I think Rush put his finger on it when he said,
“Trump is not liberal. He is not conservative. Trump is not political. He says and does what occurs to him at the time that is good for Trump to do.”
And how about this: “I think men who pay for sex with trafficked women or men should have their names put on a public list, just like they do for child abusers and sexual predators.”
Chas, I would generally agree with Rush. However, Trump is an amoral, secular socialite from New York City. Hence, all of his core values and basic instincts are liberal.
“A coalition of Democratic attorneys general in 16 states announced Tuesday an unprecedented campaign to pursue companies that challenge the catastrophic climate change narrative, raising concerns over free speech and the use of state authority to punish political foes.
Standing beside former Vice President Al Gore, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said the state officials are committed to “working together on key climate-related initiatives,” including queries into whether fossil fuel companies like ExxonMobil have committed fraud by deceiving the public and shareholders about the impact of man-made carbon dioxide emissions.
Two states — California and New York — already have launched probes into ExxonMobil, while attorneys general from Massachusetts and the Virgin Islands indicated Tuesday that they would follow suit. Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker, an independent, is the only non-Democrat involved in the campaign, called AGs United for Clean Power.
“The bottom line is simple: Climate change is real; it is a threat to all the people we represent,” Mr. Schneiderman said. “If there are companies, whether they’re utilities, whether they’re fossil fuel companies, committing fraud in an effort to maximize their short-term profits at the expense of the people we represent, we want to find out about it. We want to expose it and want to pursue them to the fullest extent of the law.”
Mr. Schneiderman also announced that 20 attorneys general representing 18 states, the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands filed a brief Tuesday in support of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan rule, which has been challenged by attorneys general in 25 mostly red states.”
“As every 10-year-old who ever got a sweater for a birthday present has been told, “it’s the thought that counts.” That seems to be the guiding principle at the Department of Energy and the California Public Utilities Commission when it comes to solar power.
The latest example is the $2.2 billion Ivanpah solar thermal plant in California. (Note: Solar thermal plants do not use solar panels to directly convert sunshine to electricity; they use sunshine to boil water that then drives conventional turbines.)
Here’s the story so far. Ivanpah…
is owned by Google, NRG Energy, and Brightsource, who have a market cap in excess of $500 billion.
received $1.6 billion in loan guarantees from the Department of Energy.
is paid four to five times as much per megawatt-hour as natural gas-powered plants.
is paid two to three times as much per megawatt-hour as other solar power producers.
has burned thousands of birds to death.
has delayed loan repayments.
is seeking over $500 million in grants to help pay off the guaranteed loans.
burns natural gas for 4.5 hours each morning to get its mojo going.
Brightsource, which is privately held, is owned by a virtual who’s who of those who don’t need subsidies from taxpayers and ratepayers.
In spite of all this, Ivanpah has fallen woefully short of its production targets. The managers’ explanation for why production came up 32 percent below expected output is the weather. In addition to raising questions about planning for uncertainty, it is not all that clear how a nine-percent drop in sunshine causes a 32-percent drop in production.
More bizarrely, the natural gas used to get the plant all warmed up and ready each day would be enough to generate over one quarter of the power actually produced from the solar energy. Sorry, let’s not be haters.”
——————————–
I suspect this was something of a scam by the DOJ all along. They didn’t need Apple. I can understand why they brought this up to make potential suspects think they were safe. Sue Apple because they can’t open the phone. Now they have what they need. They don’t need Apple anymore.
We’ll never know what was in the phone. As for Apple, i can understand why they want to know how DOJ did it.
But they have no right to that information.
“On Monday, the Justice Department dropped its case against Apple after it was able to unlock the iPhone used by San Bernardino shooter, Syed Farook, with the help of an “outside party.” Now, Apple wants to know just how they did it.’
Chas, regarding Apple and the FBI, I was reading about the issue in a publication that was for those who know more about technology, and one commenter said that it should be possible to physically take the phone apart and access the data that way. I didn’t fully understand how that could work; but by the analysis of those who know about technology, if Apple had done what the FBI wanted (disable the lock out system that kicks in after password failures), it would still have taken several years for them to actually break the coded password, with the phone hooked up to a codebreaking computer all that time. So it isn’t likely that this third party disabled the lock out feature. Perhaps they physically took apart the phone. It could even be that they found somebody who knew something about the password itself.
As regards Apple, they have every reason to be uneasy. If this third party was able to hack into this particular phone, then all of Apple’s phones are at risk.
I think Dennis Prager nailed it early on when he suggested that Trump is someone who has never really thought through political or world issues. Thus he really doesn’t know what “being conservative” even means. (Or liberal, for that matter.)
He simply is not a serious political thinker so knowing how he would react or think about any given situation or problem is an unknown. There is no particular consistency because he has neither a liberal nor conservative core when it comes to the essential values from which he acts.
He just … acts.
chas, our photo editor is an Apple tech (unofficially) and now his teen-age son has his own business fixing Apple products. They fixed my laptop last week and the dad told me that when it was set up Apple put in a very similar block — but they managed to get through it.
It’s hard for me to believe there’s such a thing a digital security that no one else can ever tap into. It’s all breachable by someone.
Still, Apple had a good case, I thought, and the issue raised important questions about our freedom and government reach.
Ain’t nothing secure.
If the government can do it, you know “the bad guys” can..
Don’t ever put anything out in cyberspace that you don’t want the world to know.
Our young people need to know that.
Our Pastor worked his way through college and seminary in an Apple store. DIL says it’s great when your Pastor can also help you with your iPhone. Last year I bought hubby an iWatch and he ended up not liking it. We gave it to our Pastor and he was delighted.
Donald Trump’s comments on abortion — first advocating punishing women who abort then backtracking hours later — were indeed a “mess.”
They played into the hands of abortion advocates in every way — helping caricature pro-lifers as “anti-woman” and raising the specter of back-alley abortions. So far, Trump’s pro-life conversion has mainly served to make Planned Parenthood look good (he can’t stop praising the nation’s largest abortion provider) and the pro-life movement look bad.
He simply has no idea how to talk about arguably the most sensitive issue in politics.
Get ready for a slow-motion pro-life train wreck if Trump’s the nominee. …
__________________________________
I may have to stop in there today with my Ipad. I hate that something that should be really simple, er, intuitive, takes over my new Ipad when I had it just fine on the old one (that I was perfectly happy with until . . . updates!)
I’m ignoring the election. Ever since Trump’s resigning staff member explained he wasn’t planning to win, was just in for publicity, it all makes a lot more sense–and reminds me of the 1975ish movie with Robert Redford, The Candidate. The last line when he wins?
“Now what?”
Perhaps Trump is becoming more and more outrageous in the hopes people won’t elect him . . .
OTOH, he’s playing right into someone’s hope of destroying the two party system in America.
The question becomes, if you were an Israelite when Babylon was threatening, how could you best prepare for what you saw coming?
How can I?
And of course, studying recent Chinese history allows us to get a glimpse of the sacrifices and triumphs of Christianity gone underground . . .
Donna, it wasn’t Trump’s comments on punishing women who’ve had abortions which bothered me so much; since Trump’s demagoguery is well known and the likelihood of him being able to convince Senate, House, and Court of his views is slim to none. It was the comments of people who think Trump was right to say that. I get Russell Moore’s FB feed, and he, of course, was horrified at Trump’s comments, knowing what damage to could do to the pro-life movement; but Moore’s posts were commented on by not one or two, but upwards of twenty commenters, all men, who said that Trump was right. It was another instance of a trend I’m starting to see, which in fact, Trump’s supporters have been saying all along. Trump says what his supporters have already been thinking.
Samuel D. James, who is on Moore’s staff at the ERLC, tweeted recently (before Trump’s recent comments), “I very much regret how long it took me to take seriously the warnings of some about a “toxic” masculinity in our culture. I was so wrong” (https://twitter.com/samueld_james/status/714923813650173952). Several months ago, in a discussion elsewhere on the internet about how Christians should interact with those considering abortions, I encountered a male commenter who took great offense at the idea that we should be gentle in seeking to help such women. He blustered that taking a gentler approach showed that we who advocated such an approach didn’t really believe abortion was murder. As I’ve observed to my mother, the nihilism that we see in the young Western men who join ISIS may also be found in the same age demographic of Western Christian men – in fact I recently heard a young Christian man a few years younger than myself who said he completely understood why ISIS hated the West. He conceded that Christianity did not allow for the same response, but in his attitude toward Western history and knowledge – he is anti-vaccination (in fact, is generally skeptical of medicine and science) and questions the extent of the Holocaust – is worrying; and he isn’t the only one I’ve noticed with such a dangerous attitude.
While Republicans, including Trump’s rivals for the GOP presidential nomination, denounced his comments, Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton pounced on the incident to claim Republicans share his beliefs, even if they won’t admit it: “Now maybe they aren’t quite as open about it as Donald Trump was earlier today, but they all have the same position. If you make abortion a crime—you make it illegal—then you make women and doctors criminals.”
______________________________________
But again, don’t ever underestimate Hillary Clinton and the Democrats when it comes to winning elections.
*************************************
From the same article:
_______________________________________
Meanwhile, with a contested Republican convention still a very real possibility, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., is working to make good on his promise to stop Trump. Before he dropped out of the GOP race earlier this month, Rubio pledged “to make sure the conservative movement does not fall into the hands of someone whose policy standards are indistinguishable from those of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.” And now the senator—in an unprecedented move—is asking to keep control of all 172 delegates he won during primaries and caucuses. Rubio has sent written requests to 21 states, and Alaska has already agreed to give him its five delegates at the Republican National Convention later this year. If Trump enters the convention short of the 1,237-delegate majority he needs to secure the nomination outright, Rubio’s delegates could make it much harder for Trump to avoid a contested convention.
________________________________________
Of course, the whole episode has moved me to examine why although I oppose therapeutic abortions, yet do not think a woman who has an abortion should be punished for it. I’m still thinking it out, but here are some of my thoughts. To start out with, it needs to be recognized that abortion was a medical term long before it became a flashpoint for women’s rights. As such, it describes a loss of pregnancy, not the cause of that loss. I recently found myself having to explain to an older Christian woman the meaning of the term therapeutic abortion – which is what Planned Parenthood clinics and other facilities offer – as opposed to spontaneous abortion, which is simply a miscarriage. It showed me that most laypeople who are pro-life do not realize that it is not abortion, the loss of pregnancy, which is murder, but the commission of a therapeutic abortion. By failing to make such a distinction, the pro-life advocates have unintentionally laid the foundations for future injustice. When women are held responsible for the loss of their unborn child, rather than the medical person who performed the therapeutic abortion, this is what happens – http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24532694:
El Salvador has one of the toughest anti-abortion laws in the world. A side-effect is that women who suffer miscarriages or stillbirths are sometimes suspected of inducing an abortion – and can even be jailed for murder.
Glenda Xiomara Cruz was crippled by abdominal pain and heavy bleeding in the early hours of 30 October 2012. The 19-year-old from Puerto El Triunfo, eastern El Salvador, went to the nearest public hospital where doctors said she had lost her baby.
It was the first she knew about the pregnancy as her menstrual cycle was unbroken, her weight practically unchanged, and a pregnancy test in May 2012 had been negative.
Four days later she was charged with aggravated murder – intentionally murdering the 38-to-42 week foetus – at a court hearing she was too sick to attend. The hospital had reported her to the police for a suspected abortion.
After two emergency operations and three weeks in hospital she was moved to Ilopango women’s prison on the outskirts of the capital San Salvador. Then last month she was sentenced to 10 years in jail, the judge ruling that she should have saved the baby’s life.
The linked article pulls a non-sequitor by arguing that legalizing abortion would prevent such injustice, but they do have a point. If therapeutic abortions were made illegal, but in addition to that, women were made criminally responsible if they had an abortion, if a woman had a miscarriage, the burden of proof would be on her to show that she did not seek the loss of her pregnancy in any way. Even lifting heavy loads, or riding over rough roads could be construed as seeking to end a pregnancy under such laws. Furthermore, since a number of birth defects are caused by environmental substances, if a child is born with such a defect, under laws which make a woman responsible for the life of her child, the mother of that child could be charged with criminal negligence. If therapeutic abortions are ever to be made illegal again, great care must be taken to prevent another set of injustices from arising from such a law.
Ricky, there is a toxic masculinity. I saw it in Northern Mexico, where you might see a large truck in front of a house in the slums, owned by the man of the household, but the women and children were poorly clad and fed. That’s not to diminish the real poverty of the area amongst both sexes, as that was present also; but the ‘macho’ culture meant that too many men justified taking care of their wants before providing for their family’s needs. I saw it in West Africa, where being a real man meant you took more than one wife (there was real peer pressure if a man had only one wife); as a result, most men couldn’t take care of their huge families, and each wife had to work to provide adequate food and clothing for their own children. I see it in the cultured West, where men justify looking a second time at any woman who catches their eye – never mind the pornography problem – as just being a red-blooded male. God, when giving Adam and Eve the consequences of their sin, told Eve that her desire would be to her husband (meaning, as the great Biblical scholars of the past agree, that woman would look to a husband to provide and care for her) and that her husband would rule over her (the word conveys a sense of oppression). Christ reversed that curse, and that is why Paul told men to love their wives and Peter said husbands should honour their wives; but the natural (unsaved) man does not receive those things. So the world of men goes on fulfilling the curse. Part of being salt and light is to advocate for those who are oppressed, so every Christian man should stand against such a toxic masculinity.
Donald Trump is meeting on Thursday with Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus during his trip to Washington, just two days after he disavowed his pledge to support the eventual GOP nominee.
… The RNC was tight-lipped about the meeting, with top officials there declining to discuss the huddle between Trump and Priebus. One party official said the fourth floor of the RNC building, which houses Priebus’s office, had been shut down by security shortly before Trump’s arrival.
Trump’s volatility has been on full display over the past two days as he verbally attacked a reporter who accused his campaign manager of battery, disavowed the GOP loyalty oath, bemoaned the Geneva Conventions, and suggested that women should be punished for abortions if they become outlawed – before quickly reversing himself.
The fallout threatened to unravel the limited headway he appeared to be making after Super Tuesday, as it became clearer that Trump was marching toward the nomination. …
____________________________________
“Ain’t nothing secure.
If the government can do it, you know “the bad guys” can..”
Some times, they’re one in the same. The govt. had outside help on the Apple problem, from a hacker. Said hacker received a very large “consulting” fee as well. Our govt thinks hackers are bad only if they aren’t one of our govts hackers.
Therapeutic abortion is never going to be made illegal. That ship has sailed. The key is education and medical advancement. They only thing separating a 20 week baby from a fetus is whether or not the mother wants it. Medically it is a viable life.
I have stated on many an occasion that we keep it legal, we treat it like every other out patient surgery there is (think of the massive amount of forms you have to fill out), only allow them in hospitals where if something goes wrong there are medical staff on hand to save at least one life, and have follow up care.
As it is right now you cannot even have a reasonable conversation with anyone about it. It’s either black or white. Nothing is ever all or nothing. And this garbage about “if the mother’s life is in danger” is a bunch of hooy. I have NEVER, not even ONCE talked to a woman who was seriously ill who took the medical advice to terminate the pregnancy.
Wandering Views 
Re; Yesterday’s discussion.
I think Rush put his finger on it when he said,
“Trump is not liberal. He is not conservative. Trump is not political. He says and does what occurs to him at the time that is good for Trump to do.”
LikeLike
A long read, but what an amazing story about a courageous Indonesian woman who finally got free from her trafficking nightmare here in the US.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35846207
Thank God that there are still people like Eddy.
And how about this: “I think men who pay for sex with trafficked women or men should have their names put on a public list, just like they do for child abusers and sexual predators.”
LikeLiked by 3 people
Chas, I would generally agree with Rush. However, Trump is an amoral, secular socialite from New York City. Hence, all of his core values and basic instincts are liberal.
LikeLike
Talk about Nazi tactics……
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/mar/29/exxon-climate-change-probe-spurs-democratic-ags-cr/
“A coalition of Democratic attorneys general in 16 states announced Tuesday an unprecedented campaign to pursue companies that challenge the catastrophic climate change narrative, raising concerns over free speech and the use of state authority to punish political foes.
Standing beside former Vice President Al Gore, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said the state officials are committed to “working together on key climate-related initiatives,” including queries into whether fossil fuel companies like ExxonMobil have committed fraud by deceiving the public and shareholders about the impact of man-made carbon dioxide emissions.
Two states — California and New York — already have launched probes into ExxonMobil, while attorneys general from Massachusetts and the Virgin Islands indicated Tuesday that they would follow suit. Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker, an independent, is the only non-Democrat involved in the campaign, called AGs United for Clean Power.
“The bottom line is simple: Climate change is real; it is a threat to all the people we represent,” Mr. Schneiderman said. “If there are companies, whether they’re utilities, whether they’re fossil fuel companies, committing fraud in an effort to maximize their short-term profits at the expense of the people we represent, we want to find out about it. We want to expose it and want to pursue them to the fullest extent of the law.”
Mr. Schneiderman also announced that 20 attorneys general representing 18 states, the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands filed a brief Tuesday in support of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan rule, which has been challenged by attorneys general in 25 mostly red states.”
LikeLike
Maybe their time would be better spent going after the fraud and abuse in the so-called “Clean Power” area. Fraud like this.
http://dailysignal.com/2016/03/29/taxpayers-are-footing-bill-for-solar-project-that-doesnt-work/
“As every 10-year-old who ever got a sweater for a birthday present has been told, “it’s the thought that counts.” That seems to be the guiding principle at the Department of Energy and the California Public Utilities Commission when it comes to solar power.
The latest example is the $2.2 billion Ivanpah solar thermal plant in California. (Note: Solar thermal plants do not use solar panels to directly convert sunshine to electricity; they use sunshine to boil water that then drives conventional turbines.)
Here’s the story so far. Ivanpah…
is owned by Google, NRG Energy, and Brightsource, who have a market cap in excess of $500 billion.
received $1.6 billion in loan guarantees from the Department of Energy.
is paid four to five times as much per megawatt-hour as natural gas-powered plants.
is paid two to three times as much per megawatt-hour as other solar power producers.
has burned thousands of birds to death.
has delayed loan repayments.
is seeking over $500 million in grants to help pay off the guaranteed loans.
burns natural gas for 4.5 hours each morning to get its mojo going.
Brightsource, which is privately held, is owned by a virtual who’s who of those who don’t need subsidies from taxpayers and ratepayers.
In spite of all this, Ivanpah has fallen woefully short of its production targets. The managers’ explanation for why production came up 32 percent below expected output is the weather. In addition to raising questions about planning for uncertainty, it is not all that clear how a nine-percent drop in sunshine causes a 32-percent drop in production.
More bizarrely, the natural gas used to get the plant all warmed up and ready each day would be enough to generate over one quarter of the power actually produced from the solar energy. Sorry, let’s not be haters.”
——————————–
LikeLiked by 2 people
I suspect this was something of a scam by the DOJ all along. They didn’t need Apple. I can understand why they brought this up to make potential suspects think they were safe. Sue Apple because they can’t open the phone. Now they have what they need. They don’t need Apple anymore.
We’ll never know what was in the phone. As for Apple, i can understand why they want to know how DOJ did it.
But they have no right to that information.
“On Monday, the Justice Department dropped its case against Apple after it was able to unlock the iPhone used by San Bernardino shooter, Syed Farook, with the help of an “outside party.” Now, Apple wants to know just how they did it.’
LikeLike
Chas, regarding Apple and the FBI, I was reading about the issue in a publication that was for those who know more about technology, and one commenter said that it should be possible to physically take the phone apart and access the data that way. I didn’t fully understand how that could work; but by the analysis of those who know about technology, if Apple had done what the FBI wanted (disable the lock out system that kicks in after password failures), it would still have taken several years for them to actually break the coded password, with the phone hooked up to a codebreaking computer all that time. So it isn’t likely that this third party disabled the lock out feature. Perhaps they physically took apart the phone. It could even be that they found somebody who knew something about the password itself.
LikeLike
As regards Apple, they have every reason to be uneasy. If this third party was able to hack into this particular phone, then all of Apple’s phones are at risk.
LikeLike
I think Dennis Prager nailed it early on when he suggested that Trump is someone who has never really thought through political or world issues. Thus he really doesn’t know what “being conservative” even means. (Or liberal, for that matter.)
He simply is not a serious political thinker so knowing how he would react or think about any given situation or problem is an unknown. There is no particular consistency because he has neither a liberal nor conservative core when it comes to the essential values from which he acts.
He just … acts.
chas, our photo editor is an Apple tech (unofficially) and now his teen-age son has his own business fixing Apple products. They fixed my laptop last week and the dad told me that when it was set up Apple put in a very similar block — but they managed to get through it.
It’s hard for me to believe there’s such a thing a digital security that no one else can ever tap into. It’s all breachable by someone.
Still, Apple had a good case, I thought, and the issue raised important questions about our freedom and government reach.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Ain’t nothing secure.
If the government can do it, you know “the bad guys” can..
Don’t ever put anything out in cyberspace that you don’t want the world to know.
Our young people need to know that.
LikeLike
As a wise person said recently, thankfully we did all our crazy, stupid stuff before the Internet was invented. 🙂
LikeLiked by 2 people
Our Pastor worked his way through college and seminary in an Apple store. DIL says it’s great when your Pastor can also help you with your iPhone. Last year I bought hubby an iWatch and he ended up not liking it. We gave it to our Pastor and he was delighted.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Yep.
How I wish we could just start all over with this “election.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/433476/nominee-donald-trump-would-do-incalculable-damage-pro-life-cause
________________________________
Donald Trump’s comments on abortion — first advocating punishing women who abort then backtracking hours later — were indeed a “mess.”
They played into the hands of abortion advocates in every way — helping caricature pro-lifers as “anti-woman” and raising the specter of back-alley abortions. So far, Trump’s pro-life conversion has mainly served to make Planned Parenthood look good (he can’t stop praising the nation’s largest abortion provider) and the pro-life movement look bad.
He simply has no idea how to talk about arguably the most sensitive issue in politics.
Get ready for a slow-motion pro-life train wreck if Trump’s the nominee. …
__________________________________
LikeLike
I may have to stop in there today with my Ipad. I hate that something that should be really simple, er, intuitive, takes over my new Ipad when I had it just fine on the old one (that I was perfectly happy with until . . . updates!)
I’m ignoring the election. Ever since Trump’s resigning staff member explained he wasn’t planning to win, was just in for publicity, it all makes a lot more sense–and reminds me of the 1975ish movie with Robert Redford, The Candidate. The last line when he wins?
“Now what?”
Perhaps Trump is becoming more and more outrageous in the hopes people won’t elect him . . .
OTOH, he’s playing right into someone’s hope of destroying the two party system in America.
The question becomes, if you were an Israelite when Babylon was threatening, how could you best prepare for what you saw coming?
How can I?
And of course, studying recent Chinese history allows us to get a glimpse of the sacrifices and triumphs of Christianity gone underground . . .
LikeLike
Speaking of terror objects, I’m writing about Zeppelins this morning . . . .
LikeLike
Donna, it wasn’t Trump’s comments on punishing women who’ve had abortions which bothered me so much; since Trump’s demagoguery is well known and the likelihood of him being able to convince Senate, House, and Court of his views is slim to none. It was the comments of people who think Trump was right to say that. I get Russell Moore’s FB feed, and he, of course, was horrified at Trump’s comments, knowing what damage to could do to the pro-life movement; but Moore’s posts were commented on by not one or two, but upwards of twenty commenters, all men, who said that Trump was right. It was another instance of a trend I’m starting to see, which in fact, Trump’s supporters have been saying all along. Trump says what his supporters have already been thinking.
Samuel D. James, who is on Moore’s staff at the ERLC, tweeted recently (before Trump’s recent comments), “I very much regret how long it took me to take seriously the warnings of some about a “toxic” masculinity in our culture. I was so wrong” (https://twitter.com/samueld_james/status/714923813650173952). Several months ago, in a discussion elsewhere on the internet about how Christians should interact with those considering abortions, I encountered a male commenter who took great offense at the idea that we should be gentle in seeking to help such women. He blustered that taking a gentler approach showed that we who advocated such an approach didn’t really believe abortion was murder. As I’ve observed to my mother, the nihilism that we see in the young Western men who join ISIS may also be found in the same age demographic of Western Christian men – in fact I recently heard a young Christian man a few years younger than myself who said he completely understood why ISIS hated the West. He conceded that Christianity did not allow for the same response, but in his attitude toward Western history and knowledge – he is anti-vaccination (in fact, is generally skeptical of medicine and science) and questions the extent of the Holocaust – is worrying; and he isn’t the only one I’ve noticed with such a dangerous attitude.
LikeLike
From World on the “punishing women” remarks (I’ve heard that false line from others, that hey, he was just saying what pro-lifers all think anyway!):
http://www.worldmag.com/2016/03/midday_roundup_trump_s_latest_abortion_gaffe_alarms_pro_lifers?platform=hootsuite
_____________________________________
While Republicans, including Trump’s rivals for the GOP presidential nomination, denounced his comments, Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton pounced on the incident to claim Republicans share his beliefs, even if they won’t admit it: “Now maybe they aren’t quite as open about it as Donald Trump was earlier today, but they all have the same position. If you make abortion a crime—you make it illegal—then you make women and doctors criminals.”
______________________________________
But again, don’t ever underestimate Hillary Clinton and the Democrats when it comes to winning elections.
*************************************
From the same article:
_______________________________________
Meanwhile, with a contested Republican convention still a very real possibility, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., is working to make good on his promise to stop Trump. Before he dropped out of the GOP race earlier this month, Rubio pledged “to make sure the conservative movement does not fall into the hands of someone whose policy standards are indistinguishable from those of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.” And now the senator—in an unprecedented move—is asking to keep control of all 172 delegates he won during primaries and caucuses. Rubio has sent written requests to 21 states, and Alaska has already agreed to give him its five delegates at the Republican National Convention later this year. If Trump enters the convention short of the 1,237-delegate majority he needs to secure the nomination outright, Rubio’s delegates could make it much harder for Trump to avoid a contested convention.
________________________________________
LikeLike
Of course, the whole episode has moved me to examine why although I oppose therapeutic abortions, yet do not think a woman who has an abortion should be punished for it. I’m still thinking it out, but here are some of my thoughts. To start out with, it needs to be recognized that abortion was a medical term long before it became a flashpoint for women’s rights. As such, it describes a loss of pregnancy, not the cause of that loss. I recently found myself having to explain to an older Christian woman the meaning of the term therapeutic abortion – which is what Planned Parenthood clinics and other facilities offer – as opposed to spontaneous abortion, which is simply a miscarriage. It showed me that most laypeople who are pro-life do not realize that it is not abortion, the loss of pregnancy, which is murder, but the commission of a therapeutic abortion. By failing to make such a distinction, the pro-life advocates have unintentionally laid the foundations for future injustice. When women are held responsible for the loss of their unborn child, rather than the medical person who performed the therapeutic abortion, this is what happens – http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24532694:
The linked article pulls a non-sequitor by arguing that legalizing abortion would prevent such injustice, but they do have a point. If therapeutic abortions were made illegal, but in addition to that, women were made criminally responsible if they had an abortion, if a woman had a miscarriage, the burden of proof would be on her to show that she did not seek the loss of her pregnancy in any way. Even lifting heavy loads, or riding over rough roads could be construed as seeking to end a pregnancy under such laws. Furthermore, since a number of birth defects are caused by environmental substances, if a child is born with such a defect, under laws which make a woman responsible for the life of her child, the mother of that child could be charged with criminal negligence. If therapeutic abortions are ever to be made illegal again, great care must be taken to prevent another set of injustices from arising from such a law.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Roscuro has made several good and profound points, so I hate to be flippant but I can not resist:
If it weren’t for “Toxic Masculinity”, there would be no masculinity left at all.
LikeLike
Ricky, there is a toxic masculinity. I saw it in Northern Mexico, where you might see a large truck in front of a house in the slums, owned by the man of the household, but the women and children were poorly clad and fed. That’s not to diminish the real poverty of the area amongst both sexes, as that was present also; but the ‘macho’ culture meant that too many men justified taking care of their wants before providing for their family’s needs. I saw it in West Africa, where being a real man meant you took more than one wife (there was real peer pressure if a man had only one wife); as a result, most men couldn’t take care of their huge families, and each wife had to work to provide adequate food and clothing for their own children. I see it in the cultured West, where men justify looking a second time at any woman who catches their eye – never mind the pornography problem – as just being a red-blooded male. God, when giving Adam and Eve the consequences of their sin, told Eve that her desire would be to her husband (meaning, as the great Biblical scholars of the past agree, that woman would look to a husband to provide and care for her) and that her husband would rule over her (the word conveys a sense of oppression). Christ reversed that curse, and that is why Paul told men to love their wives and Peter said husbands should honour their wives; but the natural (unsaved) man does not receive those things. So the world of men goes on fulfilling the curse. Part of being salt and light is to advocate for those who are oppressed, so every Christian man should stand against such a toxic masculinity.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hmmm.
Donald Trump is meeting on Thursday with Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus during his trip to Washington, just two days after he disavowed his pledge to support the eventual GOP nominee.
(would love to be a fly on that wall)
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/trump-visit-dc-foreign-policy-team-221417
_______________________________
… The RNC was tight-lipped about the meeting, with top officials there declining to discuss the huddle between Trump and Priebus. One party official said the fourth floor of the RNC building, which houses Priebus’s office, had been shut down by security shortly before Trump’s arrival.
Trump’s volatility has been on full display over the past two days as he verbally attacked a reporter who accused his campaign manager of battery, disavowed the GOP loyalty oath, bemoaned the Geneva Conventions, and suggested that women should be punished for abortions if they become outlawed – before quickly reversing himself.
The fallout threatened to unravel the limited headway he appeared to be making after Super Tuesday, as it became clearer that Trump was marching toward the nomination. …
____________________________________
LikeLike
Roscuro, I don’t disagree. As my 3 year old son said before he could say his “j”s, “I was making a zoke”.
LikeLike
“Ain’t nothing secure.
If the government can do it, you know “the bad guys” can..”
Some times, they’re one in the same. The govt. had outside help on the Apple problem, from a hacker. Said hacker received a very large “consulting” fee as well. Our govt thinks hackers are bad only if they aren’t one of our govts hackers.
LikeLike
Therapeutic abortion is never going to be made illegal. That ship has sailed. The key is education and medical advancement. They only thing separating a 20 week baby from a fetus is whether or not the mother wants it. Medically it is a viable life.
I have stated on many an occasion that we keep it legal, we treat it like every other out patient surgery there is (think of the massive amount of forms you have to fill out), only allow them in hospitals where if something goes wrong there are medical staff on hand to save at least one life, and have follow up care.
As it is right now you cannot even have a reasonable conversation with anyone about it. It’s either black or white. Nothing is ever all or nothing. And this garbage about “if the mother’s life is in danger” is a bunch of hooy. I have NEVER, not even ONCE talked to a woman who was seriously ill who took the medical advice to terminate the pregnancy.
LikeLiked by 2 people