Muddling Toward Maturity Blog

THEY SUPPORTED ABORTION UNTIL THEY SAW THIS VIDEO

Erika Andersen writes:

When faced with the reality of the abortion procedure, many people who are pro-choice change their minds instantly. A video put out by Live Action shows former abortionist Dr. Anthony Levantino describing and showing the process of a second-trimester (13-24 weeks of pregnancy) surgical abortion procedure. Dr. Levantino has preformed over 1,200 abortions and explains in detail how babies are ripped apart limb by limb in these procedures. 

Live Action approached people on the street and asked them if they were pro-choice. To those that said yes, even up to the point of birth, they showed Dr. Levantino’s video of the procedure. After watching the video, the people who claimed to be pro-choice changed their minds on the spot. They admitted they were unaware of how developed babies are at this point in pregnancy and described the video as “inhumane.” 

Watch the reactions here: 

 

America’s views on life are changing for the better as science and technology reveal the fascinating stages of life babies progress through from the moment of conception. Videos like this one are helping to change the debate and show uninformed individuals what it is they actually profess to believe in when they say they support pro-choice policies. 

Seeing the reality of abortion on it’s face makes people — like those in this video — oppose it outright. Exposing the brutal inhumanity of the abortion procedure may be the most powerful way to change minds and stop this tragic holocaust of children. 

Here’s the abortion-procedure video the participants in the film were shown that changed their minds on the spot: 

 

SOCIALISM KILLS

 

  ** Ed Morrissey on the Venezuelan situation

  ** Poll:  One Third of millennials view socialism favorably.

  ** Click here for previous blog posts on socialism,

 

ANASTASIA LIN - A TRUE BEAUTY

Jay Nordlinger writes in a short article the following about Anastasia Lin - 

Anastasia Lin is an extraordinary beauty queen. She is also an actress. And a human-rights advocate.

Last year, she was crowned Miss World Canada. But the international competition was held in China — and the dictatorship blocked her from coming. They declared her “persona non grata.”

She earned that designation from these monsters: She has spoken out against their crimes — their persecution, their killing, their organ-harvesting — and has acted in films depicting those crimes.

After she was crowned Miss World Canada, her father, who still lives in China, was subjected to terrible pressure. Evil is the regime that breaks up families, or tries to. Evil is the regime that holds a population in the grip of lies, and tries to smash any truth-teller.

At the Oslo Freedom Forum, I recorded a Q&A with Anastasia Lin. For that podcast, go here.  She has profound things to say about, among other subjects, the West’s constant appeasement of the Chinese Communist Party.

Do we have to be complicit in the CCP’s crimes? No. It’s that we choose to.

ROD DREHER: Au Revoir, Madeleine Lebeau

I am borrowing a blog post from Rod Dreher containing a movie clip I found very moving.

 

Dreher:

Madeleine Lebeau has died. She was the last surviving cast member of Casablanca, and she had an iconic role in what for me is the greatest scene of all cinema. See above. She’s the character you see crying while singing “La Marseillaise”. From the story:

It was for her third American film however that she is most remembered. Signed to a Warner Bros contract in 1942, she was quickly cast in Casablanca as Yvonne. Introduced as yet another spurned conquest by main character Rick Blaine, she is next seen as a collaborator on the arm of a German soldier. However, during the iconic cast performance of “La Marseillaise,” Yvonne tears up as she sings along and then shouts “Viva la France!”. Like many of the film’s cast who were also refugees from Nazi terror, Lebeau’s tears, and her shout, were absolutely genuine.

Madeleine Lebeau was a Jewish refugee. May her memory be eternal, and may her memory be a blessing.

And: Vive la France!

ISRAEL'S SOLUTION FOR A WATER-STARVED WORLD

A friend emailed me this review of Seth M. Siegel's book, Let There be Water: Israels Solution for a Water-Starved World.   It's a story that needs to be told. Kudos to the engineering feats of the Israelis.  They deserve enormous credit for what they have done and for their generosity in sharing the technology with others.  But the hatred for Israel will likely mute the praise.  Here's the review:

This book will make you cry. Or stamp your feet or beat your head against a wall.

The narrative is familiar. Israel, a (once) poor country in the middle of an arid space, surrounded by enemies, finds a way to make the desert bloom. Then, Israel finds a way to extend what it learned about water to other countries – poor and not poor. If it was only that, it would be a great story. But it is more. Israel has found a way to change the equation between people, money, water, and nature.

In "Let There be Water", Seth M. Siegel begins with the early Zionist pioneers, talks the reader through technologies for water management, leak control, sewage treatment, desalination and conservation. He takes on pricing and social pressures for conservation, as well as park and river cleanup, and water for improving the quality of life in dry cities such as Beersheva. Did you know that straining out toilet paper from sewage can provide cellulosic material for use in the pulp and paper industry? That household cooking oil can be skimmed from sewage and recycled into industrial applications? That 85 percent of sewage can be reclaimed and recycled? Israel is aiming for 90 percent; the average in the U.S. is 8 percent.

Israel changed what it grew – giving up cotton and beef cattle as being too water-intensive – and started water policy and technology outreach to Africa, the U.S., China, India, Iran, and South America.

So why cry?

Because UC Berkeley in Oakland, CA is the heart of the BDS movement – boycott, disinvestment and sanction – against Israel; nasty, ugly and often anti-Semitic. But a 2014 Memorandum of Understanding between the State of California and Israel called for cooperation between California and Israeli businesses and universities. With no nod to irony or hypocrisy, Berkeley was one of the first to find projects on which it could cooperate with Israel. "Never mind that BDS in the corner; let's have Israel help California."

So why beat your head against a wall?

Because when you get to Chapter 9 and read about the self-defeating nature of the Palestinian Authority and the Hamas leadership in Gaza, you begin to understand the real reason there is no "peace process" between Israel and its near neighbors. The Palestinian leadership insists that Israel owes them water regardless of what they do or don't do to conserve, maintain, or use it wisely. Palestinians go about drilling illegal wells, tossing raw sewage, and refusing maintenance on leaks. And, "starting in 2008 and accelerating since 2010, the PA has chosen to use water as one key area of non-cooperation with Israel."

THE MAJORITY'S RIGHT TO PRIVACY VS. OBAMA'S OBSESSION WITH SEX AND GENDER

The Family Research Council states the fundamental issue with regard to the North Carolina "bathroom law":

Let's be clear: This debate has never been about eliminating the non-existent rights of gender-confused, it's about the rights to privacy of the other 99.5 percent of the public. The idea of safety isn't about fearing people who identify as transgender. It's about not trusting those who would exploit the law by pretending to be one! At one of the many organized protests outside Target stores (which now have the policy the federal government is trying to force on the rest of America), one mom warned that there are as many as 209 registered sex offenders within a five-mile radius of the Utah store they were picketing. Mississippi dad Johnny Brekeen put it this way: "I'm not saying that a transgender would harm a child. What I'm saying is if men are allowed to go into the restroom, children are going to be harmed."

Ed Whelan states in stark terms what the Obama administration believes:

 1. Because Johnny thinks he’s a girl, he should use the same locker room at school that Mary and Suzie and other girls use. He should be able to watch them take off their clothes and use the shower, and he should be able to walk around in front of them without any clothes on. It doesn’t matter whether Johnny and the girls are six or sixteen years old. If Mary or Suzie or their moms or dads don’t like it, too bad for them. They’re evil or stupid.

2. Same thing when Johnny goes off to college. What’s more, he should share a dorm room with girls. If they don’t like it, too bad for them. They’re evil or stupid.

3. When John grows up and gets a job, his boss has to let him use the women’s restroom. He can’t be asked to use a single-stall room instead. That would be so mean. If the women who work with him don’t like it, too bad for them. They’re evil or stupid.

4. John should be able to use the women’s restrooms and showers wherever he is. So what that an open door for John means an open door for any guy who wants to lurk? All we care about is John and folks like him. No one else matters. Anyone who disagrees is evil or stupid.

5. We have to say that John is a woman because he says he’s a woman. A woman with male genes and organs, yes. But things like biology don’t count. All that counts is what John thinks. So he should be called “she.” Anyone who disagrees is evil or stupid.

6. We don’t want to try to get new laws. That’s hard work. You’d have to try to tell people stuff they know is nuts. Let’s just claim to read all this into the laws that are now on the books. So what that no one ever thought this before? We have the judges now. No one can stop us. Anyone who tries is evil or stupid.

7. But we’ll cut our friends a lot of slack, at least for now. We’ll first just go after folks we don’t like. That way, no one will care much. Because we all know those folks are evil or stupid.   

Update 511/16:  Daniel Horowitz commentary - How Congress can stand with North Carolina and Gender Sanity

WHAT ARE WE TO MAKE OF LONDON'S NEW MUSLIM MAYOR, SADIQ KHAN?

The redoubtable Andrew C. McCarthy provides an answer:

I am afraid that grim reality requires choosing the second of David Pryce-Jones’s two ways of looking at London’s election of Sadiq Khan as mayor: By choosing an enabler of Muslim extremism, the British are losing control of their destiny. In the run-up to the mayoral election, the invaluable Daniel Johnson, editor of Standpoint, provided the essential backdrop:

Indeed, what has emerged before our eyes in Britain is a kind of Islamist state within a state…. A new survey by ICM with the former head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, Trevor Phillips, for Channel Four and the Sunday Times confirms that Salafists are fast becoming the dominant influence on British Islam. Nearly a quarter (23 per cent) of a sample of 1,081 adult Muslims want to see “areas of Britain in which sharia law is introduced instead of British law”. Nearly a third (31 per cent) of them think “it is acceptable for a British Muslim to keep more than one wife”, even though polygamy is in theory punishable by up to five years imprisonment. . . 

The Islamist voting pattern clearly vaulted Sadiq Khan. Johnson notes that the Muslim vote is crucial to Labour because, for example, “[a]t least ten London boroughs have large, mainly conservative Muslim communities, where children grow up in an Islamic monoculture and women are covered or veiled.”

Khan is an admirer of Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the highly influential Muslim Brotherhood sharia jurist who backs Hamas’s jihad against Israel, supported violent jihad against American troops in Iraq, and has promised that Islamists ”will conquer Europe, we will conquer America! Not through the sword but through dawa!” (Dawa is fundamentalist Islam’s aggressive form of proselytism.)  (Qaradawi figures prominently in two of my books, The Grand Jihad and Spring Fever, my Broadside pamphlet Islam and Free Speech, and I’ve profiled him a number of columns, see, e.g., here. The Investigative Project outlines a number of his more memorable quotes, here.)

As I’ve previously detailed, Qaradawi is a leading force behind the “voluntary apartheid” scheme that exhorts Muslims to “integrate but don’t assimilate” in the West. The objective is to set up enclaves in which Muslims, once achieving a critical mass, pressure the home government to allow them to govern their affairs i in accordance with sharia. That brings us back to Daniel Johnson:

TRUMP AND HILLARY: EQUALLY DISTASTEFUL

I agree with Jay Nordlinger's perspective:

 . . . I’m certainly not voting for Trump. I think he is spectacularly unfit for the presidency, in both mind and character (but especially the latter). I’m certainly not voting for Hillary. I think she is equally unfit. I have opposed her, politically, since she emerged on the scene in the early ’90s.

I believe the Republican party has disgraced itself, in nominating Trump. I believe it has disfigured itself, morally. (Philosophically too, but that is separate.) The Democrats, I gave up on a long time ago (c. 1982). . . 

Perhaps people think that Trump has some kind of claim on my vote, because I’m a conservative (and, until earlier this week, I was a Republican). I do not regard Trump as a conservative. I’m not even sure he’s a democrat. He strikes me as a big-government strongman, or would-be strongman: a prospective American Putin or Chávez. . . .

I simply do not have a preference between Trump and Hillary. They are equally distasteful to me, and I’m not going to vote for either one of them. Nor am I obligated.

I’ll vote for some third candidate — an honorable conservative, or at least someone who is not corrupt, dishonest, and dangerous. If there is no such candidate, I won’t vote for president. . . .

WHAT NOW, CONSERVATIVES?

David French offers a reasoned, sensible, practical plan.

JAY NORDLINGER - "I WISH I WERE A HOOSIER..."

I wish I were, too  Nordlinger writes:

I wish I were a Hoosier... … so that I could vote for Ted Cruz tomorrow. A sterling Reagan conservative. A classical liberal. A believer in limited government, the rule of law, free enterprise, peace through strength, the right to life. A smart man, a decent man. A bold man, a persistent man. My friend (incidentally). The kind of person who ought to be president of the United States.

He’d be great for the country, and world. So would Carly Fiorina, as vice president. They are a dream ticket for me. I believe a Cruz-Fiorina administration would be curative. I believe we would see quick and marked improvement in the economy, foreign policy, the courts — everywhere.

People say they will lose. That may be. Good and meritorious people have lost before. But I hope they win. I know they would be excellent in office, as I’ve said. Wouldn’t it be something to see it tested? Confirmed?

As regular readers know, I regard Trump and Hillary as unfit. Equally unfit, in different ways. But I regard Ted ’n’ Carly as marvelously fit. I hope Indiana voters will pull the lever for them. And that Nebraskans, West Virginians, and others will later.

I know that many disagree. They can write their own blogposts. I’m with you, Ted ’n’ Carly, and I’m grateful for you. Wish I were in Indiana to express it through a ballot.

QUICK TAKES

     - Wintery Knight - What marriage-minded women need to learn about men from the movie "High Noon"  - Great post!  WK offers video segments from the movie, a partial transcript, and excellent commentary.  

     - Wintery Knight - "Is Trump a Christian?  Is Donald Trump a moral person?

     - David Harsanyi - Why aren't we having a conversation about Leftist violence?  Good question!!   

     - Steve Forbes, Stephen Moore and Art Laffer (all experts on tax policy) support Ted Cruz's flat tax proposal.  It will simplify the tax code and create jobs!

    - On Foreign Policy, Donald Trump sounds a lot like Obama.  Jim Talent offers valuable analysis.  

WATCH: TED CRUZ CONFRONTS TRUMP SUPPORTERS IN INDIANA

At times you have to listen carefully above the general shouts and "noise" but Cruz's dialog is worth listening to.  Cruz engages in a civil, facts-based dialog with a man who is a hard core, brain-washed Trump supporter.

 

WHY ARE THERE STILL PALESTINIAN REFUGEES?

A new Prager U video is out.  Today’s lecturer: Dumisami Washington of Christians United for Israel. HT: NR

 

CUBAN-AMERICAN SEES AMERICA MOVING TOWARDS COMMUNISM

Gini Thomas of the Daily Caller reports:

Filmmaker and American citizen Agustin Blazquez never thought his native Cuba would become a communist country, but now he sees the same radical shift happening in America.  

In a video, Agustin Blazquez says The  left has been clever by using “very non-threatening words,” like liberal, progressive and concerned citizens, for advancing government control of American lives. The truth about Cuban politics is hard to find because of media spin and propaganda dominating American discourse.

For Blazquez, watching American youth embrace avowed socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders for president, strikes him as “absurd.” It is the end result, he says, of the cultural marxist education and media propaganda that has anesthetized too many Americans who do not defend the values that made America exceptional.

Watching President Barack Obama travel to Cuba, he says, made him “want to throw up.” This was a “betrayal to victims of communism,” the filmmaker of “Covering Cuba” says. Blazquez adds there are “so many [Nelson] Mandelas” in Cuban prisons, who are tortured, denied medical attention and abused. Yet, prominent black elites from America, including most incredibly to him, the Congressional Black Caucus, are wined and dined by the political elites but are blind to their “betrayal of blacks in Cuba.”

60 MINUTES: NO TECHNOLOGICAL DEVICE SECURE FROM HACKERS

    **  60 Minutes - We cannot trust the technology we use.    Nothing is "secure" from hackers - including our cell phones and all else besides.  Hackers can get into everything, regardless of passwords.