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News

All about Jenean Hampton, the new Lieutenant-Governor of Kentucky

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So, there was an election for the governor of Kentucky on Monday, and all the polls said that the Democrat would win. In Kentucky, normally the Democrat does win. They only have had one Republican governor since 1971.

Kentucky.com reports:

He never led until the end, and that’s when it counted.

Republican Matt Bevin, who trailed in every public poll since winning the Republican primary in May by 83 votes, shocked Democrat Jack Conway on Tuesday to become the next governor of Kentucky.

[…]Bevin was able to defy pundits, political insiders and polling — including one released by his own campaign in October that showed him losing — and emerge a winner Tuesday night.

In the end, it wasn’t even close. Bevin won 106 of the state’s 120 counties on his way to a nine-point victory.

[…]He was quick to rush to the defense of Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis when she was jailed briefly for defying a federal judge’s order to issue marriage licenses after the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage.

In the closing days of the race, Bevin focused on that saga and other social issues, honing in on rural voters’ contempt for Obama and career politicians.

And this is the interesting bit:

After being introduced by running mate, Lt. Gov.-elect Jenean Hampton — the first black person to win a statewide race in Kentucky — Bevin spoke of the challenges that lie ahead, saying it was time “to get the overalls on, get the boots on and get out of bed.”

Here’s her picture:

Kentucky Lt. Governor Jenean Hampton
Kentucky Lt. Governor Jenean Hampton (in her USAF uniform)

Wow. Let’s find out more about her.

National Review:

Both Bevin and Hampton are Tea Party activists who have never held elective office. Hampton’s path certainly represents triumph over adversity. Born in Detroit, the 57-year-old Hampton and her three sisters were raised by a single mom who lacked a high school education and couldn’t afford a television or a car. But Hampton was determined to better herself. She graduated with a degree in industrial engineering and worked for five years in the automobile industry to pay off her college loans. She then joined the Air Force, retiring as a Captain. She earned an MBA from the University of Rochester, moved to Kentucky and became a plant manager in a corrugated packaging plant.

Daily Signal has more about her background:

She grew up in inner-city Detroit, to parents who divorced when she was 7 years old. Her mother was left to raise her and three sisters.

She vowed when young that she would not “live a life of poverty,”  she told the Courier-Journal. “A huge part of what formed my opinions was the peer pressure that I got to fail.”

After a liberal upbringing, Hampton connected with President Ronald Reagan’s ideals and made a switch to conservative thinking.

Hampton’s mother has switched to the GOP, but Hampton’s father (who died in 2014) never accepted his daughter’s conservative views.

[…]She has been married for 14 years to Dr. Doyle Isaak, a retired Air Force flight surgeon.

Hampton is a member of the Eleventh Street Missionary Baptist Church in Bowling Green, according to her campaign website.

To pay for college, she worked for five years in the auto industry, including General Motors. She holds an industrial engineering degree from Wayne State University and a master of business administration from the University of Rochester.

At the beginning of her seven years of military service, she was a computer systems officer for the Air Force. Her job duties included writing code and testing software.

Hampton was deployed to Operation Desert Storm in Saudi Arabia, where she was an Air Force captain.

We  actually had two victories in states where the left went after social conservatives. This Kentucky victory follows after the jailing of Kim Davis for civil disobedience against the Supreme Court. And then we had the rejection of a gay rights bill that would allow men to go into women’s bathrooms, which followed the effort by the gay Houston mayor to persecute Houston pastors.

Social issues won in Kentucky and Houston

David French and Ryan T. Anderson both wrote articles talking about what these victories mean for social conservatives.

David French:

In Houston, all the right celebrities and corporations endorsed the “HERO act” — an expansive city ordinance that among other things would have granted transgender men access to women’s restrooms — but the celeb/corporate alliance failed. Voters decisively rejected dangerous sexual radicalism.

[…]One year ago, the activist, lesbian mayor of Houston subpoenaed the sermons and other communications of five pastors — men who opposed the city’s expansive nondiscrimination ordinance. The subpoenas weren’t limited to sermons about the so-called HERO act; they demanded “emails, instant messages, and text messages” on “equal rights, civil rights, homosexuality, or gender identity.” Houston had launched a direct attack on religious freedom.

Ryan T. Anderson:

As the Washington Post’s “Daily 202” notes, a major factor in Bevin’s victory—a Republican in a state that has elected Democrats as governor for 40 of the past 44 years—was “[f]ocusing on social issues, including promises to defund Planned Parenthood and defend Kim Davis, [which] helped drive the conservative base to turn out.”

No one was predicting that Bevin would win, especially not after he publicly defended Kim Davis and vigorously criticized the current governor for his handling of that situation.

It’s easy for me to keep blogging about bad news every day, we have so much of it. In particular, we haven’t done a good job of raising the next generation to respect marriage, family and children. But it’s not on us to gurantee outcomes. It’s on us to try be salt and light in a world that needs it. And sometimes, we win.

Commentary

What did early church fathers think about abortion and infanticide?

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Unborn baby scheming about early church traditions
Unborn baby scheming about early church traditions

This is from Birds of the Air.

Summary:

Recently I came across a reading of the Didache. “The what?” you may ask. The Didache is a book written somewhere in the first or second century. For a long time it was up for consideration as Scripture. It was believed to be the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles. Eventually it was agreed that the book was an excellent book, but not inspired Scripture. So I was pleased to be able to download this admirable book containing good teachings from the early Church fathers.

The book seemed to be largely a lot of quotes from Scripture. You’ll learn the basic rules of Christianity — “First, you shall love God who made you; second, love your neighbor as yourself.” You’ll learn that “grave sins” are forbidden, like adultery, murder, fornication, and so on. (They specifically include pederasty in the list.) There are instructions regarding teachers, prophets, Christian assembly, and so on. Lots of the normal, good stuff. But, since this was written sometime prior to 200 AD, I was somewhat surprised at this instruction: “You shall not murder a child by abortion” (Didache, Ch 2).

I got curious about what babies look like when they are just a few weeks old, so I went looking for pictures of them.

This post from Life News has ten excellent pictures of life inside the womb.

Here’s my favorite from 10 weeks:

Unborn Baby - 10 weeks old
Unborn Baby – 10 weeks old

This is a first trimester baby!

I decided to go hunting to see what is developed at this time, and found this list:

  • From this week until birth, the developing organism is called a fetus.
  • The fetus is now the size of a small strawberry.
  • The feet are 2mm long (one tenth of an inch).
  • The neck is beginning to take shape.
  • The body muscles are almost developed. Baby has begun movement.
  • While still too small for you to feel, your little one is wriggling and shifting.
  • The jaws are in place. The mouth cavity and the nose are joined.
  • The ears and nose can now be seen clearly.
  • Fingerprints are already evident in the skin.
  • Nipples and hair follicles begin to form.

The unborn baby is now called a fetus. Though the fetus is constantly moving, you will not be able to actually feel fetal movement for several more weeks. All of the organs, muscles, and nerves are in place and beginning to function. As the hands and feet develop fingers and toes, they have lost their paddle like look. The touch pads on the fingers form and already have fingerprints.

During this week of pregnancy the crown to rump length of the fetus is 0.9 inch to 1.2 inches (22 to 30mm), weight 0.07 ounce (2gm). They are now on the way to forming their testicles or ovaries, getting ready for the next generation. Until the ninth week of fetus development, the fetal reproductive apparatus is the same one for the both sexes. The head is still large and curves into chest.

Each week your uterus grows larger with the baby growing inside it. You may begin to see your waistline growing thicker by this time. A pelvic exam will detect that your uterus has grown from it’s normal, size of your fist, to a little bigger than a grapefruit.

Fascinating!

Commentary

Seven policies that conservatives oppose, because they cause poverty

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Women for bigger government, higher taxes
Women for bigger government, higher taxes

The list is from John Hawkins, who runs Right Wing News. It’s posted at Townhall.com, though. (H/T Lindsay)

Intro:

Keeping Americans poor in a prosperous country like America is not as easy as you think. After all, this is the “land of opportunity.” Legal immigrants pay tens of thousands of dollars and wait years for the opportunity to come legally and illegal immigrants often risk their lives just so they can get here and do menial work. This is the country that made Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and even OPRAH into billionaires and it’s a nation where you can have everything from hoverboards to medicine for your pet delivered right to your door. So when there’s so much wealth and opulence everywhere, how do you lock Americans out of that success?

No matter what you do, there will always be a few poor people around, but to really maximize those numbers there are very specific government policies abetted by a few cultural attitudes that will make all the difference.

Here’s the list of policies that make people poor:

  1. Making Sure Taxes And Regulations Are Sky High
  2. Encouraging Dependency
  3. Encouraging People To Have Babies Out Of Wedlock
  4. Demonizing Success
  5. Screwing Up The Education System
  6. Having Massive Immigration
  7. Ratcheting Up Their Expenses

I partially disagree with him on #6, where he goes after skilled immigrants. I think it’s right to go after unskilled immigrants, and immigration through family sponsors, since those people may use more social programs than they pay for in taxes. I don’t mind if they come, so long as they are barred from social programs. Failing that, we should only allow skilled immigrants to come – they pay in more than they use up.

However, if he was talking about illegal alias, and not skilled workers, I agree 100%. Everyone who is here should be here legally with a work permit, and there should be enforcement to punish employers who cheat.

Here’s the one I really like, though – the one I think my Democrat co-workers would not be surprised by:

7. Ratcheting Up Their Expenses: Of course, if you want to create more poor Americans, it’s best to tax the middle class as much as possible, but in a country where they can vote you out of office, you have to be careful about directly reaching into their wallets. So, how do you take their money without their realizing that you’re responsible?

Have the Federal Reserve print money non-stop, which drives up inflation. Over time, that reduces the purchasing power of the middle class as the cost of everything seems to creep up. It’s also important to go after cheap sources of energy like oil, coal, natural gas and nuclear power. Not only does that drive up the cost the middle class pays across the board for products, it also hits people directly when they heat and cool their homes. Exploding medical costs are also helpful and Obamacare has done an amazing job of this. Medical costs are skyrocketing for the middle class and helping to drive them towards poverty. As an extra added bonus, middle class Americans who can no longer afford to pay for their medical care because of Obamacare will also be hit with a tax penalty. If your goal is to hurt middle class Americans financially, you could not do much better than Obamacare.

There are many ways to impoverish working people more than just raising their taxes. Just make them pay more for everything by regulating and taxing the people who create the services and products that people buy.