Tag Archives: Left

News

Twelve policies that undermine civil society

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I noticed this “web memo” on the Heritage Foundation web site. Basically, they just list the twelve policies and then write a couple of short paragraphs on how each policy negatively impacts civil society. This is a good introduction to Christians who want to think through whether some government policies that sound good really do good by reducing the amount of destructive and costly behavior, and promoting the public good.

The twelve policies are described in detail in the full post. (PDF)

  1. Massive Expansion of the Welfare State
  2. A Big Step toward National Same-Sex Marriage
  3. Abstinence-Based Education at Risk
  4. Expanding the Federal Government’s Role in Education
  5. Hate Crimes Expansion
  6. Legalization of Marijuana for Medical Purposes
  7. Taxpayer-Funded Abortion
  8. Needle Exchange for Drug Addicts
  9. Ending Parental School Choice for Low-Income Children
  10. Federal Funding for Abortions in the Health Care Overhaul
  11. Limiting Parental Rights and Expanding Family Planning
  12. New Government Parenting Program

Here are the details for #2.

The House of Representatives is on a trajectory to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act of 2009 (ENDA), just as it did in 2007. This legislation would disallow discrimination in hiring decisions based on “actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity.” ENDA would give special protected class status to sexual orientation and gender identity–just as is given to race, color, sex and religion.

Legislation like ENDA is a major precursor to legalizing same-sex marriage, as the history of the issue in several states shows. According to a recent Heritage Foundation paper, no state that has approved same-sex marriage has done so without first adopting ENDA-like legislation. In Vermont, Massachusetts, and five other states, courts have used the non-discrimination law as part of their reasoning to strike down traditional marriage.

Here, you can read more about the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and how it paves the way for same-sex marriage. I wrote a post about why people oppose same-sex marriage a while back.

News

What happens to the hockey stick graph if you don’t hide the decline?

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Here’s the story from Steve McIntyre. (H/T Story from Watts Up With That via ECM)

Excerpt:

“Hide the decline” refers to the decline in the Briffa MXD temperature reconstruction in the last half of the 20th century, a decline that called into question the validity of the tree ring reconstructions. (I’m going to analyze the letters on another occasion.) In the IPCC Third and Fourth Assessment Reports, IPCC “hid the decline” by simply deleting the post-1960 values of the troublesome Briffa reconstruction – an artifice that Gavin Schmidt characterizes as an “a good way to deal with a problem” and tells us that there is “nothing problematic” about such an artifice (see here.

Not only were the post-1960 values of the Briffa reconstruction not shown in the IPCC 2001 report – an artifice that Gavin describes as being “hidden in plain sight”, they were deleted from the archived version of the reconstruction at NOAA here (note: the earlier Briffa 2000 data here does contain a related series through to 1994.)

Here’s the graph, with the decline added back in.

Hide The Decline
Hide The Decline

Wow, look at that decline that somehow wasn’t included in the graphs made the global warming alarmists. Did they use a trick to hide the decline?

Hide the decline

And here’s a catchy video to help you remember all of this. (H/T Lex Communis)

The scary part is that two of my leftist friends still kept their faith in global warming after this scandal broke. It’s a religion, but one that is diconfirmed by the evidence.

Related posts

Commentary

MUST-READ: Robin of Berkeley explains why the left hates Sarah Palin

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Robin’s article is here at American Thinker. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

Like for most feminists, it was a no-brainer for me to become a Democrat. Liberal men, not conservatives, were the ones devoted to women’s issues. They marched at my side in support of abortion rights. They were enthusiastic about women succeeding in the workplace.

[…]Then along came Sarah, and the attacks became particularly heinous. And I realized something even more chilling about the Left. Leftists not only sacrifice and disrespect women, but it’s far worse: many are perpetuators.

The Left’s behavior towards Palin is not politics as usual. By their laser-focus on her body and her sexuality, leftists are defiling her.

[…]The Left has declared war on Palin because she threatens their existence. Liberals need women dependent and scared so that women, like blacks, will vote Democrat.

And so the Left must try to destroy her. And they are doing this in the most malicious of ways: by symbolically raping her.

Just like a perpetuator, they dehumanize her by objectifying her body. They undress her with their eyes.

They turn her into a piece of ass.

Liberals do this by calling her a c__t, ogling her legs, demeaning her with names like “slutty flight attendant” and “Trailer Park Barbie,” and exposing her flesh on the cover of Newsweek.

And from Atlantic Magazine’s Andrew Sullivan “Sarah Palin’s vagina is the font of all evil in the galaxy.”

Nothing is off-limits, not actress Sandra Bernhard’s wish that Palin be gang-raped or the sexualization of Palin’s daughters.

As every woman knows, leering looks, lurid words, and veiled threats are intended to evoke terror. Sexual violence is a form of terrorism.

Read the whole thing.

Do conservatives oppose women?

Conservatives think that men and women should make good choices and do good things. That is why on this blog hardly a moment goes by without me praising women like Michele Bachmann, Marsha Blackburn, Jennifer Roback Morse and Trayce Hansen for making good choices and doing good things.

For example, here’s Michele Bachmann speaking out about National Adoption Day.

Adoption is a good thing. Conservatives support the choice to love and nurture vulnerable children. We don’t support the choice to kill an unborn person. Conservatives support good choices, and oppose bad choices.