So I know an intelligent young woman who, for her own reasons, used to be pro-choice.
That is, until she went to a pro-choice rally.
I wonder if beginning to cite real Global Climate Change theorists will actually dissuade more people from this particular flavor of lunacy than well reasoned-arguments.
The Washington Post (and about a bajillion blogs) claims that Sarah Palin slashed funding for teen moms. They show a photocopy of the budget Palin marked on, crossing out the 5 million dollar figure and writing in 3.9.
Turns out that the previous year's state funding for this particular charity, that happens to include a program for teen mothers, was only 1.3 million dollars. Palin tripled their budget.
[By the way, state-funding only accounts for about 15% of the faith-based Covenant House Alaska's annual budget.]
I didn't even think to blog about this until I looked around in the results pages of several Google queries and found that everyone is railing against Palin for "slashing funds for teen mothers", calling her a hypocrite given her pro-life stance and her own daughter's young pregnancy. I only initially found this one dude that took the time to look at the context and it just doesn't seem right to me.
In fact, Deirdre Cronin, Executive Director of Covenant House Alaska, said she "is grateful for the support [Covenant House has] received from Governor Sarah Palin, the Alaska legislature and [Alaska's] Congressional delegation over the years".
Hopefully this post and these links will boost Warren Throckmorton's pages in Google's results pages. I used the "nofollow" tag in my hyperlink to Washington Post's story so that they don't get any of my link juice.
I started posting my notes on Quine's "Methods of Logic" online. I will finish someday. Anyway I was skimming it and found a quotation and a comment on it worth sharing over here on this blog:
We must be able to think up schemata which imply or are implied by a given schema and promise well as links in a proposed chain of argument. Such products can be checked mechanically by truth-value analysis, but thinking them up is an unmechanical activity.
-p. 47
It brings to mind the worn-out quotation of Einstein, "Imagination is more important than knowledge". Here, even in the midst of pursuing the discipline of meticulous, exhaustive, systematic, and well-defined logical analyses, we see the glory of knack and of imagination and of art.
On July 22, 1910, when Tolstoy was in the middle of what was to be his final crisis, he went into the woods with three friends to copy and sign the testament that had been drawn up according to his instructions, hoping thereby to settle both the tormenting spiritual problems and the distasteful bickering with his wife and family that the disposition of his property and rights induced. As Tolstoy began to copy the document he misspelled “twenty”, started to correct it and to reach for a fresh sheet of paper, but then smiled and said, “All right, let it be thought that I was illiterate,” adding “I will put the numeral next to it so that there will be no possibility of doubt”.
- “Tolstoy” by Ralph Matlaw, p. 1
Tolsoy's wife Sophie wrote in her journal of copying War and Peace, that it "uplifted her spiritually, ie morally".
Sophie hand-wrote seven copies of "War and Peace".
She wrote to the man who published her biography:
“You write about the ‘home’ interests which must have been subordinated to Leo Nikolaevich’s writing of War and Peace and Anna Karenina. But what was that home? It consisted only of Leo Nikolaevich and myself… In so far as I could tear myself from domestic matters, I lived in my husband’s creative activity and loved it…You mention among professional writers Gogol, Turgenev, Goncharov, and I would add Lermontov and others; all of them were bachelors without families, and that is a very different matter. This was reflected in their work, just as Leo N.’s family life was completely reflected in his works… It is perfectly true that Leo N. was generally a man and not merely a writer. But it is not true, if you will pardon me, that he wrote easily. Indeed, he experienced the ‘tortures of creativity’ in a high degree; he wrote with difficulty and slowly, made endless corrections; he doubted his powers, denied his talent, and he often said: ‘Writing is just like childbirth; until the fruit is ripe, it does not come out, and, when it does, it comes with pain and labor’.”
I am sometimes too hasty in the forming and giving forth of beliefs, and sometimes far too retarded.
I am often verbose, and sometimes bottlenecked.
I am rarely devoid of thought.
Over the last four years I have been taught a lot about humility. But there are several lessons I have been taught, but have not learned. And right now I can tell that I have a long way to go even beyond this unassimilated wisdom.
True, robust, meta humility is very difficult (both painful and requiring of a certain expertise).
The Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA), is a bill introduced to Congress by Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer that has been read twice and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary. Barack Obama has indicated his support of this bill.
It says*, among other things, that...
...It is the policy of the United States that... (b) A government may not--
(1) deny or interfere with a woman's right to choose--
(A) to bear a child; (B) to terminate a pregnancy prior to [fetal] viability; or (C) to terminate a pregnancy after [fetal] viability where termination is necessary to protect the life or health of the woman; or
(2) discriminate against the exercise of the rights set forth in paragraph (1) in the regulation or provision of benefits, facilities, services, or information
"Government"
includes a branch, department, agency, instrumentality, or official (or other individual acting under color of law) of the United States, a State, or a subdivision of a State.
And "viability" is defined as
that stage of pregnancy when, in the best medical judgment of the attending physician based on the particular medical facts of the case before the physician, there is a reasonable likelihood of the sustained survival of the fetus outside of the woman.
So FOCA basically says that everywhere in America regardless of State or local law, any female can take the life of her unborn baby so long as she can find just one individual attending physician to judge that her baby wouldn't survive on its own if it were taken outside of the womb of its mother that instant, or to judge that her pregnancy endangers her health (not even her life, necessarily).
What does this have to do with Obama?
Well for one, he promised that it would be the first thing he signs as President.
And then there is the issue of appointing Supreme Court judges. Justice Stevens is getting old, and a couple of other judges are no doubt getting very close to throwing in the towel. While McCain has been explicit and thorough about his stance on legal matters, Obama has shied away from talking about anything legal, anything specific, and has only commented about the need to appoint judges who empathize with certain segments of society. In light of this and his radical pro-choice record, we can no doubt anticipate Obama's judicial appointments to be ruthlessly and undiscerningly pro-choice as well.
Want to know more about FOCA? Check out what the Family Research Council has to say:
The passage of FOCA would not only force the issue of taxpayer funded abortions on both the federal and state governments, but would also overturn the wishes of all 50 state legislatures and millions of people in the states. Many of these laws are hugely popular. For example, Florida's 1994 amendment requiring parental notification was approved in a referendum with 65 percent of the vote. In an October 2007 Harris poll, 38 percent of the respondents wanted no change in current abortion laws, while 42 percent wanted to see laws that made it tougher for a woman to get an abortion. Only 16 percent of respondents wanted the government to make it easier for a woman to get an abortion.[17]
The abortion industry already handsomely rewards its supporters in Congress with millions of dollars in campaign donations. In return, enactment of the Freedom of Choice Act by a pro-abortion Congress (which we currently have) and a pro-abortion President would lead to the biggest payoff in history for those who profit from abortions. All of this would come at taxpayer expense, with the federal and state governments losing the power to decide which legislative path they wish to pursue-one of promoting abortion or promoting life. Ironically, the Freedom of Choice Act would remove any concept of "choice" from the equation, by eliminating the right of states and U.S. citizens to have a say in the debate.
A UCLA study that "is believed to be the first successful attempt at objectively quantifying bias in a range of media outlets and ranking them accordingly" found that "there is a quantifiable and significant bias in that nearly all of [the major media outlets] lean to the left" (Sullivan, 2005).
Before you react, read to the end of the article cited.
UPDATE: I found the study itself. If you or your school isn't subscribed to the MIT Press Quarterly Journal of Economics, you have to pay $10 to download it. But the abstract is free:
We measure media bias by estimating ideological scores for several major media outlets. To compute this, we count the times that a particular media outlet cites various think tanks and policy groups, and then compare this with the times that members of Congress cite the same groups. Our results show a strong liberal bias: all of the news outlets we examine, except Fox News' Special Report and the Washington Times, received scores to the left of the average member of Congress. Consistent with claims made by conservative critics, CBS Evening News and the New York Times received scores far to the left of center. The most centrist media outlets were PBS News Hour, CNN's Newsnight, and ABC's Good Morning America; among print outlets, USA Today was closest to the center. All of our findings refer strictly to news content; that is, we exclude editorials, letters, and the like.
