Kenneth Blackwell is a senior fellow at the Family Research Council and a director at the Club for Growth.
Signing Social Security into law: FDR said the program should never become a charity — but Obama's "rebate" plan starts transforming it into just that.
Posted: 4:17 am
October 23, 2008
THANKS to Joe the Plumber, we now know for sure that Barack Obama wants to "spread the wealth around." But the Democratic candidate still hasn't come clean on just how much of a European-style socialist he is.
Look at the "tax cut" he says he'll give to 95 percent of Americans. In fact, this is simply a government check he'd hand out - including to millions who don't pay income taxes, since each year 38 percent of Americans already get a full refund.
In other words, his "rebate" is a welfare plan, plain and simple.
When called on this, Obama's answer is that those 38 percent still pay payroll taxes, so he's rebating part of those payments. But that actually puts him deeper into the socialist hole. Here's why.
Payroll taxes go to fund Social Security and Medicare - the main US social-insurance programs. The taxes are dedicated because these are insurance programs - you're paying so that you'll be covered when you hit retirement age.
But, down the line, these programs face a financial crisis even worse than the housing mess that we're in now. They need literally trillions more dollars (above what they're set to take in) to meet their current obligations. By federal law, absent those new funds, every retiree will automatically have his or her benefits cut.
If Obama means to rebate those payroll taxes from the Social Security/Medicare funds, he's accelerating the bankruptcy of those programs. If not, he's still transferring money from people who pay income taxes to those who don't.
There's more: Either way, Obama is effectively changing these cores of American retirement from social insurance programs to European-style social welfare programs: Instead of each of us paying into the fund, and later collecting on that basis, some people will be paying in less to collect the same benefit.
That's a flat-out repudiation of President Franklin Roosevelt's vision in founding Social Security, and of the promise that's always underlain Medicare. Neither was ever supposed to become a charity program - but Obama's pointing down just that road.
The Obama double bind is either bankrupt our nation's retirement programs or put the nation on the path to European-style socialism. Which is it?
No wonder Obama is so popular is Europe: The Europeans finally found an American who thinks like they do. (And they won't mind in the least when we start suffering the sky-high unemployment and lack of economic growth that socialism has given them.)
Of course, Obama knows that the term "socialist" would kill his plan, so he calls it a "refund" instead. But there's no way it's not socialist; he's either:
* Giving a "refund" on taxes people never paid to start with,
* Moving us drastically closer to the day Social Security and Medicare go bankrupt, requiring a massive bailout by other sources of taxation,
* Or outright turning the core federal retirement funds into welfare programs.
So, which is it? Of course, the mainstream media won't force him to answer that question - they're shamelessly in the tank for him.
So it's up to voters to force Obama to answer - to explain how his tax plan is (somehow) neither socialism nor a deadly blow to Social Security and Medicare.
The deficit now runs hundreds of billions of dollars per year. Yet Obama proposes almost $1 trillion of new spending - and promises to also give "rebates" to the 38 percent of us who pay no income tax. Where is that money coming from?
He's put himself in a fiscal box.
J. Kenneth Blackwell is a senior fellow at the Family Research Council and a director at the Club for Growth.
Maybe This is Why Obama Raises So Much $$$
From an e-mail to NRO:
"So I went to the Obama website this afternoon and clicked on the "Donate" button.
I used my real MasterCard number (but was not asked for the 3 digit security code).
Used the following information and it was accepted...
First name: Fake
Last Name: Donor
Address: 1 Dollar To Prove A Point
City: Fraudulent
State: AL
Zip / Post: 33333
Email Address: allmyinfoismadeup@mediabias.com
Phone Number: 2125551212
Employer: Mainstream Media
Occupation: Being in the Tank
And incredibly, my $5 donation was ACCEPTED!!!
I then went to the McCain site and used the exact same information (and WAS asked for the 3 digit security code for my MasterCard). There, my contribution was rejected with the following message: "Your transaction was not approved for the following reason(s): Invalid data", and then: "We have found errors in the information that you have submitted. Please review the information below and try again."
I have screen shots and printouts of all of this as well.
Please tell me what I can do with this information? Is this a violation of FEC law by the Obama Campaign? How do we publicize this???
Thanks for all you do."
"So I went to the Obama website this afternoon and clicked on the "Donate" button.
I used my real MasterCard number (but was not asked for the 3 digit security code).
Used the following information and it was accepted...
First name: Fake
Last Name: Donor
Address: 1 Dollar To Prove A Point
City: Fraudulent
State: AL
Zip / Post: 33333
Email Address: allmyinfoismadeup@mediabias.com
Phone Number: 2125551212
Employer: Mainstream Media
Occupation: Being in the Tank
And incredibly, my $5 donation was ACCEPTED!!!
I then went to the McCain site and used the exact same information (and WAS asked for the 3 digit security code for my MasterCard). There, my contribution was rejected with the following message: "Your transaction was not approved for the following reason(s): Invalid data", and then: "We have found errors in the information that you have submitted. Please review the information below and try again."
I have screen shots and printouts of all of this as well.
Please tell me what I can do with this information? Is this a violation of FEC law by the Obama Campaign? How do we publicize this???
Thanks for all you do."
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Scott Card Nails It: The Death of Media Integrity
Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?
By Orson Scott Card
Editor's note: Orson Scott Card is a Democrat and a newspaper columnist, and in this opinion piece he takes on both while lamenting the current state of journalism.
An open letter to the local daily paper — almost every local daily paper in America:
I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.
This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.
It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.
What is a risky loan? It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.
The goal of this rule change was to help the poor — which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can't repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house — along with their credit rating.
They end up worse off than before.
This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.
Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It's as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of Congressmen who support increasing their budget.)
Isn't there a story here? Doesn't journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren't you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefiting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?
I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. "Housing-gate," no doubt. Or "Fannie-gate."
Instead, it was Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting sub-prime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.
As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled "Do Facts Matter?" ( http://snipurl.com/457townhall_com] ): "Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury."
These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was ... the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was ... the Republican Party.
Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!
What? It's not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame?
Now let's follow the money ... right to the presidential candidate who is the number-two recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae.
And after Freddie Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one presidential candidate's campaign actually consulted him for advice on housing.
If that presidential candidate had been John McCain, you would have called it a major scandal and we would be getting stories in your paper every day about how incompetent and corrupt he was.
But instead, that candidate was Barack Obama, and so you have buried this story, and when the McCain campaign dared to call Raines an "adviser" to the Obama campaign — because that campaign had sought his advice — you actually let Obama's people get away with accusing McCain of lying, merely because Raines wasn't listed as an official adviser to the Obama campaign.
You would never tolerate such weasely nit-picking from a Republican.
If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish, and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama.
If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis.
There are precedents. Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension — so you pounded us with the fact that there was no such link. (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that there was a connection.)
If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression.
Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That's what you claim you do, when you accept people's money to buy or subscribe to your paper.
But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie — that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad — even bad weather — on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.
If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth — even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.
Because that's what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don't like the probable consequences. That's what honesty means . That's how trust is earned.
Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one. He has revealed his ignorance and naivete time after time — and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing.
Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter — while you ignored the story of John Edwards's own adultery for many months.
So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know what honesty means?
Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?
You might want to remember the way the National Organization of Women threw away their integrity by supporting Bill Clinton despite his well-known pattern of sexual exploitation of powerless women. Who listens to NOW anymore? We know they stand for nothing; they have no principles.
That's where you are right now.
It's not too late. You know that if the situation were reversed, and the truth would damage McCain and help Obama, you would be moving heaven and earth to get the true story out there.
If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices.
Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation's prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama's door.
You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a Senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis. You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.
This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.
If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe — and vote as if — President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.
If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats — including Barack Obama — and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans — then you are not journalists by any standard.
You're just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it's time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a news paper in our city.
This article first appeared in The Rhinoceros Times of Greensboro, North Carolina, and is used here by permission.
By Orson Scott Card
Editor's note: Orson Scott Card is a Democrat and a newspaper columnist, and in this opinion piece he takes on both while lamenting the current state of journalism.
An open letter to the local daily paper — almost every local daily paper in America:
I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.
This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.
It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.
What is a risky loan? It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.
The goal of this rule change was to help the poor — which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can't repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house — along with their credit rating.
They end up worse off than before.
This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.
Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It's as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of Congressmen who support increasing their budget.)
Isn't there a story here? Doesn't journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren't you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefiting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?
I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. "Housing-gate," no doubt. Or "Fannie-gate."
Instead, it was Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting sub-prime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.
As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled "Do Facts Matter?" ( http://snipurl.com/457townhall_com] ): "Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury."
These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was ... the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was ... the Republican Party.
Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!
What? It's not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame?
Now let's follow the money ... right to the presidential candidate who is the number-two recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae.
And after Freddie Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one presidential candidate's campaign actually consulted him for advice on housing.
If that presidential candidate had been John McCain, you would have called it a major scandal and we would be getting stories in your paper every day about how incompetent and corrupt he was.
But instead, that candidate was Barack Obama, and so you have buried this story, and when the McCain campaign dared to call Raines an "adviser" to the Obama campaign — because that campaign had sought his advice — you actually let Obama's people get away with accusing McCain of lying, merely because Raines wasn't listed as an official adviser to the Obama campaign.
You would never tolerate such weasely nit-picking from a Republican.
If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish, and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama.
If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis.
There are precedents. Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension — so you pounded us with the fact that there was no such link. (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that there was a connection.)
If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression.
Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That's what you claim you do, when you accept people's money to buy or subscribe to your paper.
But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie — that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad — even bad weather — on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.
If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth — even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.
Because that's what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don't like the probable consequences. That's what honesty means . That's how trust is earned.
Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one. He has revealed his ignorance and naivete time after time — and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing.
Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter — while you ignored the story of John Edwards's own adultery for many months.
So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know what honesty means?
Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?
You might want to remember the way the National Organization of Women threw away their integrity by supporting Bill Clinton despite his well-known pattern of sexual exploitation of powerless women. Who listens to NOW anymore? We know they stand for nothing; they have no principles.
That's where you are right now.
It's not too late. You know that if the situation were reversed, and the truth would damage McCain and help Obama, you would be moving heaven and earth to get the true story out there.
If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices.
Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation's prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama's door.
You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a Senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis. You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.
This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.
If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe — and vote as if — President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.
If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats — including Barack Obama — and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans — then you are not journalists by any standard.
You're just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it's time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a news paper in our city.
This article first appeared in The Rhinoceros Times of Greensboro, North Carolina, and is used here by permission.
Friday, October 10, 2008
LA Times Article on Prop 8
Looks like Latter-day Saints are making a real impact in support of Proposition 8 defending traditional marriage and family. See link below in this update e-mail.
Toran,
Here is a good link to an LA Times article showing the financing and surveys of polls for the Prop. 8 bill. This is our Ladera Ranch 2nd ward holding signs every Wed. and Thurs. until the vote.
From: danalarkin@cox.net
To: danalarkin@cox.net
CC: dhigham@byu.net; brandonhtanner@gmail.com
Subject: Another Great Prop 8 Sign Waving Event!
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2008 19:50:01 -0700
Friends,
We had another great sign waving in support of Prop 8 tonight! We took some fun pictures - they are attached to this email. It was a great time. The reaction of people driving by has been almost entirely positive. It feels great to be out there helping this important effort. Thanks so much to all who came out and made it such a success again.
We will be having these sign waving events each Wednesday and Thursday from 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm through the November 4th vote. We will be meeting at the same location - the South West corner of Crown Valley and Antonio (in front of the Mercantile West sign). We have a goal of 30 people per evening. Please come out and help us meet our goal. It is actually a lot of fun to be outside with friends from the ward, eating pizza and spreading the word about Prop 8. Of course, any nonmember friends who would like to join us are very welcome - the more the merrier!
No one from the "No on 8" campaign showed up tonight. I believe that they are taking it for granted that they are going to win. We need to prove them wrong. Our efforts are having a positive effect on the poles. We are definitely making a difference. Check out this article from the LA Times today that specifically mentions the Church's efforts as a big factor in changing the tide (thanks to Wayne Clark for the article):
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/politics/cal/la-me-gaymarriage8-2008oct08,0,1678837.story
REMINDER: Members of the ward will be receiving a call this week to ask whether or not you would like a yard sign. If you would like one, please let us know when we call and we will deliver them to you. For those who received yard signs last night after the Broadcast, it has been suggested that we remove the sign from our yards at night because they have been getting stolen. This is a good suggestion.
As always, if you have any questions, suggestions, or would like to help out in any way, please let me know.
Thanks,
Dana Larkin
(949) 429-1470 h
(949) 701-6490 c
(949) 451-4337 o
-----------------------
Here is a good link to an LA Times article showing the financing and surveys of polls for the Prop. 8 bill. This is our Ladera Ranch 2nd ward holding signs every Wed. and Thurs. until the vote.
From: danalarkin@cox.net
To: danalarkin@cox.net
CC: dhigham@byu.net; brandonhtanner@gmail.com
Subject: Another Great Prop 8 Sign Waving Event!
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2008 19:50:01 -0700
Friends,
We had another great sign waving in support of Prop 8 tonight! We took some fun pictures - they are attached to this email. It was a great time. The reaction of people driving by has been almost entirely positive. It feels great to be out there helping this important effort. Thanks so much to all who came out and made it such a success again.
We will be having these sign waving events each Wednesday and Thursday from 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm through the November 4th vote. We will be meeting at the same location - the South West corner of Crown Valley and Antonio (in front of the Mercantile West sign). We have a goal of 30 people per evening. Please come out and help us meet our goal. It is actually a lot of fun to be outside with friends from the ward, eating pizza and spreading the word about Prop 8. Of course, any nonmember friends who would like to join us are very welcome - the more the merrier!
No one from the "No on 8" campaign showed up tonight. I believe that they are taking it for granted that they are going to win. We need to prove them wrong. Our efforts are having a positive effect on the poles. We are definitely making a difference. Check out this article from the LA Times today that specifically mentions the Church's efforts as a big factor in changing the tide (thanks to Wayne Clark for the article):
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/politics/cal/la-me-gaymarriage8-2008oct08,0,1678837.story
REMINDER: Members of the ward will be receiving a call this week to ask whether or not you would like a yard sign. If you would like one, please let us know when we call and we will deliver them to you. For those who received yard signs last night after the Broadcast, it has been suggested that we remove the sign from our yards at night because they have been getting stolen. This is a good suggestion.
As always, if you have any questions, suggestions, or would like to help out in any way, please let me know.
Thanks,
Dana Larkin
(949) 429-1470 h
(949) 701-6490 c
(949) 451-4337 o
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Continuing the Fight for 'YES' on Prop 8 in California
Update from my friend Dave Petersen in California:
"Thought you guys might appreciate what the Californians are having to fight for.
David J. Petersen, DPM
Pacific Coast Foot & Ankle Center, Inc.
Phone - 949-855-1177
Fax - 949-855-6939
www.pacificcoastfoot.com
---------------------------
From: danalarkin@cox.net
To: danalarkin@cox.net
CC: dhigham@byu.net; brandonhtanner@gmail.com
Subject: Prop 8 Sign Waving A Big Success!!
Date: Wed, 8 Oct 2008 19:04:50 -0700
Friends,
I want to thank everyone who came out for the Yes on Prop 8 sign waving today! It was a huge success. We had over 30 people there on our side. Of course, the opposition was out as well (see the attached picture). It was a lot of fun and had a really exciting atmosphere. We had a lot of positive response from people driving by - horn honking and thumbs up. Those in favor of Prop 8 vastly outnumbered those against it. Thanks again to all who participated.
Just as a reminder, we will be having the sign waving again tomorrow night (Thursday October 9) from 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm. We will meet in the same location - the South West corner of Crown Valley and Antonio (just in front of the "Mercantile West" sign). Also we will be meeting for the sign waving each week until November 4th on Wednesday and Thursday at the same time and location.
Children are welcome if you feel comfortable bringing them. There is a small grass area where they can sit and play a bit. But If any of you need baby sitting in order to make it, Lindi Sorenson's daughter - Alexa - has volunteered to babysit the children in her home free of charge. Lindi's email is lindisorenson@hotmail.com. Please feel free to contact her if you need babysitting. This is very generous and much appreciated.
We will be distributing yard signs after the Broadcast at the Stake Center tonight and then throughout the next week or so. The young men will be handling this, so expect a visit from them. If you would rather not have a yard sign, please let me know and I will take you off of the list.
Today was a tremendous success! It was very exciting. Let's keep it up and get Prop 8 passed.
Thanks,
Dana Larkin
(949) 429-1470 h
(949) 701-6490 c
(949) 451-4337 o"
"Thought you guys might appreciate what the Californians are having to fight for.
David J. Petersen, DPM
Pacific Coast Foot & Ankle Center, Inc.
Phone - 949-855-1177
Fax - 949-855-6939
www.pacificcoastfoot.com
---------------------------
From: danalarkin@cox.net
To: danalarkin@cox.net
CC: dhigham@byu.net; brandonhtanner@gmail.com
Subject: Prop 8 Sign Waving A Big Success!!
Date: Wed, 8 Oct 2008 19:04:50 -0700
Friends,
I want to thank everyone who came out for the Yes on Prop 8 sign waving today! It was a huge success. We had over 30 people there on our side. Of course, the opposition was out as well (see the attached picture). It was a lot of fun and had a really exciting atmosphere. We had a lot of positive response from people driving by - horn honking and thumbs up. Those in favor of Prop 8 vastly outnumbered those against it. Thanks again to all who participated.
Just as a reminder, we will be having the sign waving again tomorrow night (Thursday October 9) from 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm. We will meet in the same location - the South West corner of Crown Valley and Antonio (just in front of the "Mercantile West" sign). Also we will be meeting for the sign waving each week until November 4th on Wednesday and Thursday at the same time and location.
Children are welcome if you feel comfortable bringing them. There is a small grass area where they can sit and play a bit. But If any of you need baby sitting in order to make it, Lindi Sorenson's daughter - Alexa - has volunteered to babysit the children in her home free of charge. Lindi's email is lindisorenson@hotmail.com. Please feel free to contact her if you need babysitting. This is very generous and much appreciated.
We will be distributing yard signs after the Broadcast at the Stake Center tonight and then throughout the next week or so. The young men will be handling this, so expect a visit from them. If you would rather not have a yard sign, please let me know and I will take you off of the list.
Today was a tremendous success! It was very exciting. Let's keep it up and get Prop 8 passed.
Thanks,
Dana Larkin
(949) 429-1470 h
(949) 701-6490 c
(949) 451-4337 o"
Saturday, October 4, 2008
California Prop 8: Defending Traditional Marriage
My good friend, David Petersen, from Southern California, has sent me several compelling links related to Proposition 8 which will be on the ballot in California in a month.
Proposition 8 states simply: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."
This is, in my view, an extremely critical issue. As Sarah Palin put it so well in the VP debate, this is not about adults choosing whatever relationships they wish to enter into. Nor does it preclude certain legal rights from being granted to any person chosen by an individual, such as hospital visitation rights. It is simply a definition of marriage, and this is important both for the symbolic nature of the statement confirming a special type of relationship between a man and a woman, and because that in turn is a key foundation for providing for children the most stable and beneficial parenting structure we can give them, and that is important to all society.
Of course, most of us also have a faith-based view of the sacredness of marriage, and I consider that important as well, but it is important for all of these reasons.
And let's not fool ourselves. If these kinds of propositions fail, and pro-same-sex marriage propositions win, it will truly affect all of us, our kids, our society. Now is the time to take a stand.
Here are some links I recommend related to Proposition 8. Please help spread the word to all, but particularly any contacts you may have in California.
A pro-Prop-8 editorial from a liberal Democrat - very good
Newt Gingrich on stopping imperial judges by supporting Proposition 8
A family's kindergartener forced to be taught same-sex partners/marriage without notification in Massachussets (where same-sex marriage has been legalized despite strenuous efforts by Mitt Romney and others)
Proposition 8 states simply: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."
This is, in my view, an extremely critical issue. As Sarah Palin put it so well in the VP debate, this is not about adults choosing whatever relationships they wish to enter into. Nor does it preclude certain legal rights from being granted to any person chosen by an individual, such as hospital visitation rights. It is simply a definition of marriage, and this is important both for the symbolic nature of the statement confirming a special type of relationship between a man and a woman, and because that in turn is a key foundation for providing for children the most stable and beneficial parenting structure we can give them, and that is important to all society.
Of course, most of us also have a faith-based view of the sacredness of marriage, and I consider that important as well, but it is important for all of these reasons.
And let's not fool ourselves. If these kinds of propositions fail, and pro-same-sex marriage propositions win, it will truly affect all of us, our kids, our society. Now is the time to take a stand.
Here are some links I recommend related to Proposition 8. Please help spread the word to all, but particularly any contacts you may have in California.
A pro-Prop-8 editorial from a liberal Democrat - very good
Newt Gingrich on stopping imperial judges by supporting Proposition 8
A family's kindergartener forced to be taught same-sex partners/marriage without notification in Massachussets (where same-sex marriage has been legalized despite strenuous efforts by Mitt Romney and others)
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