Tag Archives: Barack Obama

News

Second black man found dead at home of wealthy LGBT Democrat megadonor

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Wealthy Democrat Ed Buck and wealthy Democrat Hillary Clinton
Wealthy Democrat donor Ed Buck and wealthy Democrat Hillary Clinton

I’m not going to have a lot to say about this as commentary, because I just want to stick with the facts. Please be restrained with your comments.

Story from Fox News:

A man died early Monday at the West Hollywood home of prominent Democratic donor Ed Buck, his attorney confirmed to Fox News — 17 months after a male escort died in the same apartment.

[…]Buck, a well-known figure in LGBT political circles, has given more than $500,000 to a range of Democratic groups and candidates — including former President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.

In July of last year, prosecutors declined to file charges against Buck in the death of Gemmel Moore, a male escort whose body was found in Buck’s apartment in July 2017. According to a coroner’s report, Buck’s apartment was full of drug paraphernalia, including 24 syringes containing brown residue, five glass pipes with white residue and burn marks, a plastic straw with possible white residue, clear plastic bags with white powdery residue and a clear plastic bag containing a piece of crystal-like substance.

Moore’s death initially was ruled an accidental methamphetamine overdose, but the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office re-opened the investigation after writings in Moore’s journal implicated Buck in his drug use.

The well-known pro-LGBT web site The Advocate reported that the second man was also a young black man. And they had more about the diaries of the first victim:

“I’ve become addicted to drugs and the worst one at that,” Moore wrote in his journal in December 2016. “Ed Buck is the one to thank. He gave me my first injection of crystal meth.”

[…]Community activists like Jasmyne Cannick have accused Los Angeles officials of declining to prosecute Buck in 2017 thanks to his contributions to powerful politicians such as Hillary Clinton, California Gov. Jerry Brown, L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti, and numerous West Hollywood City Council members.

The Advocate reported that the second death is also the result of an overdose of drugs.

Not the first time

This is not the first time that a wealthy LGBT Democrat has gotten himself into trouble.

The far-left New York Times reports:

The mayor of Seattle, Ed Murray, said on Tuesday that he would resign after announcing in May that he would not seek a second term. Several men have comeforward to accuse Mr. Murray of sexually abusing them decades ago, when they were underage.

The announcement came just hours after The Seattle Times published a story with an account by a fifth man, Mr. Murray’s cousin, who said Mr. Murray had abused him in the 1970s.

[..]Mr. Murray, 62, a Democrat, is the city’s first openly gay mayor, and had served in the State Legislature for many years before being elected in 2013.

[…]The liberal Mr. Murray is generally considered a father of Washington’s same-sex marriage law, which he pressed in the State Legislature for years.

The radically-leftist New York Times isn’t about to tell you what this Democrat gay-marriage activist actually did – that’s not news that’s fit to print. For that you have to go to Life Site News.

This happens a lot

Here’s another story from the far-left CNN, of all places. Headline: “Obama backer, Democratic fundraiser Terry Bean charged in sexual abuse case”.

Excerpt:

A prominent supporter of President Barack Obama and co-founder of the Human Rights Campaign was arrested last week on charges of sodomy and sexual abuse related to what authorities said was an encounter with a juvenile male.

Terrence Bean, 66, a major Democratic donor and a celebrated gay-rights activist, was indicted on two felony charges of sodomy and a misdemeanor count of sexual abuse by a grand jury and arrested in Oregon Wednesday, according to a statement from the Portland Police Bureau.

[…]The charges relate to an alleged encounter the two had with a 15-year-old boy in Oregon last year, The Oregonian reported.

[…]Bean, a real-estate developer and co-founder of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund and the Human Rights Campaign, is a powerful figure in Democratic politics.

The Oregonian reported that he helped raise more than half a million dollars for Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, and Federal Election Commission records show he’s contributed thousands to Democrats, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and others.

Photos posted online show him with the Obamas, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and aboard Air Force One with the President.

In remarks at a 2009 Human Rights Campaign dinner, President Obama thanked Bean, calling him a “great friend and supporter.”

Again, a reminder to be careful with your comments. This is not the sort of content that the tech leaders at Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. want to see, so we have to be careful to stick to the facts.

Polemics

Abortion debate: a secular case against legalized abortion

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Unborn baby scheming about being only two months old
Unborn baby scheming about being only two months old

Note: this post has a twin! Its companion post on a secular case against gay marriage is here.

Now, you may think that the view that the unborn deserve protection during pregnancy is something that you either take on faith or not. But I want to explain how you can make a case for the right to life of the unborn, just by using reason and evidence.

To defend the pro-life position, I think you need to sustain 3 arguments:

  1. The unborn is a living being with human DNA, and is therefore human.
  2. There is no morally-relevant difference between an unborn baby, and one already born.
  3. None of the justifications given for terminating an unborn baby are morally adequate.

Now, the pro-abortion debater may object to point 1, perhaps by claiming that the unborn baby is either not living, or not human, or not distinct from the mother.

Defending point 1: Well, it is pretty obvious that the unborn child is not inanimate matter. It is definitely living and growing through all 9 months of pregnancy. (Click here for a video that shows what a baby looks like through all 9 months of pregnancy). Since it has human DNA, that makes it a human. And its DNA is different from either its mother or father, so it clearly not just a tissue growth of the father or the mother. More on this point at Christian Cadre, here. An unborn child cannot be the woman’s own body, because then the woman would have four arms, four legs, two heads, four eyes and two different DNA signatures. When you have two different human DNA signatures, you have two different humans.

Secondly, the pro-abortion debater may try to identify a characteristic of the unborn that is not yet present or developed while it is still in the womb, and then argue that because the unborn does not have that characteristic, it does not deserve the protection of the law.

Defending point 2: You need to show that the unborn are not different from the already-born in any meaningful way. The main differences between them are: size, level of development, environment and degree of dependence. Once these characteristics are identified, you can explain that none of these differences provide moral justification for terminating a life. For example, babies inside and outside the womb have the same value, because location does not change a human’s intrinsic value.

Additionally, the pro-abortion debater may try to identify a characteristic of the already-born that is not yet present or developed in the unborn, and then argue that because the unborn does not have that characteristic, that it does not deserve protection, (e.g. – sentience). Most of the these objections that you may encounter are refuted in this essay by Francis Beckwith. Usually these objections fall apart because they assume the thing they are trying to prove, namely, that the unborn deserves less protection than the already born.

Finally, the pro-abortion debater may conceded your points 1 and 2, and admit that the unborn is fully human. But they may then try to provide a moral justification for terminating the life of the unborn, regardless.

Defending point 3: I fully grant that it is sometimes justifiable to terminate an innocent human life, if there is a moral justification. Is there such a justification for abortion? One of the best known attempts to justify abortion is Judith Jarvis Thomson’s “violinist” argument. This argument is summarized by Paul Manata, one of the experts over at Triablogue:

Briefly, this argument goes like this: Say a world-famous violinist developed a fatal kidney ailment and the Society of Music Lovers found that only you had the right blood-type to help. So, they therefore have you kidnapped and then attach you to the violinist’s circulatory system so that your kidneys can be used to extract the poison from his. To unplug yourself from the violinist would be to kill him; therefore, pro-lifers would say a person has to stay attached against her will to the violinist for 9 months. Thompson says that it would be morally virtuous to stay plugged-in. But she asks, “Do you have to?” She appeals to our intuitions and answers, “No.”

Manata then goes on to defeat Thomson’s proposal here, with a short, memorable illustration, which I highly recommend that you check out. More info on how to respond to similar arguments is here.

Here is the best book for beginners on the pro-life view.

For those looking for advanced resources, Francis Beckwith, a professor at Baylor University, published the book Defending Life, with Cambridge University Press, 2007.

News

The 5 Taliban commanders that Obama traded for a deserter have returned to the Taliban

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Private Bowe Bergdahl pled guilty to mischief and desertion
Private Bowe Bergdahl pled guilty to charges of mischief and desertion

We live in a world where people get their news by watching far-left news media. They’re sure that Obama did a great job, but they can’t remember exactly what he did that was so great. When Obama asserts that he led a “scandal-free” administration, they just nod their heads like trained seals. They can’t remember any of Obama’s scandals.

One such scandal is Obama’s decision to trade five senior Taliban commanders – who were captured on the battlefield – for a Private for walked off his post (deserted) in Afghanistan. He abandoned his brothers in a combat zone. Perpetual liar Susan Rice – who falsely blamed the Benghazi terrorist attack on a YouTube video – claimed that Bergdahl was a hero who had “served honorably”. It was only later that Bergdahl was charged with mischief and treason. And he pleaded guilty to those charges. It should be noted that he isn’t just a “deserter”. He put down his weapons and took off his uniform and sought refuge with enemy forces. He’s not just a deserter, he’s a traitor. Exactly the kind of person who Democrats admire.

Did Bergdahl’s desertion have any consequences for his brothers in the military? Yes. When his absence was discovered, ground and air assets were diverted from their missions in order to search for him, to “rescue” him. Not just a few assets, but a huge number of assets were diverted to searching for him. U.S. troops lost their lives searching for him. Some were maimed and injured searching for him. And what’s more, if you’ve read the book “Red Platoon”, you know that other operations were impacted. Men were killed in Eastern Afghanistan at the Battle of Keating, because their close air support assets were re-tasked with searching for Bergdahl.

At the time of the trade, Obama promised that these five Taliban commanders would never again attack U.S. Armed Forces on the battlefield. That was how he justified the trade.

Time magazine reported:

When U.S. President Barack Obama agreed in May to exchange five Taliban detainees from Guantanamo Bay for Bowe Bergdahl, a U.S. soldier who had been held captive for five years, his political opponents had a field day. They warned that the detainees risked returning to Afghanistan, and to militancy. Obama, with the backing of the government of Qatar that had agreed to host the men, promised that they would be kept far from the battlefield.

Here is the latest news from the Washington Free Beacon:

The five members of the Afghan Taliban who were released from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay in exchange for captured American Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl in 2014 have joined the Taliban’s political office in Qatar, according the insurgent group’s spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid.

[…]”The Taliban are bringing back their old generation, which means the Taliban have not changed their thinking or their leadership,” said Haroun Mir, a political analyst in Kabul. “What we are more worried about is if tomorrow the Taliban say ‘we are ready to negotiate,’ who will represent Kabul? That is the big challenge because the government is so divided, not just ideologically but on ethnic lines.”

[…]President Barack Obama received backlash in 2014 when his administration orchestrated the prisoner swap for Bergdahl, prompting him to defend his decision.

The Obama administration favored our enemies at the expense of our own armed forces in so many ways.

They rewarded convicted traitor Private Bradley Manning with a pardon for his treason, and a free sex change – paid for by taxpayers. He leaked so many military secrets to our enemies, but the Obama administration had to protect him from his punishment, because they agreed with what he did. Later on, he would run as a Democrat, because that’s what he is.

The Obama administration forced many policies on the military that were designed to reduce our effectiveness. Sometimes, it was overt, like canceling the deal to help Poland with missile defense. Or backing out of Syria in order to hand it to the Russians. Or give Iran a green light and $400 million dollars to research nuclear weapons. Or forcing the U.S. Navy to use green energy. The list goes on and on. I personally know people who left the military because of the Obama administration’s anti-military policies.

And it’s not just the armed forces, it’s our spies and diplomats. Instead of pushing an agenda of world peace, the State Department antagonized other nations by pushing for legalized abortion and same-sex marriage. Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State, was allowed to operate a private, unsecure e-mail server in her bathroom. She sent and received classified e-mails over that server. And we know know that the server was hacked by the Chinese.

During the Obama administration, our allies were continuously disappointed. Our enemies were continuously emboldened. The Democrats did not take the job of protecting taxpayers seriously. No one who cares about projecting American strength and values abroad should ever vote for the Democrat party.