Patterico's Pontifications

8/4/2015

Fox News 2016 GOP Debate Line-up

Filed under: General — Dana @ 9:11 pm



[guest post by Dana]

Fox News announced the list of candidates who earned a coveted slot at the debate this Thursday night. Based on an average of the latest five national polls, including Bloomberg, CBS, Fox News, Monmouth University and Quinnipiac University, here is the roster:

1. Businessman Donald Trump. Five-poll average: 23.4
2. Former Florida governor Jeb Bush: 12
3. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker: 10.2
4. Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee: 6.6
5. Dr. Ben Carson: 5.8
6. Sen. Ted Cruz: 5.4
7. Sen. Marco Rubio: 5.4
8. Sen. Rand Paul: 4.8
9. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie: 3.4
10. Ohio Gov. John Kasich: 3.2

Not making the cut:

Texas governor Rick Perry (at 1.8 percent), former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum (1.4), Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (1.4), businesswoman Carly Fiorina (1.3), Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C., 0.7), former New York governor George Pataki (0.6) and former Virginia governor Jim Gilmore (0.2).

If internet chatter dictated which subjects are considered most important to question candidates about, the Iran nuclear deal and Planned Parenthood would be at the top of the list.

How Trump will play out on stage is anybody’s guess.

–Dana

Fifth Planned Parenthood Video: Aborted Babies And Line Items

Filed under: General — Dana @ 6:59 pm



[guest post by Dana]

“If we alter our process, and we are able to obtain intact fetal cadavers, then we can make it part of the budget”

– Melissa Farrell, Planned Parenthood official

The Center for Medical Progress released a fifth Planned Parenthood video today. The entire “industrialized sized operation of infanticide” that is Planned Parenthood has been laid bare for all to see. It is a house of horrors that boggles the mind. Democrats are too cowardly to actually watch the videos and continue to defend the organization. They studiously ignore that Planned Parenthood is trafficking in baby parts, and even more strenuously ignore the moral implications therein. Of course, they must. No one wants to be confronted by their own unrighteousness and see the blood on their hands.

In this fifth video, it appears that Planned Parenthood may be “selling the “fully intact” bodies of unborn babies purposefully born alive and left to die”. This is illegal under the Born Alive Infants Protection Act. Also in the video, a doctor discusses alterations in surgical procedures to ensure they obtain “intact fetal cadavers”. This is illegal under the National Institutes of Health Revitalization Act. As Hans Von Spakovsky notes, it is these legal concerns that demand a DOJ investigation of Planned Parenthood.

Consider yourselves warned. In the video, Melissa Farrell, director of research for Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, is shown gleefully admitting that dissecting a dead baby is fun:

“It would be exciting too if you needed it dissected, because LaShonda and I are the most Curious George of the group,” Farrell says. “I know it’s sickening on some level, but it’s fun.”


In the fifth of a series of videos from the Center for Medical Progress, a woman identified as Melissa Farrell, director of research for Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, discusses contributing to the organization’s “diversification of the revenue stream” and the potential to “get creative” with conditions for procurement needs. The video was reportedly filmed in April at a Planned Parenthood facility in Texas.

“Just depending on the patient’s anatomy, how many weeks, where it’s placed in the uterus … we’re going to potentially be able to have some that will be more or less intact and then some that will not be,” she says.

“But it’s something that we can look at exploring how we can make that happen so we have a higher chance,” she adds.

“And we’ve had studies in which the company, or in the case of the investigator, has a specific need for a certain portion of the products of conception and we bake that into our contract, and our protocol, that we follow this. So we deviate from our standard in order to do that.

If we alter our process and we are able to obtain intact fetal cadavers, then we can make it part of the budget, that any dissections are this, and splitting the specimens into different shipments is this. I mean, it’s all just a matter of line items,” she says.

Planned Parenthood attempted to defend itself after the video’s release:

“The footage released today doesn’t show Planned Parenthood staff engaged in any wrongdoing or agreeing to violate any legal or medical standards,” Planned Parenthood Executive Vice President Dawn Laguens said in a six-paragraph statement.

“Instead, the latest tape shows an extremely offensive intrusion and lack of respect for women, with footage of medical tissue in a lab. These extremists show a total lack of compassion and dignity for women’s most personal medical decisions,” she added.

So deluded, they have no understanding that they are the very enemies of respect, compassion, and dignity.

-Dana

Who Will President Obama Support For 2016?

Filed under: General — Dana @ 7:30 am



[guest post by Dana]

Recently, we’ve seen a push for Joe Biden to enter the presidential race. It has also been reported that it was his dying son’s wish that he run.

This weekend Maureen Dowd looked at how a Biden run might impact Hillary’s campaign:

Having Mr. Biden as an opponent could help Mrs. Clinton’s campaign in its efforts to shed the perception of inevitability that hurt her with Iowa caucus-goers in the 2008 contest. Back then, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Biden sparred on the debate stage before Mr. Biden withdrew from the race after receiving less than 1 percent of the vote in the Iowa caucuses.

Going up against Mr. Biden again in the first Democratic debate in October could help Mrs. Clinton hone her skills and appear to be working for the nomination, said Steve Elmendorf, a veteran Democratic strategist. “You’re a better general election candidate if you have competition,” he said. “The vice president would be a formidable opponent.”

Dowd notes that President Obama is playing it close to the vest:

Mr. Obama has been careful not to undermine or wholeheartedly endorse his former secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton, or his vice president. “The president has said that the best political decision he’s ever made in his career has been to ask Joe Biden to run as his vice president,” Eric Schultz, a White House spokesman, said last week.

With that, Monica Crowley points out that Obama has not publicly committed to backing his former secretary of state in her bid for the presidency. As such, she floats an interesting idea that President Obama is quietly waiting for Biden to announce, and when he does, he will throw the full weight of his office behind Biden and simultaneously work to dismantle Hillary’s campaign:

The Clintons and the Obamas have a long history of bad blood, dating to the 2008 primary race. After Mr. Obama creamed her, he offered her the plum gig of secretary of state. Friends close, enemies closer. She tried to get her dirty tricks consigliere, Sidney Blumenthal, a top position in the State Department, which Mr. Obama pointedly denied. So she hired him anyway through the Clinton Foundation.

Through Mr. Blumenthal, she was fed all kinds of intelligence on global hotpots such as Libya, much of it inaccurate, as she circumvented traditional government communication chains via her private email server. What was she hiding from Mr. Obama? And why? Perhaps because she trusted Mr. Obama about as much as she trusted Bill.

Mr. Obama didn’t trust her, either. In a recently disclosed email, Mrs. Clinton complained that she heard “on the radio” that there was a “Cabinet meeting” that morning and wondered if she could attend. The secretary of state — fourth in line to the presidency — was frozen out, so she set up her own fiefdom.

Mr. Obama needs a successor whom he can control to ensure that the “fundamental transformation of the nation” continues. He cannot control either of the Clintons. In a revealing “tell” this week, he said, “In 18 months, I’m turning over the keys. I want to make sure I’m turning over the keys to somebody who is serious about the serious problems that the country faces and the world faces.”

So here’s the likely plan: Mr. Biden will announce that he is running for president (the reported dying wish of his late son, Beau). After a respectable amount of time, Mr. Obama will announce that while he admires all of the Democratic candidates, Mr. Biden has earned his particular loyalty. Following his presidential endorsement, Mr. Obama will then support Mr. Biden with the full weight of the White House, including the sophisticated technical infrastructure his campaigns used to win in 2008 and 2012. For years, Mrs. Clinton has begged Mr. Obama to turn it over to her, and he refused. He’s been saving it for someone else. Mr. Obama will also use his considerable influence with black and Latino voters to support Mr. Biden, which may be enough to help him significantly….

Read the whole thing.

–Dana

Democrats Protect Baby Harvesters, Block Measure To Defund Planned Parenthood

Filed under: General — Dana @ 6:41 am



[guest post by Dana]

In a vote of 53-46, Senate Democrats blocked a bill to defund Planned Parenthood:

Republicans fell short of the 60 votes needed to move forward with the legislation, which was fast-tracked to the floor after the release of undercover videos that show Planned Parenthood officials discussing fetal tissue from abortions.

Only two Democrats, Sens. Joe Donnelly (Ind.) and Joe Manchin (W.Va.), voted for the legislation, while two Republicans, Sen. Mark Kirk (Ill.) and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), voted against it.

McConnell voted no to preserve the option of bringing up the bill again. Kirk, who is facing a tough reelection race in 2016, had signaled he was likely to break with his party on the vote, citing the preventive health services that Planned Parenthood provides.

Sen. Lindsay Graham, who has railed against the videos, skipped the vote so he could campaign instead. However, he threw a bone to voters and reassured them that when he is elected, he would immediately defund the organization.

Interestingly, as with Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, Democrats who voted against the defunding measure made sure they did not watch the videos:

“I have not seen them,” Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire told me after the vote.

“I’m sorry, what’s your name?” asked Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii in response to a simple yes-or-no question. “Can you call my comms director?”

“I have not seen them, no,” Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania told me last week.

As New York senator Chuck Schumer stepped into a senators-only elevator, I asked him the same yes-or-no question. “Shut the door,” Schumer told an aide.

One Democrat did watch the videos, but chose to further the myth that defunding Planned Parenthood would keep millions of women from the nation’s largest health care provider instead of saving intact babies from having their organs harvested:

Only one Democratic senator, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, told me that she had seen any of the videos. McCaskill agreed that the videos were disturbing, but she added that “that’s not the point. The point is to prevent abortions by making sure that women can get birth control.”

–Dana


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