Jon always has the perfect perspective . . .

The messages you are viewing are archived/old.
To view latest messages and participate in discussions, select the boards given in left menu

I have seen portions of this video today, and let me tell you this is not mainstream Christianity. We are not worshipping images of George Bush nor are we working our children up into an emotional frenzy. I disdain what this so-called woman minister is doing to these children. My child would not come within 100 yards of her. It's not Biblical...it's almost cultish, but before you start parading this around as the Christian norm. It's not. This woman is developing a cult under the name Christian...she's got some deep seated theological issues.

Um, do you guys realize that not all OB/GYN doctors perform abortions? Not that I'm an ob/gyn physician, but I believe you need training beyond residency to be certified in abortions. There are a many residencies that do not offer abortion training to its residents, for whatever reason. The point is, just because you're an ob/gyn doctor, does NOT mean that you perform abortions. Therefore, just because Bush's law is being repealed or whatever by Obama, doesn't mean that now every ob/gyn doctor out there is going to have to provide abortions or risk getting sued. Did that happen before Bush's law went into effect?

I think the concerning thing about Bush's law was that it permitted healthcare workers to refuse to even provide INFORMATION regarding abortions (like, who to refer someone to), based on their moral beliefs. Moral beliefs vary between people, and between providers, and are very subjective. What if a healthcare provider believed that ANY abortion, even in a case in which the mother's health was threatened, was immoral? He or she, under Bush's law (as I understand it), would be legally protected in not giving the woman information on who to go to to get an abortion. In a field where healthcare providers put patients first (and in the case of a mother's life or health being threatened, the mother always comes first for obvious reasons), it is unconscienceable, from a medical ethics standpoint, to refuse to offer that woman the resources she needs to protect her health and/or life.

That's an extreme example, and I truly hope no healthcare provider would make the decision to refuse information to a woman in that case, but under Bush's law, they would be protected. As far as I understand it.

Another MUCH more common example is prescribing emergency contraception, and even regular contraception. Under Bush's law, a pharmacist would have the right, legally, to refuse to fill a prescription for a woman seeking that if his or her beliefs indicated that such a thing (contraception - emergency or not) was immoral. This is especially relevant in rural areas, where women - often poor - do not have access to more than one pharmacist. Her right to contraception definitely trumps a pharmacist's beliefs - and I'll tell you why. Pharmacists don't (as far as I know) have access to doctor's notes explaining the reason for a prescription. They're smart and trained people who can look at your meds and deduct what medical problems you have, but how are they to know if you have antiphospholipid antibody syndrome and really, really shouldn't get pregnant? They don't. They might know if you're taking retin a orally and thus shouldn't get pregnant for that reason, but they don't know everything about your medical conditions. And even if they did, legally protecting these providers' decisions to refuse contraception CAN remove the right of a woman to make decisions regarding her own health. In a free society that protects individual autonomy, such a law goes directly against what it is supposed to protect - autonomy. A subexample - what if the woman in question is a victim of rape or incest and can't remove herself from the situation, for reasons that you and I don't know? Why should a pharamcist's beliefs - again, which are hard to legally define - trump HER decision to not get pregnant with the result of a repeated act of rape or incest? Furthermore, you and I don't know that she's being raped. You and I also don't know the reason why she can't remove herself from the situation. So, why should you or I make a moral judgement and/or a decision that impacts her health? I don't believe that we can. I know that *I* can't, because I really don't know this woman's story. As a pharmacist, and even as her doctor, I likely wouldn't know.

Back to the subject of morality and the definition of morality. What if a healthcare provider believes that homosexuality is immoral, and allowing such a couple to have children is immoral? A case like that happened in California a few years ago, where the fertility clinic a lesbian couple went to basically either did not harvest the eggs, or did not give the proper treatments (I don't know the exact details), but executed acts that were based on a decision (a decision they admitted to) to not help these women conceive BECAUSE they believed homosexuality was immoral, and they allowed the women to keep coming to the clinic for months before it came out that they were not helping them because they were lesbian. Now, perhaps this was a Christian clinic, or perhaps everyone in the clinic WAS Christian. I don't know. I do know that the rights of these women to get fertility treatments was denied to them because a decision was made based on someone else's morals. Why should their health, and their control over their fertility, be impacted by someone they don't even know? We don't go into the healthcare business to make moral decisions for people. That's the job of our church, if we have one.

Basically, I'm writing here because I've gone through most of the comments, and people all seem to be under the misconception that doctors will have to perform abortions now if asked, and a) that's not the case, given that all doctors are not trained in abortions, and b) the main importance of the law (in my opinion) lies not in the actual procedure of abortion, but in the sharing of information to women about their LEGAL options. Which, in America and in many developed countries, includes abortion, like it or not.

I heard many calls today on talk radio from these naturalized US citizens who said to just take a look at what happened to these nations.

Think what y'all want, but I'll never forget what they've done to take the $ I make and hand it over to some jerk who pays nothing in taxes. Yeah, that's really fair.

One clip was played where a lady said she's so happy that she'll never have to pay a mortage, car payment, and even gas for her car! So this is okay? Next time I need gas $ or something, I'll just put my hand out and y'all can just empty your wallets. So if someone owns 2 acres and I own only 1/2, you have to pony up to even out the difference. Enjoy it and don't bitch about it if you voted for this naked socialist.

Good luck to charitable organizations. It should be interesting to see how many people continue to give once they've been completely raped for all they've earned.

of why dems are so critical of the right. You just throw stuff out there that has no basis. Given that I have looked at all available text that would fall into the category you speak of and have found nothing to back up your claim, the fact that Obama typically meticulously chooses his words before he says them, and your obvious unwillingness or inability to provide some kind of documentation to support your claim, I have to come to the conclusion that what you have said is false. If this is incorrect, then by all means, please feel free to prove me wrong.

The dems were just recently accused of character assassination after stating facts. And then here you come along with this garbage, which is basically the same thing that has been done by the pubs since before the election. At least you're consistent.

MT: See, THAT'S what I am talkin' about! SM boring and lame! I am telling you, you are lame girl.

American Girl: Did they just wish me dead? ....RIP is a term usually reserved for the dead, right?

They degenerate debate to name calling, calling us evil, and then wishing us dead....all the while preaching to us about how evil and intolerant we are....the irony is bewildering but not unexpected.

MT: Don't forget when they told Nan she was old and would die soon SM and wished for her to burn in hell. That was an especial highlight of the nature of how they "never" say anything hateful.

(No name, but I admit it was me, completely frustrated and having sunk to their level): I know it's difficult but close your eyes and try to FOCUS for a second or two. Take a deep breath. You can do it. The poster was directly responding in kind to YOUR post in which YOU wrote: you're boring me to death.... Now feel free to twist and mangle that any way that makes you look like poor little AG who is always picked on, but YOU are the one who started this. The person was wishing you a peaceful trip while on the destination YOU indicated you were headed.

Nameless Troll: Not true. I don't wish anyone dead. I don't harbor that kind of hatred inside me. Sorry to bust your bubble.

These were just a FEW in an entire thread of insults (including one from Nan calling the person a slimy bottom dweller.) Not ONE post in this entire thread added anything of intelligence to any debate (including my own).

Does anyone reading this SERIOUSLY think the poster wished AG dead? When I read it, I see it as a very sarcastic response to a very sarcastic post. I believe it�s shortly after this point in time (when those three were getting exactly what they gave, after repeated threats and "chances" and "strikes" by them to the poster or else they would tell the Monitor) that they all three posted that they wouldn�t be coming back here any more. Those posts are gone now, and as we can see, one of them is already denying ever saying she was leaving. (To those of you who actually did read these posts and know they were there, please continue to rely on the accuracy of your memory because it�s correct.)

Now, when the day comes that AG recalls someone on this board "wishing her dead," are you going to believe that that is what the person REALLY wished, given the entire context of these posts?

MSNBC ran a ticker headline Friday identifying dead bodies, debris, human waste and chemicals as prominent contents of the toxic flood waters. It�s no surprise, and curiously fitting, that the national media all week has been awash with the cultural equivalent: noxious, vile proclamations by the America�s foremost moral pretenders, atrocity addicts, all-purpose grifters and incendiary race hustlers: Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Cynthia McKinney, and Maxine Waters � with auditions from aspiring race-mongering demagogues Kanye West and Michael Eric Dyson.

Each of these self-congratulatory progressive activists has labored to exploit the New Orleans catastrophe as an onslaught against black America. Collectively they possess moral authority equivalent to the two scammers who used an amputated finger in an attempted shakedown of Wendys. Let�s be clear about the lineage these bottom feeders are part of. The opportunistic race-based ghouls who have made New Orleans their haunt are not different from David Duke, in either kind or degree. The activists now working overtime to incite race hatred � doing so in the name of �justice� and �civil rights� � deserve the same accolades and mantles as the klansmen who terrorized blacks, Jews, Catholics, and white civil rights workers in another decade.

Like the vulgar, hate-driven white racists who read aloud from Bibles in church the morning after lynching, burning and raping, these morally bankrupt representatives of today�s civil rights elite represent the last gasp of a morally unregenerate worldview. And like the Klan of yore, they (and their enablers Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi, Richard Cohen, and Hillary Clinton) grow more desperate and deranged as the moderate American mainstream rejects their quest to rip open the nation�s past racial wounds for temporary partisan advantage.

Efforts to turn New Orleans into the cultural equivalent of Rwanda are repugnant to everything about America than makes moral sense. Lincoln spoke of the better angels of human nature, implying the existence of something very much worse. Every schoolboy knows the proper counterpart is demon. The moral scammers now inciting race hatred in the wake of the Louisiana nightmare will fail. And the movement they represent will ultimately fail, because it is more than wrong or simply false, it is cancerously self-canceling. The body politic will cast off this disease and will do so to preserve its well being, vitality, and wholeness.

But the end of this fight is not near. The mainstream media is highlighting the preposterous claims of America�s hate apostles because the MSM sees an opportunity not simply to negate the past two presidential elections, but to reverse the general trend away from the cultural corrections (anti-welfare state, pro-national defense) that Reagan�s 1980 victory represented. The American left has been licking its chops for years, hoping for the political equivalent of a perfect storm: the ideal convergence of forces that would yield a return to normalcy for expanding the gutter of identity politics and apologizing to the world at large for everything American. The left longs for a return of Carter�s malaise because that will reinforce the left�s longstanding antagonism toward the resurgence of personal responsibility and national pride since 9-11.

The unconscionable quest to exploit the human misery of New Orleans sickens me more than I can say. I was with my family at a Florida hospice, attending to my mother as she lay dying from cancer, when Katrina came ashore, wreaking human and physical loss only miles away. We were all aware that our personal loss would be shared by many hurricane victims, and that the American people would do what we always do: rally to help the wounded, the sick, and the bereaved. It never occurred to us � not even remotely � on August 25, the day mom passed away, that leaders of this nation�s so-called progressive community would even consider using a natural tragedy as an occasion to further their now familiar By Any Means Necessary campaign against this country and its traditions.

Then again, neither did I expect that there would be 250 demonstrations on American campuses against the United States responding militarily to the September 11 attacks, as David Horowitz has so aptly described. Na�vete dies hard, but there�s a positive side. It�s extremely hard to resuscitate.

to run for president anyhow? There were candidate s much more qualified than O that could have run away with the votes if they were "chosen" by the party...but they chose someone who was only a senator for what, less than 2 years? Why? I would love to know how the party choses their candidates to run for president. Something doesn't smell right here.

Did you by chance see the Barbara Walters special last night on heaven? I watched part of it, but I also taped it.

The two religions that stuck out like a sore thumb were the *born again* Christians and the *jihad Muslims*. They were the two groups who felt that everyone who didn't believe exactly as they do are doomed to go to hell.

So the fact that Catholics are targeted makes perfect sense to me and is in line with the Bush & Co. MO.

They are both getting their victims to do what they want them to do with a promise neither of them will keep.