They Will Always Tell You What They Are Afraid Of

I may not be alive to see the day, but there will be a day, when Roe v. Wade will take its place alongside Dred Scott v. Sandford as the U.S. Supreme Court's worst decisions. The Dred Scott decision held that, among other things, persons of African descent cannot be, nor were ever intended to be, citizens under the U.S. Constitution.

Africans therefore became un-citizens.

The taxpayer-financed abortion lobby would have people believe that the Supreme Court essentially said the same thing in Roe. The modern progressive holds that the unborn are un-citizens. But that's not what the Court said. The Court held that a woman's legal right to an abortion must be balanced against the state's legitimate interest in protecting the potentiality of human life.

In other words, a woman has a legal right to abortion until viability.

Therefore, it is hard for me to understand why abortion activists are such absolutists about "abortion rights," even past the point of viability. And it's even harder to understand, and impossible for me to accept, that 177 Democrats in the House of Representatives voted against HR 3504 this week. HR 3504, the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, may be redundant because of existing law. Voting for it may be a purely symbolic act. Then so is voting against it!

Is someone like Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-NY, an abortion absolutist, an abortionista? Or is he just a prostitute addicted to the power of his office and dependent on the blood money of the 501 C(3) abortion lobby? He voted against the bill, offering, "I recognize of course that there are those who hold the religious conviction that one-celled organization – one cell, two cells – is a fully formed human being, [but] they are not entitled to impose that religious conviction on all of the women of this country."

Nobody has the "religious conviction" that "two cells" is a "fully formed human being." And most pro-life people would cede the abortion ground in the area of blastocysts anyway. Whether I cede that ground or not is a different essay. Pure reason dictates the futility of trying to regulate something a woman can remedy with a pill acquired from anywhere.

It also stands to reason why any Democrat would deny life-saving measures to any infant that survives an abortion. The head of the party himself, Barack Obama, voted against Illinois SB 1095 when he was still a state senator.

In Obama's floor speech against the bill, Obama stated his key concern was that doctors would be forced to care for pre-viable fetuses, and he couldn't stomach the idea of extending equal protection to a pre-viable fetus. Though the bill does contain the language "at any stage of development," caring for pre-viable fetuses was never the intent. It just afforded legal protections to babies that survive abortion, and obligated clinicians not to withhold life-saving measures.

Because I think the whole point of abortion should be the termination of pregnancy, not ending the life of the child. The woman seeking an abortion just wants the fetus removed. What if the fetus could be removed, and still be carried to term?

A gestation robot, or artificial uterus, is still only a theoretical possibility. But it won't always be that way. At some stage of human development, it is conceivable that a child will be gestated to term using entirely artificial means. And it is imaginable that such a device may be desirable, perhaps in the case of some parasite or disease that prevents natural pregnancy. Author PD James imagined a world rendered infertile. So can I.

I can also imagine a world where a woman seeking an abortion has her fetus removed, uterus and all, at any stage of development, and placed into a device. It's for the children.

The Butcher of La Cabana

The image of Che Guevara is plastered all over Cuba. Pope Francis has associated himself with and lent legitimacy to a homicidal maniac.

"What we affirm is that we must proceed along the path of liberation even if this costs millions of atomic victims." --Che Guevara

"To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary." Those who mindlessly strut around in Che Guevara t-shirts are the same people who oppose the death penalty in the United States.

And don't forget his hatred for black people. And homosexuals. That Pope Francis deems it fit to endorse the communist Castro regime does not reflect well upon him.

I believe a compelling counterpoint to the Castro regime can be found in the Pinochet regime of Chile. The same one that leftists are always screaming is the blinding outrage of the Reagan presidency. Castro's death toll is ten times greater than Pinochet's. And Pinochet relinquished power voluntarily. Today, Chile is a first-world economy. In twenty years, Cuba will still be an economic basket case fetishized by romantic leftists.

Lately, the legacy media have been making hay because of a poll that shows 43 percent of Republicans believe Barack Obama is a muslim. Well, they took a poll in February and didn't tell anybody about it. It showed that a clear majority of Democrats don't believe Obama is a Christian. Democrats are ok with their leaders lying to them.

Obama could demonstrate his faith in Jesus Christ by taking communion with the Pope. But he won't.

Pope Francis is going to address a joint session of Congress. Will he make a passionate defense of the unborn? I don't think it matters one way or the other. It will only allow cafeteria Catholics to continue to pick and choose which teachings to follow, and which to ignore.

The Pope is fighting poverty by crusading against "rampant capitalism." The same "rampant capitalism" that has raised billions out of poverty.

"Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as 'bad luck.'" Robert Heinlein

San Diego Climate Coercion

Public radio station KPBS carried a story today about commuters, entitled Census Data Shows No Change In Percentage Of San Diegans Who Drive To Work. The anodyne title alone doesn't convey the sense of worry in the newsreader's voice.

San Diego has a "Climate Action Plan," which came as news to me. I thought having a Republican mayor would insulate us from such nonsense, but the plan came from Mayor Kevin Faulconer's office. Faulconer wants San Diego operating on 100 percent renewable energy within twenty years. Jackass.

At least hizzoner didn't include a sought-after provision "for homeowners to make energy efficient upgrades before selling their homes." I'm sure that will happen during the next Democratic administration. Then, if you want to sell your home, you will have to disclose but not repair a cracked slab, but installing energy-efficient windows will be mandatory. I thought a healthy margin providing upgrades was the whole reason house-flipping invited investment.

San Diego is already one of the most expensive cities to own relative to median income, in the world. It's going to get even worse.

Another aspect of Faulconer's Climate Coercion Plan is the goal to get half of San Diego commuters out of their cars in twenty years. They've got a long way to go. Right now, 87 percent of commuters get to work by car.

It's all about the progressive fetish with mass transit and bicycles. And the control fetish. Well, they can all go fuck themselves. I'm not going to schlep myself in the rain to a bus stop, then share a seat with someone for a two hour commute, each way, counting transfers. I know we have traffic congestion; that's why I leave the house at ten, and stay until after seven.

There are allowances being made for party apparatchiks who will get to keep their cars. The city plans to install "30,000 electric vehicle charging stations." It seems like these are mutually exclusive mandates, considering that the grid must be powered by "solar, wind, or hydro." If it's cloudy, there won't be anywhere near enough juice for everything.

Unless they are planning on buying renewable energy from outside the city, at fifteen to twenty cents a kilowatt, and forcing consumers to pay up. Yeah, that's a much better idea than burning clean natural gas for three cents per kilowatt.

Yesterday we had hundred degree temperatures, and SDGE was ordered by Cal-ISO to drop 150 megawatts of load. The reason? An "unexpected" loss of power generation. More than 115,000 customers were dark for hours.

Yeah, solar and wind will supply peak demand. Sure it will. In the meantime, I'm moving to Idaho.

Time To Withdraw Clock Boy

Ahmed Muhamed of Irving, Texas, aka Clock Boy, has been asked and answered. It was obvious from the beginning that this was a deliberately provocative act, and the only question to be answered was, "why."

Why rip apart a Radio Shack Micronta 63 756 clock radio and stuff it into a briefcase, then take it to school on September 11? The original intent was to play coy under questioning, and then get arrested. Because the politically correct, the progressive fluffers of Islam, always hypersensitive to persecution of Muslims, will fly to his defense.

Getting swag may have been an unintended side benefit to this false flag operation. Perhaps the most hilarious was Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook post, describing how Clock Boy has "the skill and ambition to build something cool." Mark Zuckerberg built a tech empire and is richer than Croesus, yet he can't discern the difference between an invention and a hoax.

And President Obama invited him to the White House. The leader of the free world is this credulous, yet we are supposed to trust that he will "snap-back" sanctions on Iran because "if they cheat, we will know." Does President Obama know that Clock Boy's uncle runs a trucking company called "Twin Towers Transportation?"

It takes a skeptic like Richard Dawkins to throw a wrench into the wheels of Islamic supremacy. He tweeted:

Disassembling & reassembling is great. But you shouldn't then claim it was your "invention". http://t.co/bBcaWoJpbd

— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) September 20, 2015

The most telling behavior of this whole undertaking wasn't the staged photo with Clock Boy wearing a NASA shirt and handcuffs. It was when Clock Boy and his CAIR handlers blew off a meeting with the school principal and chief of police to hold a news conference blasting Irving's mayor, Beth Van Duyne.

The same mayor who nearly every article about this story blasts as islamophobic and anti-islamic. Because she opposed setting up an Islamic tribunal in her city. A tribunal which would dispense sharia law.

Now that the why has been unraveled, I thought it might be fun to travel down memory lane, with a Hollywood-style montage of Clock Boy's tweets. These all belong to me. I feel it may be time to retire Clock Boy, if Richard Dawkins hasn't breathed new life into the story. I feel a new hash-tag mocking troll emerging. Is #BlackLivesMatter still a thing?

Islamo Pandering

Clock Boy Ahmed Mohamed has roused the passions of Muslim apologists everywhere. Even President Obama somehow found time to tweet, "Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House?" If Clock Boy did bring his device to the White House, would it be "islamophobic" to insist that the Secret Service inspect it?

Because it doesn't look like a clock. It looks like a contraption with a bunch of wires.

What do clocks look like? Many clocks have hands and faces. Clock Boy, who already has a Wikipedia Page, is so young, it's possible he doesn't know this. He is a product of the digital age. So Clock Boy attached an LED display to his gadget. Every movie I have ever seen with a bomb in it uses an LED clock attached to the weapon.

My toaster oven has a clock on it, but my toaster oven is not a clock.

So detaining Clock Boy on suspicion of possessing a bomb is racist? The Twitter account @IStandWithAhmed tweeted, "We can ban together to stop this racial inequality." Islam is not a race. Islam is a religious affiliation and political ideology that afflicts persons of every race.

And what about the charges of islamophobia? What is so terrible about profiling? All profiling means is using statistics to quantify probabilities. When was the last time you heard about an Israeli airplane being hijacked?

I assert that maybe the police response didn't go far enough. Ahmed Mohamed's father is a Dallas imam, Mohamed Elhassen Mohamed, who in 2011 debated Terry Jones, the Florida pastor who burned a Koran. Ahmed Mohamed was said by police to be "passive aggressive" under questioning.

Would it be too islamophobic to ask whether any investigator examined the browser history on his phone or computer?

Maybe there wouldn't be so much islamophobia if so many of them weren't trying to kill us. A 2011 Pew Survey found that 22 percent of foreign-born U.S. Muslims believe that bombing kuffar is legitimate.

Maybe Clock Boy's adventure is a dry run for ISIS. CAIR is certainly going to leverage this crisis to their advantage. Their attorneys are meeting with the chief of police and school principal, in the belief that "some of the student's rights may have been violated." What about the rights of Clock Boy's fellow students? Do they have the right to a learning environment free of fear of getting blowed up?

When Obama and CAIR parrot claims of islamophobia, they reveal that they are more afraid of some non-existent backlash against muslims than they are afraid of fanatical muslim murderers.

Climate Change Meets Godwin's Law

Generally, Godwin's Law asserts that as rhetoric expands around a subject, the probability that one side will compare the other side to Nazis or to Hitler approaches 1. It is also a clear sign that whoever used the Hitler analogy is an automatic loser.

Timothy Snyder, a Yale history professor, has published an opinion piece for the Gray Lady, entitled The Next Genocide.

"The quest for German domination was premised on the denial of science," Snyder writes. I would disagree with the distinguished scholar on this thesis, starting with his conflation of Germans with Nazis. Nazi domination was fueled by the belief that they were the master race, the ubermensch, and that it was their destiny and entitlement to rule the world.

There were other reasons Nazi Germany waged their war of conquest. To avenge the humiliating terms of the Treaty of Versailles. And yes, Nazi Germany wanted resources, including energy and Lebensraum.

But Snyder distills the essence of Hitler's desire for living space into a denial "that all the scientific methods of land management - irrigation, hybrids and fertilizers - "could feed the German people from German soil. This is based on Hitler's "Second Book," published in 1928.

Published five years before the American Dustbowl. Perhaps this "denial" of science is actually an unawareness of technology that hasn't been invented yet. I could just as well make an argument that Hitler wanted to conquer the world because he was a vegetarian, and all vegetarians are fascists determined to make all people vegetarians, by killing most of them, if necessary.

"Climate change threatens to provoke a new ecological panic," Snyder writes. The "United States has done more than any other nation to bring about the next ecological panic, yet it is the only country where climate science is still resisted by certain political and business elites."

How interesting that the word "denier" originated with those who questioned the veracity of accounts of the Nazi holocaust. Now it is tossed around to describe people who are mistrustful of the motives of climate scientists. Alarmists like Snyder avoid the use of the word "skeptic," because it conjures the flawed methodology of the climate scientists: the cherry-picking, the falsifications, and the fact that their models are bullshit.

Yes, the planet is warming. We are coming out of an ice age. New York used to lay under a mile-thick sheet of ice. Humans didn't melt that. Besides, increasing CO2 levels are beneficial to plant life.

Snyder concludes his essay by asking the rhetorical question, "Will we accept empirical evidence and support new energy technologies?" I did a word search of Snyder's polemic, and didn't find any references to fracking or nuclear energy. By "new energy technologies," then, Snyder must be referring to windmills.

By ignoring natural gas and nuclear energy, climate alarmists like Snyder give us the choice between windfarms, and technology that hasn't been invented yet.

The #BlackLivesMatter Shakedown

Is there is a better example of a self-refuting political slogan than #BlackLivesMatter? The movement is silent on the fact that 78 percent of abortion clinics are located in minority communities. The movement is silent on the fact that nearly three out of four black babies are born of single mothers. And the movement is silent on the gangster culture that helps cause thousands of black-on-black homicides every year.

If the movement would address even one of those malignancies, they could count me as an ally.

But they won't, and it's because #BlackLivesMatter is a gigantic shakedown operation. A predictable outcome of hiring a community organizer as President of The United States is the ascendance of the professional activist class.

The activists have descended on the Oakland Whole Foods to extract their mordida. Credulous protesters learned from Yahoo News that a black man was Brutalized by Security Guard at Whole Foods for Trying to Buy Food.

The Whole Foods story relies on a single eyewitness account. She is described as "Zoe Marks, on visit from Edinburgh, Scotland where she lectures at the University of Edinburgh." Sounds like an unbiased witness, a charming visiting scholar who probably has a wee accent! Er, no. She's a Seattle native. And a glance at her Twitter profile shows her interests as "Research and teaching on gender|violence, peace, development, Africa, race, art &hip-hop." In other words, she's a wigger, and has a clear vested interest in gaining the trust and acceptance of those in the #BlackLivesMatter movement.

Marks reportedly gave a report to the Oakland police, claiming that the customer "wasn't shouting at anyone. He wasn't violent or disruptive." However, there are numerous accounts that contradict hers, and the context is missing. For example, both the cashier and security guard are black. There isn't a #racism card to play here.

Colin Flaherty has published an article in American Thinker and posted a Youtube video refuting Zoe Marks' account. Several other witnesses recall that the customer came into the store drunk, and sexually harassed several female shoppers.

He then took it to the next level by spitting in the face of the cashier, and punching her, punching a customer, and spitting in the face of the security guard. One might say that the security guard used a disproportionate amount of force to resolve the situation. Not me.

But the narrative complications are irrelevant to the movement. They have staged repeated protests at the Oakland store, preventing customers from using the checkstands. My favorite new slogan from this protest has to be the one carried by the wigger in this video, which reads, "EBT while Black is not a crime." Whole Foods has been deemed a legitimate target for harassment in part because of owner John Mackey's flavor of libertarian politics: anti-union, anti-fascism.

One thing these #BlackLivesMatter protesters do is shit on the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. King said that "Nonviolence [is] the only road to freedom." I don't see shutting down a Whole Foods for an hour as pure nonviolence. And I don't think the movement has a commitment to nonviolence, but rather an open commitment to racial violence.

Time to rename the movement to better signify what it really represents. The ONLY black lives which matter are ones who provide the means to their ends. #ExpedientBlackLivesMatter

Obama's Largesse

President Obama celebrated Labor Day by, what else, giving a speech and signing an executive order. The executive order mandates paid sick leave for federal contractors.

One wonders if and when the country will get back to regular order, with Congress making laws.

The White House didn't say where the money would come from, but the Labor Department said that contractors would save money via lower attrition rates and increased worker loyalty. This is based on information that Labor Secretary Thomas Perez pulled out of his ass.

There are many reasons that mandatory paid leave is a bad idea. The country is running half-trillion dollar deficits, for one. If asked, I would tell President Obama that the main reason he shouldn't be so generous with the federal treasury is:

Because It's Not Your Money

It's not your money, Obama. The money belongs to the taxpayers, present and future. It's not yours to give away.

The government should operate more like Amazon. They use technology to reveal "data that allows individual performance to be measured continuously." We get government workers that surf porn all day.

Amazon runs "a continual performance improvement algorithm on its staff." We get an EPA whose former Secretary, Lisa Jackson, used an email account to avoid FOIA scrutiny, under the name Richard Windsor, and whose mission includes trying to regulate cow farts.

At Amazon, "team members are ranked, and those at the bottom [are] eliminated every year. We get enough corruption from the IRS to tilt elections, and even causing an ecological disaster won't get you fired.

Amazon has a phone called the Fire. It's doing so poorly that N1 Wireless is selling an unlocked version for $139.99, which includes a full year of Amazon Prime. The failure of the Fire Phone prompted Amazon to fire almost everybody on the project.

We don't fire presidents. We elect new ones. The current occupant of the White House went to Alaska and took a selfie to show just how far up his own ass his head is. While he was there, police officers were ambushed and murdered, and dead refugee children from Syria washed up in the surf. Heckuva job.

Six False Flags Over Planned Parenthood

A Planned Parenthood clinic in Pullman, Washington has been damaged by fire. The fire broke out at 3:30 Friday morning, and, according to Pullman police spokesman Cmdr. Chris Tennant, was "suspicious" because it's "an office building that started fire at 3:30 in the morning."

Fire officials later confirmed that preliminary analysis shows that the fire was intentionally set.

From that determination, it's pretty easy to blame anti-abortion activists for the violence. Almost too easy. That is because the story corroborates our pre-existing biases.

Spokesman.com indicated that the fire followed a "wave of protests at Planned Parenthood clinics," and noted that on "Aug. 22, an estimated 500 protesters gathered outside the Pullman clinic." The cub reporters at Spokesman.com somehow failed to mention that on August 22, hundreds of thousands of protesters demonstrated at more than three hundred Planned Parenthoods.

Karl Eastlund, CEO of Planned Parenthood of Greater Washington and North Idaho, called the arson a "predictable ripple effect from the recent false and incendiary attacks that fuel violence from extremists."

Washington governor Jay Inslee displayed his temperance and reasoning ability by calling the arson "a senseless act of violence" and added that it was "deeply disappointing that we still see the kind of hateful rhetoric in our state that fuels this kind of violence." It appears Gov. Inslee has solved the case all by himself.

And Planned Parenthood wasn't about to let a good crisis go to waste. They tweeted:

Planned Parenthood patients will always come first. You can donate to @PPGWNI here: http://t.co/c49N9r52Wy pic.twitter.com/2nHX4YecMM

— Planned Parenthood (@PPact) September 6, 2015

Notice how the tweet directs people right to their donation page.

That little trick reminded me of their website "hack" back in July. Slate called it a DDOS attack, and printed a mewling tweet by Planned Parenthood claiming that their "health website is under attack by anti-abortion extremists."

The website "hack" occurred right after Planned Parenthood hired public relations firm SKDKnickerbocker to do damage control. Many people pointed out that the website "hack" appeared to be part of the spin. Stephen Miller pointed out that their "site is so hacked right now that someone has been rearranging CSS fonts and alignment." Further investigation revealed that the web page announcing the "hack" was listed as a "'Campaign' and used a specific template named 'Site Down Tempalte.'"(sic)

Thus, Planned Parenthood has demonstrated their willingness and ability to false flag, and the willingness to take political advantage over their "victim" status. The web page announcing the "hack" also redirected visitors to a fundraising portal.

I'm not saying that it is impossible that an anti-abortion activist started the Pullman fire. But it is highly unlikely. The anti-abortion movement is all about the sanctity and dignity of all life. There is nothing to be gained from violence, as it will harden the hearts of the abortionistas.

A false flag is a low-risk operation, too. If the leftist operator is caught, all they have to do is claim that they were trying to raise awareness of violence against abortion providers.

Plus, it is those on the progressive, radical left that are enamored of violence. I seem to recall a guy named Bill Ayers, who set bombs with the Weather Underground. And where is Ayers today? Retired professor, University of Illinois.

Love Wins

Right now Kim Davis is sitting in a jail cell in Kentucky. She was charged with contempt of court by judge David Bunning for defying his order to issue marriage licenses to homosexual couples. Since the Supreme Court's decision in Obergefell, Judge Bunning's decision is lawful if not just. As a public servant, Kim Davis has to put her personal beliefs aside and issue marriage licenses to all who legally qualify.

I cannot help but admire and support Kim Davis for her depth of faith, and her willingness to suffer for it. As Antonin Scalia correctly predicted in his Obergefell dissent, the ruling will be used to "vilify Americans who are unwilling to assent to the new orthodoxy."

Rowan County stopped issuing marriage licenses for all couples, gay and straight. That way, they cannot be said to have been discriminating. And it helps bring into question exactly why the government is in the marriage business in the first place.

And when I say "government," I mean the federal government. The constitution doesn't enumerate a specific right to marry. Therefore, the Tenth Amendment specifies that that right is reserved for the states.

If radical progressives can convince people that the sanctified union of man and wife is actually a legally protected right, what else can they convince people of?

When Obamacare was being debated, I kept hearing people say that healthcare is a "right." Today, Obamacare is more or less settled law. And I am convinced that Obamacare is a Trojan Horse for a single-payer health system. Sooner or later, health insurance companies will be so heavily regulated as to be de facto government institutions. Think Fannie May, only with premiums instead of mortgage payments.

Then the government will fully control the health care of every single American. And they will also control the providers. They will hire the doctors and nurses, and set their compensation.

So what happens then? Doctors and nurses will be public servants, just like a DMV clerk issuing driver's licenses. Just like rural county clerks handing out marriage licenses.

Then it will be impossible for any doctor to refuse any treatment. If you are a doctor, and the government tells you to perform abortions at twenty weeks, you better do it, or go to jail for contempt. If the government tells you to perform genital reassignment on a five-year-old, well, you get the picture.

And one last word. Two of the couples who received marriage licenses yesterday were named in the media. April Miller, and her partner Karen Roberts have been together since 2004. James Yates and William Smith Jr. have been together since 2006. These were some of the people spitting the word "bigot" at Kim Davis.

Both couples have been considered married under common law anyway.

The only new thing they have created by pursuing a marriage license is a stronger faith among those who have been tempered by this experience.

Lady, Liberty Beckons

Lauren Barbato (@lauren_barbato) has written an article for Cosmopolitan entitled I Don't Need Forgiveness for My Abortion. Her subhead is titled, "The Pope's proclamation that priests can absolve Catholic women of the "sin" of abortion only further stigmatizes the procedure." Note the scare quotes around the word 'sin.' Barbato spills a lot of ink rationalizing her absolute support for abortion; she could have conveyed the totality of her thesis using less than 140 characters.

Further stigmatizes. If we ever become a society where there is no stigmatization of abortion, that society would be relentlessly dystopian. The procedure. There is more than one way to willfully terminate a pregnancy. I can think of at least six. All of them carry equivalent moral implications, but some of them are more ethically problematic than others.

Barbato abjures forgiveness because she feels she has already "weighed the moral consequences" and "thought about whether or not my fetus had a soul." Has she ever asked herself whether her fetus had a natural right to be born, and experience the sensual pleasures that Barbato takes for granted?

The main reason Barbato forsakes forgiveness, is because of the requirement of repentance. There are "strings attached" to Pope Francis' offer, that include the unacceptable condition of having to "turn in their pro-choice cards."

Maybe Barbato doesn't need or want forgiveness, but there are millions of Catholic women who do. Imagine if just some of them turned in their pro-choice cards, what a powerful army that would be.

Barbato would dispute even the need for forgiveness that other women might have. She cites a study being used to refute the idea that women who abort their child feel any remorse. The study titled Decision Rightness and Emotional Responses to Abortion in the United States purports to show that ninety-five percent of women don't regret their abortion.

I don't think anybody believes that abortion consumers are happier with their decision, and suffer less buyer's remorse, than people who purchase a brand-new Mercedes Benz, by nine percentage points. The Decision Rightness study is just abortion marketing. And in marketing, it's just as important to lure new customers, as it is to reinforce the purchasing wisdom of existing customers.

One last word on the Decision Rightness study, for now. Just last week an international team of experts found that they could not replicate the results of 75% of the social psychology experiments. Using the study as an appeal to science is totally flawed.

I want to wrap up this essay with another exercise in consecration. If you have read my blog before, you might have seen the essay entitled, Happy Birthday Barack, which might initialize your consciousness in this direction.

I will post a picture of Lauren Barbato to assist in this endeavor. The intention is to get ourselves out of judgement zones, and into an awareness of the spiritual needs of each other.

Imagine that Lauren Barbato is completely within a field of pure white light. The field is being continuously replenished by a perpetual spring of cherishing, creative love.

Now imagine the Statue of Liberty. She has beckoned to souls seeking liberty, from the four corners of the earth, for generations. Inside her crown are people. You can see them inside her, looking out. The lady of liberty holds her torch aloft, and it illuminates the area all around her. This illumination has also created a field of pure generative light all around her.

Now imagine the field enveloping Lauren Barbato, and beholden both to her and to Divine will, is allowing light from lady liberty to reach her, and that there are not two fields of light, but one.

There are millions of Lauren Barbatos in our world, and each of them need to be thought of in this way. Don't tell them they will burn in hell, or send them pictures of mutilated fetuses. Don't judge them. Love them. Consecrate them. Imagine how powerful and life affirming just one Lauren Barbato could be.

Arrivederci Sanfilippo's

A local institution, Sanfilippo’s Pizza, is closing their doors after forty years. This hits very close to home for me, because I have eaten there. The Village in La Mesa is practically walking distance from my house.

And my other other other job is working at a very similar pizzeria. Family run, generations of customers. People start working there as teenagers, go on to raise families of their own, and their kids come in and work or eat.

Owner Anna Sanfilippo says her operating expenses are too high, specifically the rising costs of minimum wage pay and sick leave. I've already written about California's state law mandating paid sick leave for all hourly workers.

Sanfilippo's closing should be the canary in the coal mine, but it won't be.

On January 1, 2016 (less than four months away) the minimum wage in California is going to ten dollars an hour. If you are a pizzeria, you need probably five employees as minimum staff. Couple of waitresses, a cook, a dishwasher, and a manager. Counting benefits, the business is spending about eighty dollars an hour in labor just to open the doors. That's not counting food costs and overhead.

Sometimes I hear about a business closing, and people will claim that it was an "unintended consequence" of mostly benign policy. Really sick of that. After awhile, the consequences are so predictable as to imply intention.

It might be fair to wonder if anyone paid Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez to sponsor a bill like AB 1522. Sanfilippo's is an independent operation, and at the mercy of busybody lawmakers. Lawmakers who should get out of the way.

But if anyone benefits from mandatory higher wages and mandatory paid sick leave, it is a large operation that can absorb the higher costs better, enjoy watching their competitors exit the market, and sleep comfortably knowing that new competitors won't enter the market. Cronyism at its best.

And the unions. Can't forget about the unions. Unions peg their negotiated wage to the minimum wage.

It's a win for everybody, except the two dozen employees that will lose their jobs, and the gentle customers who just want a familiar face to welcome them to dine.

Take That, Bibi

PBS Newshour host Gwen Ifill made news yesterday. If legacy media is a cancer on the body politic, then Ifill is an example of its metastasization. News anchors should be like baseball umpires, and like umpires, be anonymous. If the umpire becomes the center of attention, he's doing it wrong.

Ifill tweeted her support for President Obama's Iran deal yesterday.

Take that, Bibi. https://t.co/V9Gn9vP6xN

— gwen ifill (@gwenifill) September 2, 2015

Note the use of Benjamin Netanyahu's nickname, Bibi. Addressing an adversary by their nickname is a clear sign of contempt. And she didn't even have the courage to tweet him directly. She just tweeted, to her fellow cultists, the ridiculous infographic put out by the Obama regime.

Even the PBS ombudsman was disappointed with Ifill, writing that "to personalize it by saying, 'Take that, Bibi' is, in my book, inexcusable for an experienced journalist." Yet it will be excused. She won't have to apologize, and she won't face censure or reprimand. In fact, she doubled down on her tweet, saying it was just a retweet. "I was retweeting a Marie Harf tweet, perhaps that got lost in translation. You know how retweets work, right?" Good enough for government work.

When did national security take a backseat to partisan loyalty?

I'm having a hard time swallowing this deal. First of all, it's a treaty. Treaties need to be ratified by a two-thirds Senate vote. Obama got around this by claiming the agreement is a "sole executive agreement" between Iran and the United States. An executive agreement can be revoked by the next executive in that case.

Iran's behavior since the deal was agreed to, has been disturbing. Qassem Soleimani, head of Iran's elite military Quds Force, hopped on a plane to Russia immediately. Soleimani is under an international travel ban. Obama is cool with sanctioned Iranian military officials flying to Russia and discussing S-300 surface-to-air missile systems.

Obama isn't just enabling Iran's anti-aircraft capabilities. He has pledged to provide security to Iran's nuclear facilities. The agreement compels the United States to help strengthen Iran’s ability to protect against, and respond to nuclear security threats.

Iran's most sensitive military installation at Parchin won't be available for inspection by IAEA inspectors. Associated Press reported that Iran will be allowed to use its own inspectors at Parchin, which is where Iran tests nuclear triggers and ballistic missiles.

The self-inspection regime is not the only self-deception at work. We keep hearing that Iran has to submit sites to inspections twenty-four days after being notified. However, the deal actually allows the IAEA to notify Iran of the basis for its concern, and Iran is permitted to provide the IAEA with "explanations." This stage has no time limit.

President Obama frequently deploys the logical fallacy of the false choice when peddling this shit sandwich of a deal. It's either war or diplomacy. This deal is not diplomacy, it's an American president submitting to the will of an adversary.

Iran's existential conflict with the United States began in 1979. Their desire to destroy us has never diminished. And America's geographic advantage is going to be nullified by the technology of the nuclear-tipped ICBM. Never forget that President Barack Hussein Obama willed this technological leap into being, along with the following quislings, er, Senators.

Baldwin, Tammy Democrat WI
Boxer, Barbara Democrat CA
Brown, Sherrod Democrat OH
Carper, Tom Democrat DE
Casey, Robert Democrat PA
Coons, Chris Democrat DE
Donnelly, Joe Democrat IN
Durbin, Richard Democrat IL
Feinstein, Dia Democrat CA
Franken, Al Democrat MN
Gillibrand, Kir Democrat NY
Heinrich, Mart Democrat NM
Hirono, Mazie Democrat HI
Kaine, Tim Democrat VA
King, Angus Independent ME
Klobuchar, Amy Democrat MN
Leahy, Patrick Democrat VT
Markey, Ed Democrat MA
McCaskill, Cla Democrat MO
Merkley, Jeff Democrat OR
Mikulski, Barb Democrat MD
Murphy, Chris Democrat CT
Murray, Patty Democrat WA
Nelson, Bill Democrat FL
Reed, Jack Democrat RI
Reid, Harry Democrat NV
Sanders, Bernie Independent VT
Schatz, Brian Democrat HI
Shaheen, Jeanne Democrat NH
Stabenow, Debbi Democrat MI
Tester, Jon Democrat MT
Udall, Tom Democrat NM
Warren, Elizabe Democrat MA
Whitehouse, Shl Democrat RI

Advise and consent my arse.

Abortion Contrition

Local CW affiliate San Diego 6 News is trumpeting Pope Francis' abortion announcement. The Catholic Church's Holy Year of Mercy opens Dec. 8. Today the Vatican issued a proclamation that permits all priests to offer absolution to those who have committed the sin of abortion. Forgiveness will be offered to those who have procured it, and who, with contrite heart, seek forgiveness for it.

San Diego 6 explains that this absolution will only be granted to those women who ask for forgiveness during the upcoming Holy Year. But they and others never mention the word, "contrition."

Contrition has a very specific meaning within the Catholic Church, and indeed, in most religious scripture and texts. It doesn't mean that you just say you are sorry.

Contrition is the expression of remorse, surely, but more importantly, it is a manifestation of repentance. Repentance involves turning away from sin. To repent of abortion is to turn your back on the very practice of abortion.

I believe this is sound guidance from Pope Francis. As a Christian, I believe I ought to forgive a sinner, and hate the sin. I am a little concerned that the story is going to be spun by the legacy media to imply that the Pope has put a green light on abortion. And social issues have a way of ratcheting in only one direction.

When I googled "pope" today, the very first search result was this masterpiece at cnn.com. Entitled, Pope Francis says priests can forgive women who've had abortions, the article is by Daniel Burke, CNN Religion Editor.

In the fifth paragraph, Burke cites a survey by Public Religion Research Institute. He claims that the poll indicates that 51% of American Catholics believe abortion should be legal in all cases. The poll actually indicates that 51% of Catholics believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

One would expect the religion editor of a fine journalistic outfit like CNN to either not lie, or to look at the actual data.

Pope Francis is making clear that a woman who has an abortion need not be excommunicated. The Church's Code of Canon Law says that offenses that carry automatic excommunication include "procuring, performing or actively assisting or pressuring a woman into having an abortion."

I wonder if any California lawmakers, or the sheeple who voted for them, realize they are subject to excommunication? California Assembly Bill 775 would require crisis pregnancy centers to actively assist women to obtain an abortion.

And for the love of Pete, why hasn't Nancy Pelosi, "Catholic and mother of five," been excommunicated?