Why Romney’s parents are buried in Brighton, Michigan
Kalamazoo, Michigan – Sometimes one story leads to another for Mitt Romney.
At Western Michigan University, the Republican presidential candidate told a packed house his parents, George and Lenore Romney, had campaigned in the same conference room when George ran for Michigan governor and Lenore ran for a U.S. Senate seat decades ago.
This reminded him that his campaign bus had taken him past Brighton, Michigan, where his parents are buried, on the way to Kalamazoo.
Which reminded him why his parents were actually buried in Brighton.
“My dad was a very frugal man,” said Romney as the crowd laughed. “He checked all over for the best deal on a gravesite. I asked him, ‘How’d you pick Brighton, Dad?’ and he said, ‘Well, best place I could find in the whole state.’”
Romney gets a little punchy as the days grow longer ahead of Michigan’s Tuesday primary contest.
When a German man stood up and asked why presidential debates don’t focus on serious issues, Romney told him, “I think it’d be wonderful if you’d be willing to moderate the next debate.”
from FaithWorld:
Stupak now target of all sides in abortion debate
Up until a few days ago Bart Stupak, an unassuming Democratic congressman from Michigan, was a hero among American activists opposed to abortion rights (who refer to themselves as "pro-life"). This was because Stupak had managed to insert strong language in the House of Representatives version of the healthcare bill aimed at preventing any federal tax funds from being used for abortion.
What a difference a weekend makes. President Barack Obama clinched the votes he needed to win passage for his healthcare overhaul on Sunday by winning over a handful of Democratic abortion rights opponents, led by Stupak, with the pledge of an executive order affirming restrictions on the use of federal funds for the procedure.
Stupak was suddenly a traitor to the cause, with barbs like "Judas" thrown his way on the blogosphere. Randy Neugebauer, a Republican congressman from Texas, reportedly yelled "Baby killer!," while Stupak explained why he was finally going to support the bill. Neugebauer was later quoted as saying he was referring to the bill and not Stupak himself, but that is the kind of emotional language one often hears in the shouting matches on this issue.
The Susan B. Anthony List, a conservative group that works to get female opponents of abortion rights elected, said it no longer planned to give Stupak its annual "Defender of Life" Award on Wednesday.
"This Wednesday night is our third annual Campaign for Life Gala, where we were planning to honor Congressman Stupak for his efforts to keep abortion-funding out of health care reform. We will no longer be doing so. By accepting this deal from the most pro-abortion President in American history, Stupak has not only failed to stand strong for unborn children, but also for his constituents and pro-life voters across the country," its president Marjorie Dannenfelser said in a statement.
The Family Research Council, an influential evangelical political lobby group, also has Stupak and other anti-abortion Democrats who supported the healthcare bill in its sights.
from FaithWorld:
Karl Rove says did not ask for gay marriage fight
Karl Rove, the political operative widely credited with the electoral successes of former U.S. President George W. Bush, says in his new book that he did not choose gay marriage as a wedge issue but that circumstances thrust it his way.
Conventional wisdom, at least in some circles, has it that Rove masterminded gay marriage as an issue in the 2004 White House race in a bid to get conservative evangelicals -- a key base for the Republican Party, especially during the Bush years -- to the polls. There were ballot initiatives in about a dozen states that year to ban gay marriage (or, supporters of such measures would argue, to defend traditional marriage). Many political commentators have said such tactics are in keeping with the "Rovian" strategy of ginning up the base to clinch narrow victories.
Rove, in "Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight," says the ballot initiatives made little difference to the outcome that year and that they were not his idea anyway.
"Gay marriage was an ugly fight we had not asked for but could win if we handled with care. Done right, our response to gay marriage could show it was possible to bring a courteous and caring tone to a divisive issue. The issue also revealed the nuttiness of the Left, which never saw how persistent America's traditionalism really was. Instead, the Left seemed convinced that Bush and I engineered the issue's emergence to drive Bush partisans to the polls. But, of course, it was a liberal supreme court that brought the issue to the fore," he writes.
He was referring to a November 2003, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision that legalized gay marriage in that state. Rove said that development sparked the ballot initiatives and he maintains their impact in the election battle against Democrat John Kerry has been greatly exaggerated. What did matter in his view was that state court decision.
"In the end, whether a state had a marriage ballot measure didn't affect Bush's share of the vote: he increased his portion of the vote between 2000 and 2004 by an average of 2.7 points in the states without referenda and by an average of 2.5 points in the eleven states with defense-of-marriage initiatives on the November ballot, a statistically insignificant difference ... But the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision did affect the 2004 election by motivating culturally conservative Democrats and independents who might otherwise have voted Democratic to abandon Kerry over his wobbly views on marriage."
Has abortion role been overblown in U.S. healthcare debate?
A new poll by the Pew Research Center and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life suggests that concern about federal funding for abortion is very low on the list of factors driving opposition to President Barack Obama’s effort to overhaul America’s healthcare system.
The results of the poll, released on Thursday, show that just 3 percent of healthcare opponents cited abortion funding as their main reason for opposing congressional healthcare proposals.
The biggest reasons, cited by 27 percent of respondents to an open-ended question about their opposition, were that the overhaul would be too expensive and lead to higher deficits and taxes. Another 27 percent said they did not want government involvement in healthcare.
The nationwide poll of more than 1,000 Americans was conducted from Nov. 12 to 15.
The poll’s publication comes as the U.S. Senate prepares to begin debate on its version of a healthcare bill that does not include language approved earlier this month by the House that would strengthen the existing prohibition on using federal funds for abortion.
Many analysts say the abortion issue — which has been fanned by conservative evangelicals associated with the Republican Party and Catholic clergy whose flock lean to the Democratic Party — threatens to unravel Obama’s top domestic priority.
Pew’s identification of abortion as the main issue is not an accurate measure of the importance of the issue of abortion to the health care debate. A more accurate measure would be to ask a simple question. Would you support a bill that would have your taxes pay for medicaly unnecessary abortions. I am certian that the majority would vote NO!
Abortion issue hard to avoid in healthcare debate
Like it or not, the healthcare debate has turned into a fracas over abortion rights.
U.S. House Democratic leaders had hoped to avoid just that in their push to expand healthcare coverage and reform the health insurance market.
But getting the votes to pass the historic legislation on Saturday boiled down to settling a dispute between pro-choice and pro-life forces over abortion.
Abortion foes won. The House passed an amendment restricting the availability of insurance policies that include elective abortion services even though many medical plans currently offer such coverage.
The debate over abortion highlights broader questions surrounding the government’s reach in healthcare. Once the government starts subsidizing insurance premiums, it will dictate what can and cannot be included in that coverage.
Democrat Congressman Louis Capps underscored that in arguing the amendment “will mean more women will have their reproductive health choices made by politicians and anti-choice zealots in Washington, DC, instead of by themselves and their doctors.”
With abortion-rights supporters vowing to strip the amendment out of the bill as it moves through the legislative process, the debate now shifts over to the Senate.
@TC:
USA is definitely NOT the greatest country in the world by any standard except perhaps the one with the most unchecked greedy capitalism running everything, including the economy.
Human beings? Really?
I think it’s a matter of opinion. Personally I see a POTENTIAL human being, not something that absolutely WILL become a human being.
While I do not support inhumane or cruel practices to end life, think for millisecond WHY people get abortions.
Because: a) they don’t want a child or
b)they cannot afford to feed and clothe one or
c)both
These children are UNWANTED, they are likely to grow up with little love if their mother/father tried to get rid of them somehow.
Not having abortions makes people’s lives miserable, both the parent’s and the child’s.
And who are the people who most want abortions? Statistically, teenage mothers. You think they can afford one? Most do not even tell their parents! If we want to reduce the number of unwanted children, you need to give these girls an affordable option.
And if you STILL think abortion is a monstrosity, then do your best to get the government to promote sexual education and high schools to have free condoms available.
The First Draft: Obama and the Pope
President Barack Obama heads to Africa on Friday on the final stop of a weeklong trip that included visits to Russia and Italy, but before leaving Rome he will visit with Pope Benedict.
Obama has had an uneasy relationship with some Roman Catholics because of his support for abortion rights and embryonic stem cell research, which the church opposes.
He faced protesters when he gave a graduation speech at Notre Dame University, although his call for a “fair-minded” discussion on abortion earned several standing ovations.
But his relations with the Vatican have been cordial and he has spoken to the pope on the telephone. Obama told reporters before the trip that “there are going to be some areas where we’ve got deep agreements, there are going to be some areas where we’ve got some disagreements.”
For more Reuters political news, click here.
- Photo credit: Reuters/Osservatore Romano
The facts rule!
Sciences rule!
The truth rules!
everything else is just he said and she said… lol
The First Draft: End of an era for GM
Even though it was expected, it was still a jolt: GM declared bankruptcy this morning, the third-largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history and the biggest ever in U.S. manufacturing.
Unthinkable a decade ago, now General Motors is yet another casualty of the cratered U.S. economy, with taxpayers putting up $30 billion for a 60 percent stake in the company. The GM filing followed just hours after a bankruptcy judge approved the sale of virtually all of automaker Chrysler’s assets to a group led by Italy’s Fiat SpA.
Within minutes of the filing, the headlines were rocketing around the Web: The Washington Post: “Filing Marks the End of Financial Independence for Industrial Icon” The New York Times: “A Risky Bet to Save an Icon of American Capitalism” The Drudge Report led its page with a photo of the GM logo under a U.S. flag, headlined: “Government Motors.”
It wasn’t a total blue Monday for the U.S. economy, though, as consumer spending eased and personal income rose in April, the largest increase in almost a year.
President Barack Obama, fresh from a slightly controversial “date night” in New York City over the weekend, will be talking about the automotive industry at the White House around midday, before an afternoon visit to the National Naval Medical Center. The Senate returns from recess today, with the House still out.
Moving back to work after a gorgeous weekend in the Washington DC area, the morning television shows led with the disappearance of an Air France passenger jet over the Atlantic on its way from Brazil to Paris. There was condemnation of the fatal shooting of Dr. George Tiller, one of very few U.S. physicians who performed late-term abortions, who was gunned down at his church on Sunday. And there was also the inevitable post-mortem of the “Britain’s Got Talent” contest result on Saturday, in which sudden media star Susan Boyle sang well but not well enough to ace out Diversity, the winning dance troupe.
the harsh treatment handed out to the auto dealers and other parties involved in the auto bankruptcies ,has been done in a way that would typify the actions that liberals want you think would only happen in a clinical capitalist no prisoner taken environment.the only caution that has been shown in the whole process is how the obama government has”walked on ice”as it was careful to make sure that the unions were not penalized,if you look back at the postings over the last six months this was forecast many times.
from FaithWorld:
Gallup first: more Americans now “pro-life” than “pro-choice”
America may have a president and Congress that support abortion rights, but a new Gallup poll suggests that for the first time such a stance is not the majority view.
Gallup said on Friday that a new poll, conducted May 7 to 10, found "51 percent of Americans calling themselves 'pro-life' on the issue of abortion and 42 percent 'pro-choice.' This is the first time a majority of U.S. adults have identified themselves as pro-life since Gallup began asking this question in 1995."
"The new results, obtained from Gallup's annual Values and Beliefs survey, represent a significant shift from a year ago, when 50 percent were pro-choice and 44 percent pro-life. Prior to now, the highest percentage identifying as pro-life was 46 percent, in both August 2001 and May 2002."
Underscoring how divisive the issue remains, the poll further found that 23 percent of Americans felt abortion should be illegal in all circumstances and 22 percent said it should be legal in all circumstances.
Still, it found that 53 percent held to a middle view -- that is should be legal in certain circumstances. That figure, Gallup said, has been steady since 1975.
A few other things stand out. The percentage of Republicans and those who lean to that party who lablel themselves "pro-life" rose by 10 percentage points over the past year to 70 percent. As there was essentially no shift among Democrats on this issue (33 percent said they were "pro-life," unchanged since last year) much of the shift clearly came from the Republican side. Does this suggest a hardening among the party faithful, whose numbers have also been in decline, in reaction to the Democratic administration of President Barack Obama?
Bristol Palin urges teens to abstain from sex
Nearly a year after becoming the most celebrated pregnant, unmarried teenager in the United States, Bristol Palin is launching off on a campaign to encourage teens NOT to have sex to avoid getting pregnant.
After shying away from the spotlight since her mother Sarah — John McCain’s vice presidential running mate — announced that her then 17-year-old daughter was pregnant, Bristol did a series of interviews today to announce explain her plans.
“Regardless of what I did personally, I just think that abstinence is the only way that you can effectively, 100 percent foolproof way to prevent pregnancy,” she said on ABC’s “Good Morning America”, while avoiding a direct answer to a question about how she ended up expecting.
“I want to go out there and promote abstinence and just say – this is the safest choice. This is going to prevent teen pregnancy and prevent a lot of heartache,” she said. “Learn from my example.”
Asked if she thought her pregnancy was a mistake she said on NBC’s “Today Show” about her son Tripp: “He’s not a mistake, he’s a blessing. But it’s just a lot of work, a lot of responsibility … it’s not like an accessory on your hip, it’s hard work.”
Palin said telling her parents she was pregnant was “harder than labor” and one of the most difficult things she ever had to do.
“I hope that me speaking out now will prevent girls from having to do that in the future.”
This young lady says to “Learn from my example”. Her example appears to be: have unprotected sex, get pregnant, have a baby that “is a blessing”, get tremendous social support from your family and go on tv. I would imagine that any teens that heard Bristol’s message of practicing abstinance would hardly be pursuaded by her “do as I say and not how I do (did)” message that only strains her credibility. It’s a shame that Bristol is wasting her time and any influence she might have on this issue. I think that she would be a potent advocate for all of the unwed mothers who desperately need one. However, I doubt her family would even consider allowing that.
Steele’s abortion comments anger fellow Republicans
Michael Steele has gone and put his foot in his mouth again.
In an interview with GQ magazine, the Republican National Committee chairman described abortion as an “individual choice” and said individual states should decide its legality.
Those comments, predictably, have drawn a sharp rebuke from other Republican leaders who say he should stick to the party’s core position that abortion should be outlawed nationwide.
“Chairman Steele, as the leader of America’s pro-life conservative party, needs to re-read the Bible, the U.S. Constitution, and the 2008 GOP Platform. He then needs to get to work — or get out of the way,” said former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, a former rival for the RNC job.
Mike Huckabee called Steele’s remarks troubling. “For Chairman Steele to even infer that taking a life is totally left up to the individual is not only a reversal of Republican policy and principle, but it’s a violation of the most basic of human rights,” the former Arkansas governor and presidential candidate said on his blog.
Steele was widely praised as an eloquent speaker when he was elected as chairman of the Republican Party at the end of January. But since then, he’s spent plenty of time apologizing for off-hand comments that have angered many in the party and prompted some to suggest that he should resign.
In a statement sent out Thursday, Steele said he has always opposed abortion and said the Supreme Court decision that made it legal should be repealed. “The Republican Party is and will continue to be the party of life,” he said.
The debate on abortion is merely opinion. Moral values are based on either self-centered, God-based or society-based non-provable basic assumptions. For the Catholic viewpoint let me excerpt from the free ebook series “And Gulliver Returns” (http://andgulliverreturns.info) The Abortion chapter in Book 4 elaborates the pros and cons of the 3 ethical assumptions. Let me attempt to summarize the changing Catholic position. From the 13th Century the views of St. Thomas Aquinas, that male embryos got their souls about 4 weeks after conception, females somewhat later, were the standard. His was a Christionized view of Aristotle’s ideas.
The crux of the modern idea, that the soul is infused at conception, might be traced to St. Paul (Romans 5:12) who started the ball rolling on ‘original sin.’ 500 years later St. Augustine popularized the idea. But the Blessed Virgin was born without original sin, her Immaculate Conception. Pope Pius IX declared this in 1854. Then in 1870 he decided that popes were infallible in church doctrine. So was his pronouncement retroactive?
Recent popes have generally followed Pius’s idea that the soul enters the zygote at the moment of conception. This brings with it some theological problems. Since many fertilized ova never implant in the uterus what happens to these little souls?
If you are really interested in the question, see the aforementioned chapter. It is done in detail.
Additionally, unwanted children don’t have a fair chance at a happy life, which may affect their chances of a joyful afterlife. Adoption is only a limited option since there are not unlimited adoptive parents–especially for questionably healthy babies–like crack babies. Abortion is good from both a self-centered and a society based morality. It is also moral from most religious views, if they don’t follow the Pope’s opinions. If you are a conservative Catholic who believes that the Pope gets his opinions directly from God, it makes sense. But if you are not a strong Catholic your opinions are certainly on thin ice–logically.
