Unbelievable.
Well, maybe not.
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Tuesday, August 26, 2008
News you won't hear at the Democratic National Convention
From the US Census Bureau:
* Real median household income in the United States climbed 1.3 percent between 2006 and 2007, reaching $50,233.
* The number of people without health insurance coverage declined from 47 million (15.8 percent) in 2006 to 45.7 million (15.3 percent) in 2007. The number of uninsured children declined from 8.7 million (11.7 percent) in 2006 to 8.1 million (11.0 percent) in 2007.
* Income inequality decreased between 2006 and 2007, as measured by shares of aggregate household income by quintiles and the Gini index. The share of aggregate income received by households in the top fifth of the income distribution declined, while the shares for the third and fourth quintiles increased. Meanwhile, the Gini index declined from 0.470 to 0.463, moving closer to 0, which represents perfect income equality (1 represents perfect inequality).
* In 2007, the family poverty rate and the number of families in poverty were 9.8 percent and 7.6 million, respectively, both statistically unchanged from 2006. Furthermore, the poverty rate and the number in poverty showed no statistical change between 2006 and 2007 for the different types of families. Married-couple families had a poverty rate of 4.9 percent (2.8 million), compared with 28.3 percent (4.1 million) for female-householder, no-husband-present families and 13.6 percent (696,000) for those with a male householder and no wife present.
We will be informed that these numbers don't count, because they don't reflect the recent economic "downturn." This is typically deceptive, because the statistics include a period (last year) when Democrats began hammering away at the economy, insisting that we were in a recession--although we still aren't in one.
* Real median household income in the United States climbed 1.3 percent between 2006 and 2007, reaching $50,233.
* The number of people without health insurance coverage declined from 47 million (15.8 percent) in 2006 to 45.7 million (15.3 percent) in 2007. The number of uninsured children declined from 8.7 million (11.7 percent) in 2006 to 8.1 million (11.0 percent) in 2007.
* Income inequality decreased between 2006 and 2007, as measured by shares of aggregate household income by quintiles and the Gini index. The share of aggregate income received by households in the top fifth of the income distribution declined, while the shares for the third and fourth quintiles increased. Meanwhile, the Gini index declined from 0.470 to 0.463, moving closer to 0, which represents perfect income equality (1 represents perfect inequality).
* In 2007, the family poverty rate and the number of families in poverty were 9.8 percent and 7.6 million, respectively, both statistically unchanged from 2006. Furthermore, the poverty rate and the number in poverty showed no statistical change between 2006 and 2007 for the different types of families. Married-couple families had a poverty rate of 4.9 percent (2.8 million), compared with 28.3 percent (4.1 million) for female-householder, no-husband-present families and 13.6 percent (696,000) for those with a male householder and no wife present.
We will be informed that these numbers don't count, because they don't reflect the recent economic "downturn." This is typically deceptive, because the statistics include a period (last year) when Democrats began hammering away at the economy, insisting that we were in a recession--although we still aren't in one.
Voters should be troubled by Obama's abortion stance
By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune
Can we just listen to ourselves? We're debating whether some babies born alive have a right to medical attention.
How have we come to this? Can't we all agree that everyone whose heart beats, brain functions and lungs respire at birth should have a chance to live? If we're a compassionate, rational and just society, we would say, "Of course, every infant has a right to lifesaving medical attention. Even if it's not wanted."
But an unthinkable debate is raging as a part of the presidential campaign, centering on how Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama voted while he was an Illinois state senator on legislation designed to protect the lives and health of all newborns. The debate over Obama's voting record has grown so arcane that we've lost sight of why this question ever came up: Some infants that survive abortion are denied medical assistance. They are left to die.
Jill Stanek, a former nurse at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, described in 2001 during congressional testimony how it happens: In a "live-birth abortion," doctors "do not attempt to kill the baby in the uterus. The goal is simply to prematurely deliver a baby who dies during the birth process or soon afterward." Medication stimulates the cervix to open, allowing the baby to emerge, sometimes alive. "It is not uncommon for a live aborted baby to linger for an hour or two or even longer. At Christ Hospital, one . . . lived for almost an entire eight-hour shift." Some actually are born healthy because they are aborted to preserve the "health" of the mother, or because the pregnancy was due to rape or incest. At best, they are left in a "comfort room," complete with a camera (for pictures of the aborted baby) "baptismal supplies, gowns, and certificates, footprinting equipment and baby bracelets for mementos and a rocking chair," where they are rocked to death. "Before the comfort room was established," Stanek said, "babies were taken to the soiled utility room to die."
Yes, there ought to be a law against this, and Congress passed one unanimously. It declares that a person is defined as "every infant member of the species homo sapiens who is born alive at any stage of development." Born alive means any human being that after "expulsion or extraction" from the mother "breathes or has a beating heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord, or definite movement of voluntary muscles, regardless of whether the umbilical cord has been cut, and regardless of whether the expulsion or extraction occurs as a result of natural or induced labor, Caesarean section, or induced abortion."
Pretty simple, right?
Well, not really. Some people fear that this fundamental protection, ensuring to all the first of the rights of "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness," is in reality a sneak attack on a woman's right to choose an abortion. To prevent this "Trojan horse," they insisted, and got, in the federal law a guarantee against construing the law to "affirm, deny or contract any legal status or legal right applicable to any member of the species homo sapiens at any point prior to being 'born alive'. . ." This mumbo jumbo is supposed to mean that abortions can't be restricted.
To mollify pro-choice concerns, including Obama's, this was inserted in several versions of the Illinois legislation. But it didn't matter, because the legislation died anyway, with Obama's help. Whether or not he refused to vote for a version that contained the right-to-an-abortion provision isn't what's important here. What is important is that Obama put the supposed and vague threat to an abortion right ahead of a real and concrete threat to the most innocent of human lives.
Obama's response to all this is to sidestep any discussion about when human personhood begins, the key question in the abortion debate. Some say it begins at the moment of conception; others say it begins at birth. (Still others look for a middle ground, suggesting it begins when brain activity starts.) But by arguing against the born-alive legislation because it might in some distant and ambiguous way obstruct abortion, Obama implies that the right to an abortion trumps an infant's right to life, even after he is born.
Such logic is breathtaking. It says that even after birth, a mother's right to rid herself of the baby supersedes any right that a child, now independent of the mother's body and domain, has a right to live. Where America stands on this issue truly is a measure of its sense of justice and compassion. On this score, Obama fails.
Chicago Tribune
Can we just listen to ourselves? We're debating whether some babies born alive have a right to medical attention.
How have we come to this? Can't we all agree that everyone whose heart beats, brain functions and lungs respire at birth should have a chance to live? If we're a compassionate, rational and just society, we would say, "Of course, every infant has a right to lifesaving medical attention. Even if it's not wanted."
But an unthinkable debate is raging as a part of the presidential campaign, centering on how Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama voted while he was an Illinois state senator on legislation designed to protect the lives and health of all newborns. The debate over Obama's voting record has grown so arcane that we've lost sight of why this question ever came up: Some infants that survive abortion are denied medical assistance. They are left to die.
Jill Stanek, a former nurse at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, described in 2001 during congressional testimony how it happens: In a "live-birth abortion," doctors "do not attempt to kill the baby in the uterus. The goal is simply to prematurely deliver a baby who dies during the birth process or soon afterward." Medication stimulates the cervix to open, allowing the baby to emerge, sometimes alive. "It is not uncommon for a live aborted baby to linger for an hour or two or even longer. At Christ Hospital, one . . . lived for almost an entire eight-hour shift." Some actually are born healthy because they are aborted to preserve the "health" of the mother, or because the pregnancy was due to rape or incest. At best, they are left in a "comfort room," complete with a camera (for pictures of the aborted baby) "baptismal supplies, gowns, and certificates, footprinting equipment and baby bracelets for mementos and a rocking chair," where they are rocked to death. "Before the comfort room was established," Stanek said, "babies were taken to the soiled utility room to die."
Yes, there ought to be a law against this, and Congress passed one unanimously. It declares that a person is defined as "every infant member of the species homo sapiens who is born alive at any stage of development." Born alive means any human being that after "expulsion or extraction" from the mother "breathes or has a beating heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord, or definite movement of voluntary muscles, regardless of whether the umbilical cord has been cut, and regardless of whether the expulsion or extraction occurs as a result of natural or induced labor, Caesarean section, or induced abortion."
Pretty simple, right?
Well, not really. Some people fear that this fundamental protection, ensuring to all the first of the rights of "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness," is in reality a sneak attack on a woman's right to choose an abortion. To prevent this "Trojan horse," they insisted, and got, in the federal law a guarantee against construing the law to "affirm, deny or contract any legal status or legal right applicable to any member of the species homo sapiens at any point prior to being 'born alive'. . ." This mumbo jumbo is supposed to mean that abortions can't be restricted.
To mollify pro-choice concerns, including Obama's, this was inserted in several versions of the Illinois legislation. But it didn't matter, because the legislation died anyway, with Obama's help. Whether or not he refused to vote for a version that contained the right-to-an-abortion provision isn't what's important here. What is important is that Obama put the supposed and vague threat to an abortion right ahead of a real and concrete threat to the most innocent of human lives.
Obama's response to all this is to sidestep any discussion about when human personhood begins, the key question in the abortion debate. Some say it begins at the moment of conception; others say it begins at birth. (Still others look for a middle ground, suggesting it begins when brain activity starts.) But by arguing against the born-alive legislation because it might in some distant and ambiguous way obstruct abortion, Obama implies that the right to an abortion trumps an infant's right to life, even after he is born.
Such logic is breathtaking. It says that even after birth, a mother's right to rid herself of the baby supersedes any right that a child, now independent of the mother's body and domain, has a right to live. Where America stands on this issue truly is a measure of its sense of justice and compassion. On this score, Obama fails.
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