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Osama bin Laden Killed

Posted by R. Patrick McCaffrey on May 1, 2011

News is pouring in over the recent announcement that Osama bin Laden has been killed and the body has been found.  President Obama is expected to address the nation soon.  You can view it here via the Whitehouse’s live feed.

UPDATE:  Wall Street Journal confirms the body is in U.S. posession

Obama:

“The most signficant achievement to date in our effort to eliminate Al-Qaeda.”

“We need to affirm that the United States never has been and never will be at war with Islam.”

“His demise should be welcomed by alll who believe in peace and dignity.”

“Tonight let us think back to the sense of unity that prevailed on 9/11. I know that it at times has frayed, but todays achievement is a testament to the greatness of our country. America can do whatever we set our mind to.”

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The Sun Reports on Planned Parenthood

Posted by R. Patrick McCaffrey on April 28, 2011

Today the Sun reported on a Planned Parenthood speaking here in Ithaca.  The article is available online here.  The speaker, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood (yes, it IS a company), was Joe Sammons.  I quote the Sun here:

Because Planned Parenthood does not use government funding for abortions, the organization’s stance on abortion should not apply to the recent government funding debate, Sammons said.

“I do not have the time to list every service that we use federal funds for, but I can tell you one that we do not: abortion,” Sammons said.

I guess Joe Sammon and the Sun must think Cornellians are stupid.  But we’re not, and we at the Review, along with our fellow Cornellians and Americans, know that money is fungible.  So whatever Joe says about abortion not receiving federal funding is a completely moot point.

The National Review has posted before about Planned Parenthood, and I feel it’s worthwhile, in light of Joe Sammons claim that “this [the funding debate] is about women’s health and giving women the freedom to make decisions about their lives.”  The National Review reported that Planned Parenthood “fought a bill to make reporting of sex abuse mandatory, because Planned Parenthood allegedly feared that the legislation might overload the responsible agency with too many cases of suspected abuse.”  Additionally, PP “challenged a Missouri law that required abortion clinics to meet the same standards as the ambulatory-surgery centers in the state. Its reason? Bringing its clinics into compliance with these medically accepted standards would be prohibitively costly.”

So the next time the Sun reports about a “fight for reproductive justice and access to affordable, nonjudgemental [sic] health care”, they should look a little more closely.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Budget Cuts and the Republican Era of Symbolism

Posted by R. Patrick McCaffrey on April 11, 2011

Struggling to pass a budget for the remainder of this fiscal year, Democrats and Republicans agreed on which budget to sign into law just hours before the midnight deadline.  The GOP was pushing for an additional $22 billion in cuts that did not transpire.

Thirty-nine billion is a lot of money, and it is a good place to start when it comes to reining in the national deficit and looming debt problems.  But when the national debt is on the order of $14 trillion, $39 billion is chump-change.  Here are a few tricks I use when I trying to understand how much money these figures represent.  First, try reading “14 trillion dollars” as “fourteen million millions of dollars.”  It takes a couple seconds for that to sink in.  This past weekend’s budget cuts are barely 0.27% of the nation’s deficit.  If the deficit and inflation held constant (they won’t), it would take 371 years of similar cuts to eliminate the federal debt completely.  So why all the hullabaloo?  The answer seems to be that the cuts, despite what real and direct effects they may cause, are mainly symbolic.  Let me explain.

Turn back the clock to November of last year.  The GOP is feeling pretty good.  They won six new seats in the Senate and sixty-three in the House.  They’re thinking ahead to the 2012 election cycle.  What issues are going to be the heavy-hitters in the next election, and what can we do about them?  If you guessed the national debt, then dear reader, you would be spot on.  Republicans needed to demonstrate their commitment to reducing the national debt.  The GOP, in an effort spearheaded by Paul Ryan, the House Budget Committee Chairman, has proposed a budget with ten-year spending about $6 trillion less in spending than our President’s budget.  That is a plan that’s going to pull this nation out of debt.  So what we see here is GOP’s two-fold approach: The long-term goal actually closing the deficit accomplished via broad federal cuts, and the short-term proof of concept and showcase of willingness via the $39 billion in cuts for this fiscal year. Follow the jump for rest.

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