Don’t tell Socialist lovers like Tom Friedman: the Chinese are brutal to their ladies.
Local authorities forced seven months pregnant Feng Jianmei into an abortion because she couldn’t pay the steep fee for those who already have a child. Seven months. The family couldn’t afford the fine because they were helping to pay for an in-law’s cancer treatment (but wait! I thought they had free medical!) The negative publicity garnered by circulating pictures on the internet of the aborted baby next to mama have caused a furor, forcing the government to admit the truth:
Chinese authorities confirmed Thursday that a woman was forced to abort seven months into her pregnancy, several days after her plight came to light when images of her baby’s corpse were posted online.
Rights groups have blamed authorities in north China’s Shaanxi province for forcing Feng Jianmei to abort her pregnancy because she failed to pay a hefty fine for exceeding China’s strict “one-child” population control policy.
The Shaanxi provincial government said in a statement that a preliminary probe had confirmed the case was “basically true”, and the investigators have recommended action be taken against the perpetrators.
“This is a serious violation of the National Population and Family Planning Commission’s policies, jeopardises the population control work and has caused uneasiness in society,” the provincial government said on its website.
What’s curious: the “federal” government denies the legality of an abortion at 28 weeeks, while the locals stick to their guns and say it’s fine.
No word yet from our Dear Leader of the Free World, who famously voted to protect the “intent” of the mother to kill her child even if the babe was born alive.
Heh. The sad part? The CPUSA wishes it had 80 members in Congress. Via Politico:
A top official of the Communist Party USA on Wednesday ripped Rep. Allen West’s “sad ploy” for claiming that as many as 80 Democratic members of the House are communists.
“I just think it’s an absurd way to cast a shadow over his colleagues. It’s kind of a sad ploy,” Libero Della Piana, a vice-chairman of the national Communist Party, said of the Florida Republican’s charge that about 80 House Democrats were members of the radical party.
“It’s just guilt by association taken to an extreme,” he told POLITICO. He also said there are no members of Congress who are members of the Communist Party – not even avowed socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
A socialist can be a socialist, but a communist can’t be a communist? Is the idea still that charged? Yes. Which is why folks here use the kinder, gentler term: progressive. This was the point Allen West made:
In a video clip of the event posted Wednesday, West was responding a question from a constituent asking “What percentage of the American legislature do you think are card-carrying Marxists?”
“That’s a fair question. I believe there’s about 78 to 81 members of the Democratic Party that are members of the Communist Party,” West says in the video. He went on to say, “It’s called the Congressional Progressive Caucus,” according to a West spokesman, Tim Edson.
And it’s why the CPUSA spokesman has his panties in a twist:
Della Piana also said that using the term “communist” as slander ran counter to democratic principles.
“We are supposed to live in a political democracy,” he said. “I didn’t know that being a Communist in Congress was off-limits or out of bounds. There aren’t any now and if there were in the future does that mean that the voters don’t have a say? Can’t choose a Communist to be in Congress?”
I do know a few liberals who would actually vote for a Communist in Congress. But there are still Democrats–Hillary Dems, most likely–who would never do the same.
According to the Palm Beach Post, West merely made the allegation about party membership and then “wouldn’t name names” — something Edson said was also untrue.
“One stupid reporter with a local publication misquoted the entire thing, and they all jumped on one press account without verifying,” said Edson. ”It’s all typical west wing marching orders for their friends in the press.”
“Some people are going to quibble about semantics,” he added. “The real point is these people speak for themselves and if you listen to the words of the progressive caucus it’s clear that these people are opponents of capitalism — they oppose free markets, they oppose individual economic freedom — so you can call them whatever you want — whether they’re socialists or marxists or communists.”
Allah says this would cross West off any VP shortlist if he were ever on one to start. Why? Why not be able to call a statist a statist? We’re not even allowed to do that anymore for fear of offending who, the Communists? Ugh.
So says Tom Golstein in regards to the government’s “bad day” at the SCOTUS. Please someone, issue a DNR; that’s our best hope for salvaging the country and eliminating debt. More:
“‘The government had in my view as bad a day as it reasonably could have,’ said Tom Goldstein, founder of SCOTUSblog and a regular litigator at the high court. ‘It won’t cause the government to have a complete cardiac arrest — they’ll just be nauseous for months. … The only people coming out of that building optimistic today were the plaintiffs.’…
What, pray tell, could cause such a bad case of heartburn for the federal government? Oh, Justice Anthony Kennedy eviscerating the Solicitor General Donald Verilli in charge of presenting the government’s case as to why Obamacare should survive. But I’m getting ahead of myself. More from Politico:
“In the orgy of panel discussions, interviews and feature articles previewing this week’s arguments, law professors, Supreme Court litigators and journalists confidently predicted that the justices would uphold the individual mandate as a logical extension of the federal government’s well-established ability to regulate the health insurance market…
“Within the first few minutes of Tuesday’s arguments, that bravado seemed to go out the window.
Chief Justice John Roberts brought up the cellphone mandate: if the government can force you to buy health insurance because it’s “good for you,” then what else can you be forced to purchase that’s also “good for you.” Vegetables in every cart? A cellphone for emergencies?
“I thought that was an important part of your argument,” Roberts told Verrilli. “That when you need health care, the government will make sure you get it. Well, when you need police assistance or fire assistance or ambulance assistance, the government is going to make sure to the best extent it can that you get it — get it.”
But Roberts asked whether the same assurance that the government will provide emergency services could lead to a requirement that everyone buy a cellphone to help facilitate communication in an emergency.
Where does it stop? Gym memberships? Newer, safer Government Motors vehicles?
It doesn’t.
Verelli caused much angst and anguish on the left for his “trainwreck” performance. Brian Bolduc at NRO writes:
CNN’s legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin called the arguments “a train wreck for the Obama administration.” “This law looks like it’s going to be struck down,” Toobin said. “I’m telling you, all of the predictions including mine that the justices would not have a problem with this law were wrong.”
Jamie Dupree, reporter for Cox Radio, tweeted, “One thing was clear, the Solicitor General [Donald B. Verrilli Jr.] (arguing for the Obama Administration) had a bad day in court.” Justice Kennedy asked him the seemingly skeptical question, “Can you create commerce in order to regulate it?”
“Essentially, the Solicitor General’s performance was so abysmal that it fell to the [Democratic] appointees to make his argument for him,” says Adam Serwer, reporter for Mother Jones.
Of course they did. At one point Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg apparently interrupted Verelli to try to clarify his argument for him. Heh.
Scalia unleashed:
I shouldn’t get too excited. Ed Whelan makes a valid point:
I’m always leery of inferring much from oral argument. Now that I’ve listened to the audio and reviewed the transcript (both available here) of today’s argument, I don’t claim to have any meaningful read on which side has the advantage.
I will, though, repeat what I’ve been sayingall along: Opponents of Obamacare will be making a terrible blunder if they count on the Supreme Court to deliver the death blow to Obamacare. We need to work to elect this November a Congress that will repeal and replace the monstrosity and a president who will sign that legislation
True enough.
H/t to Allahpundit here and here. He’s on fire. Read the rest of both and this one, where he confronts the notion that the SCOTUS striking down Obamacare could help Obama win reelection. (Perish the thought).
Type the URL “socialists.com” or “communists.com” and be redirected to Obama for America’s site where you’ll be prompted to answer whether you like Obamacare:
It’s the two-year anniversary of the Affordable Care Act. Since then, the law that almost everyone calls Obamacare has been doing exactly what the other side has hoped it wouldn’t do: It’s been working.
Say you like Obamacare—and you want everyone to know
It serves no point to try to rename “socialism” or “communism” or to eliminate the words from our lexicon. The terms refer to theories of social and economic organization in the same way that “capitalism” does — and the theories continue to attract adherents to greater and lesser degrees. The president has openly stated his approval of wealth redistribution and has also displayed a marked tendency toward central planning, particularly in the area of energy policy. Why he should balk at being called either a “socialist” or a “communist” puzzles me. Why not attempt to defend his ideas instead of hiding behind conservative rhetoric as he pushes a progressive agenda? I’d never recoil from the label of “capitalist” even though “the 99 percent” thinks capitalism is evil. What does it matter to the president if half the country doesn’t like his ideas? Oh, right. That’s why it matters. He has an agenda to push, yes, but he has to win reelection to push it. That’s why this prank is so brilliant. I’d love to hear the president explain why he doesn’t want those links to redirect to his website. Or, better yet, I’d love to hear him explain why he does.
Ouch. Truth hurts, doesn’t it. Reminder to inflame liberals further: Obama’s only had 3 years in office compared to Bush’s 8.
Mark Knoller writes:
The Debt rose $4.899 trillion during the two terms of the Bush presidency. It has now gone up $4.939 trillion since President Obama took office.
The latest posting from the Bureau of Public Debt at the Treasury Department shows the National Debt now stands at $15.566 trillion. It was $10.626 trillion on President Bush’s last day in office, which coincided with President Obama’s first day.
The National Debt also now exceeds 100% of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product, the total value of goods and services.
Mr. Obama has been quick to blame his predecessor for the soaring Debt, saying Mr. Bush paid for two wars and a Medicare prescription drug program with borrowed funds.
And of what doom may come if Obama wins another term:
If Mr. Obama wins re-election, and his budget projections prove accurate, the National Debt will top $20 trillion in 2016, the final year of his second term. That would mean the Debt increased by 87 percent, or $9.34 trillion, during his two terms.
Given Obama’s inability to project with accuracy anything budget related (like the doubling of the cost of Obamacare, whoopsie!), this would be much worse.
Also given that confiscatory 100% tax rates wouldn’t cover our current debt let alone this kind of spending, from where would this imaginary money appear? Think Cuba, y’all. Everything flows from the government, including jobs, rice cookers and gas. Until the country is broker than broke and everyone just starves together, smiling happy socialists.
Exit question: when did CBS suddenly become the network with the most cojones?
UPDATE: Ed Morrissey tackles the subject here and highlights Ryan’s new budget plan. Pundette has more on the revamped Ryan plan via James Pethokoukis. She also brings to attention a new book which says Obama’s “failure to lead” was a plan to trap the GOP. Funny how that works, isn’t it? I’m not sure I’m comforted by the bungling attempts at political grandstanding over, you know, a complete failure of leadership. Which is worse?
Video available at Hot Air, but Allahpundit spares you from having to watch:
Via RCP, the key bit comes at around 3:40. This is his whole strategy in a nutshell and I still can’t decide whether to admire him or loathe him for it. He doesn’t care if you trust him. He doesn’t care if his rallies leave you flat. He doesn’t care if pulling the lever for him reduces you to dry heaves in the voting booth. He cares about two things: 1,144 and 270, and he’s likely to achieve at least the first thanks to hard work, careful planning, and the great good luck of having extraordinarily weak competition. Those qualities — high energy, fortitude, diligence, not needing to be liked — could be huge assets in a president if he applied them to enacting a worthy policy agenda, starting with entitlement reform. But I don’t think he’d use them to policy ends; he’d use them to position himself for re-election by pandering to centrists, which means no meaningful entitlement reform or anything else. He’s telling you right here why he’d be such a risk in office to the right. When push comes to shove, you’ll always hold your nose and vote against the Democrat, no matter how annoyed at him you might be. And he knows it — and he doesn’t care. He doesn’t need his base to like him. That’s a recipe for squishiness.
Unbelievable. I still can’t fathom pulling the lever for the man. I think I’d still show up at the polls to vote in down-ticket races (or, I guess on my absentee ballot since we’re moving). But vote for Romney? Why? He’s indistinguishable from Obama on the issues that, quite frankly, matter the most. I don’t believe he will lead the charge to eliminate Obamacare. He won’t have HHS reverse mandates. He won’t do any of it because he designed it all in Massachusetts. Add to that Romney’s core belief in the social net, and as Allah points out, we won’t have any meaningful entitlement reform. We’ll end up with amnesty. And we’ll damage the idea of conservatism byond the pale. If we ended up with Obama after 8 years of W and big-government Republicans, what would we end up with after a term of Romney, eh? Stalin himself?
I don’t think the majority of Americans are going to be pleased with this. They may or may not be okay with abortion, but do they really want the blood on their own hands, per order of the federal government? Isn’t there a law against that? But the Obama administration is betting they won’t really mind. God knows he doesn’t. Nor does his henchwoman Kathleen Sebelius.
So it should come as no surprise to see what’s turned up in Obamacare: Obama Admin Finalizes Rules: $1 Abortions in ObamaCare
Pundette highlights the coverage from Life Site News. The Daily Caller has the story now, too:
The Department of Health and Human Services has finalized the policies governing state health care exchanges under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and with it the rules governing abortion coverage under the new law.
Life News reports that “the concern pro-life organizations had about the ObamaCare legislation funding abortions has been confirmed.”
Indeed pro-lifers have long have known that the health care law, specifically Section 1303, would require enrollees in the health care exchanges to pay a separate monthly surcharge for abortion coverage.
With the final HHS rules set in stone, the surcharge is a dollar.
“We knew it would be there because of the law but they have confirmed now with their final rule that it will be a one dollar surcharge,” a pro-life House staffer told The Daily Caller.
“In all likelihood a lot of people are going to be purchasing a plan and if they are not paying attention when they purchase they are going to be paying a dollar a month surcharge for a service they are never going to use or want to use,” the staffer added. “Really it boils down to an accounting gimmick anyway.”
That’s it. Life Site News, Pundette, Nice Deb, K-Lo and the DC. Spread this around. Make it go viral. Multiple Memeorandum threads. Force the MSM to report it on the nightly news. Make everyone who claims to be pro-life who voted for this man and his merry henchmen rue the day they swallowed the Hopenchange.
This will not stand.
Repeal this bill. And know that the man who designed the grandfather of Obamacare won’t be the man to lead the way.
Greeks attend university and vocational schools at a higher rate than students in Germany, Spain or Switzerland, with 43 percent of college-aged Greeks enrolled in 2007, the most recent year that statistics were available from the Organization of European Cooperation and Development in Paris. Yet only 18 percent graduate, one of the lowest rates in Europe.
Greek students pay no tuition, a fact enshrined in the constitution, so there’s no incentive to leave college, said Alan Ruby, a senior fellow for international education at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
Emphasis my own. So many lessons can be distilled from one tiny fact, no?
Students pay no tuition, therefore have no incentive to leave.
Welfare recipients pay no taxes and receive never-ending benefits by sitting on their duffs, therefore have no incentive to find work.
Long-term unemployment collectors receive benefits for not finding a job, therefore have no incentive to find said better job.
I could go on.
As Greece heads off the cliff we’re facing. Is it possible to learn a lesson? Doesn’t look likely, does it, as folks scream for free contraceptives.
Oopsie. I guess that’s just for the ladies. Maybe he needed the iPhone app for free condom locations instead. Via Drudge:
A man was shot and killed Friday night after an apparent dispute over the price of condoms at a Detroit gas station.
WWJ’s Beth Fisher spoke to an employee at the BP gas station on Fenkell and Meyers, where the shooting took place on the city’s westside overnight. The employee said the argument was apparently over the price of a box of condoms.
He said the customer bought a box of condoms, but made a comment that he was overcharged and could have bought them somewhere else for a cheaper price. After being told he couldn’t get a refund, the customer allegedly began tossing items off the shelves. That’s when, according to the employee, the overnight clerk came out with a gun and fired a warning shot, which struck the customer in the shoulder.
Police say the customer was taken to a local hospital where he later died from his injuries.
Alas, that app is only good in NYC. Who would’ve thought a liberal-run-(into-the-ground)-for-generations city like Detroit would be left out in the lurch?
Waiting for a Democ$%t to use this as an example of how many more free condoms are needed.
Heck, why have stores for anything?
Campaign slogan: Make it all free! (And ban those pesky guns). For no citizen should die trying to have safe sex!
Politicaljunkie Mom 