The Rise of Pro-Life Feminism

Tuesday saw a surge of pro-life women candidates:

Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser called Tuesday’s victories for pro-life women candidates “the greatest affirmation of our mission in the history of the organization,” and “proof that Americans are responding to authentic, pro-life feminism.”

“We applaud Americans in California, New Jersey, Nevada, South Carolina and South Dakota for taking steps to support authentic, pro-life feminism with their votes,” said Dannenfelser. “Now more than ever, we need pro-woman, pro-life leadership. These women will usher in the year of the pro-life woman and win back critical pro-life margins in the House and Senate.”…

The liberal feminists were, if anything, in continual war against all that women stand for. Faith, family and home are words of insult on the left – but now women who are smart, strong and successful while at the same time pro-life and pro-family are rising to the top.

It is a sign of political health that such women as Sharron Angle and Carly Fiorina can rise so high – especially when some of the women who won on Tuesday were written off early on in the primary campaign (at one point, Angle polled a mere 5%). This is now the real Year of the Woman – the pro-life, patriotic, independent and courageous woman.

The world is being turned up side down – and at the end of this year, nothing will ever be the same in American politics again.

Palin Power

The lady has pull:

Some of Sarah Palin’s riskiest endorsements scored major victories Tuesday for the former Alaska governor, showing off her power in Republican primaries.

Palin had four primary endorsements in play – Carly Fiorina, Nikki Haley, Terry Branstad and Cecile Bledsoe – and three won or moved on to a runoff.

Palin served different roles for each candidate – sometimes spotlighting conservatives not well known to the national scene while at others validating conservative credentials to an unsure grassroots and even stepping in to deflect nasty attacks.

Whether she decides to run in 2012 or not, she’ll be carrying a lot of political weight all through the 2012 campaign. In a time of political upheaval, someone who’s conservative/populist credentials are spotless like Palin’s will be able to use her endorsement again and again to either defend someone against attacks or shoot them in to public notice. Especially if, as I expect, her actions secure a lot of GOP victories in November, she will be a king maker in the Republican party.

This, on the whole, is good for the party – we need someone who can stand up for principle. And in the long run, this might be a better service to us than even her being President.

Plans for a "Reverse Flotilla" to Turkey

Excellent idea, but dangerous:

Although most of the recent talk regarding flotillas has revolved around ships sailing toward Gaza, at least two plans have emerged for “reverse flotillas” – from Israel toward Turkey – to highlight what organizers have labeled the Turks’ “shameless hypocrisy” in their criticisms of the Jewish state.

The most ambitious of the two plans has been devised by members of Israel’s National Student Union, who this week announced their intention to set sail toward Turkey, in an effort to bring humanitarian aid to the “oppressed people of Turkish Kurdistan” and to members of the “Turkish Armenian minority.”

Which is all quite true – the Turks have behaved brutally with the Kurds and Armenians; far worse than anything the Israelis have done to anyone. No notice is really taken of it because the Turks aren’t Jewish or American, and thus there’s no upside to talking of their savagery. You get no notice in the press, no invites to human rights conferences and, of course, given that the Turks are Moslem there’s always that chance you’ll wind up dead if you look cross eyed at them.

Given the nature of the Turkish government, I would advise these young Israelis not to actually carry it out. The IDF was forced to defend itself against terrorists and 9 people died – the Turks might well massacre everyone in the flotilla even if no resistance is offered. Its a grand gesture, but I can never support a move where innocent people might be killed to no good effect – it won’t stop the lies about what is going on in Gaza, nor will it stop what is truly happening in Turkish occupied Kurdistan.

What Media Bias? Part 173

And this is from Fox News, and so demonstrates how even in a place where they are trying to be fair, they still slip in to inaccuracy in favor of a pre-set story line – the headline:

Mexican Teen Killed by U.S. Border Patrol Agent

So, the story is about a Mexican killed by a US Border Patrol Agent, right? Well, that is the story if you follow the “America defending the borders is bad” meme – but here’s the real news, noted only in the 7th paragraph:

The official, who agreed to discuss the matter only if not quoted by name, said the video also shows what seem to be four Mexican law enforcement officers driving to the edge of the dry but muddy bed of the Rio Grande, walking across to the U.S. side, picking up an undetermined object and returning to Mexico near the area where the boy’s body was. Like their U.S. counterparts, Mexican law officers are not authorized to cross the border without permission.

Law enforcement officials of the Mexican government illegally entered the United States – and did so in order to manufacture evidence that US Border Patrol agents had crossed in to Mexico to shoot a Mexican citizen! That is the story! The story we’ve heard again and again – but always kept quite: Mexican officials, including allegations of armed Mexican soldiers, crossing our borders.

But, it doesn’t fit the MSM story line – and so its buried in the story and not given any context. Until we get an MSM – an entire MSM – which will tell the truth and the whole story, we will continue to be ill-served by the organizations which allegedly inform us of the day’s events.

Primary Night Open Thread

Discuss all the races of the day – will Lincoln get the boot in Arkansas? Gibbons in Nevada? Will Democrats desperately spin the increasingly hostile political atmosphere?

What did I do here in Nevada? Noonan for Nevada has the details.

UPDATE: Voter support for Congress at record low.

UPDATE II: Angry pinkos heckle Pelosi.

UPDATE III: Hmm…Reid is getting 78% of the Democrat vote in the primary in early returns. If this holds true, then it will be a stunning rebuke – he’ll still win, but he should get 95% or better against the non-entities he faces.

UPDATE IV: “None of These Candidates” is winning 9% in the early returns for the Democrat Senate primary in Nevada…

UPDATE V: From Saul Anuzis on Facebook – Lincoln wins the Democrat Senate runoff primary in Arkansas. Commentary: Now she gets to lose in November.

UPDATE VI: Another incumbent bites the dust – Republican governor Jim Gibbons of Nevada being soundly beaten in the primary by Brian Sandoval.

UPDATE VII: With 31% in, it looks like Sharron Angle will have the honor of sending Harry Reid back to Searchlight.

UPDATE VIII: Carly Fiorina draws the duty of retiring Senator Barbara Boxer.

Gross Failure of Leadership in the Gulf Spill

Just terrible:

…Running a first-rate campaign, Obama and his supporters argued, showed that Obama could run the federal government, even at its most testing moments. He could set goals, demand accountability, and, perhaps most importantly, bend the sprawling federal bureaucracy to his will.

Fast forward to 2010. The oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico is gushing out of control. The Obama administration is at first slow to see the seriousness of the accident. Then, as the crisis becomes clear, the federal bureaucracy becomes entangled in itself trying to deal with the problem. “At least a dozen federal agencies have taken part in the spill response,” the New York Times reports, “making decision-making slow, conflicted and confused, as they sought to apply numerous federal statutes.”…

Its all been a muddle – no one knows what to do. No one knows who is really in charge – or, indeed, if there is really one person you can go to for a hard and fast “yes” or “no” answer. Absurdities like Holder talking criminal prosecution rise the forefront of an Administration which doesn’t know how to make a decision, but does know how to lawyer up. At this point, the fix will come more as an accident than as part of a plan – eventually the gang which can’t shoot straight will hit the target, but only by pure, dump luck.

The spill, itself, is not Obama’s fault – but the abject failure to see the threat and set up a group for dealing with it shows for all the world to see that we have a government incapable of decision. They react to events and their primary concern seems to be assigning blame rather than resolving issues.

We’re stuck with this President until at least January 20th, 2013 – but let this be a lesson to all of us about the wisdom of electing a community organizer from the hard left.

Unions vs The People

Shaping up to what could be one of the major battles of 2010:

Spurred by state budget crunches and an angry public mood, Republican and some Democratic leaders are focusing with increasing intensity on public workers and the unions that represent them, casting them as overpaid obstacles to good government and demanding cuts in their often-generous benefits.

Unlike past battles over the high cost of labor, this time pitched battles over wages and pensions are being waged from Sacramento to Springfield to New York City and the conflict is marked by its bipartisan tone, with public employee unions emerging as an intransigent public enemy number one in cities and state capitals across the country.

There is a reason the public sectors unions are viewed as an intransigent public enemy – this revolves around the fact that they are, well, an intransigent public enemy.

As long as the gravy train kept rolling along, public sector unions could remain untouched. This is especially true of police, firefighter and teachers (especially teachers!) unions. The strength of propaganda in favor of what these entities represent entirely trumped the reality of what some of them were doing. To argue for any sort of budgetary reform of education, for instance, allowed the unions – spending vast sums on politics extracted from the membership, even when the members were Republican or Independent – to paint a person as “anti-education”.

Regardless of what one thinks of individual policemen, firefighters and teachers (and majority of these are hard working and dedicated to their vocations), substantial minorities of these are time-serving wastrels. This wouldn’t be bad except for the fact that the unions have become organizations dedicated to the protection of the wastrels – fighting fiercely to protect them as sources of union dues, with the unions being defended in this by the primary recipient of union political donations, the Democrat party.

What has resulted from the mutual political back scratching of unions and the Democrat party is that we’ve got a hopelessly corrupt government over-staffed by over-paid bureaucrats who can retire quite young on fat pensions and health care benefits for which they contributed little or nothing. And all of it paid for by an increasingly impoverished population which can only dream of the benefit package most government employees obtain (and think about this government workers get paid, on average, more than private workers…think of the insanity required to have the employees paid more than the boss!).

All around the nation, cities and States are functionally bankrupt. As you go from city to city and State to State, you’ll find it invariable that public employee pension and health care benefits are at the center of the budget crunch. Some local and State governments might be forced in to actual bankruptcy. What is the union response to this? Demands for tax increases to keep not just the current levels of pay, but to actually increase pay (what are the New Jersey bureaucrats angry with Christie over? That he wants to freeze pay – not cut it, just freeze it, and they are up in arms).

Public sector unions have become job-destroying parasites on the productive economy and they must go – each and every union will have to give in to demands for cuts, or be crushed completely. Personally, I would go back to a system where government employees were forbidden to be in unions. You want to work for government? Fine, but you do it at our pleasure – and if you don’t like it, go get a job in the private sector. People, I think, are starting to understand this – and thus the growing popular animosity towards unions.

For the sake of our nation, come what may, we must have this fight. If you want to tackle Big Government, your main obstacle is Big Union. The time has come to call and end to government employee unions and the corruption and waste they generate.

Kick Turkey Out of NATO

Just another report on the increasing Islamization of Turkey:

The women wore veils. The men donned green Hamas headbands with swirling Arabic script. They gathered by the thousands in a sunny, working-class plaza in Istanbul, bellowing: “Damn Israel!”

The Saturday demonstration seemed incongruous with the image Turkey has long had in the West as a secular friend of Israel and the United States…

The image has been false for about a decade now – and should have been abundantly clear when Turkey, our alleged NATO ally, refused permission for a US division to transit Turkey to Iraq in 2003. The plain fact of the matter is that Turkey is turning its face firmly from the West and increasingly embracing the worst aspects of Islamo-fascism. It is time to live in reality and understand that Turkey is no friend of the United States.

As a NATO ally, Turkey is supposed to be on our side in case of military conflict. Can anyone name a nation we might wind up at war with where Turkey would be even benevolently neutral, let alone a good ally? Having the Turks in NATO just allows a potential enemy to obtain knowledge of our weapons and military organization. It is time to close the door.

We can, at any event, find better allies among the Bulgarians, Kurds, Georgians and others in the area. It is better that we don’t have peace time military alliances – but if we are to have them, lets have them with friends, not enemies. As Turkey buddies up to Iran, Hamas and other American enemies, it is time to act accordingly and lay our plans with at least the contingency of armed conflict with the Turks. They have made their choice, and we must make ours