Planned Parenthood's tiresome demands for welfare

Printed in the Herald-Times, May 17, 2013. (Comments)

To the Editor:

When Planned Parenthood applied for another handout from the city's Jack Hopkins social services fund last year, the city council rejected the request and instead disbursed the limited funds available to other organizations. It was a wise and fiscally prudent decision that should be repeated this year.

In the report currently available on Planned Parenthood of Indiana's website, they report $14,336,668 in revenue and $13,984,785 in expenses - a profit of $351,883. Do they really need another $5,000 handout from Bloomington's city government? Clearly, the answer is no.

This annual game by PP is tiresome and disrespectful. Every year, they go to our representatives with their hands out, depriving other social service agencies that actually do need financial help with their cynical effort to get a political endorsement from the city council.

In just four years between 2008 and 2011, there were 3,213 abortions in Monroe County - an average of over 800 per year according to the Indiana Department of Health. That is over three thousand precious lives exterminated - a tragic number that illustrates why not one dime of taxpayer dollars should go to the Planned Parenthood abortion "clinic," whether or not the money goes to abortion "services."

Obama’s obvious hypocrisy on AP phone records

Connect the dots...

Obama could have simply issued an executive order instructing federal law enforcement not to look into journalists’ phone records without following the procedures he claims to support... there is nothing preventing the Obama administration from voluntarily restraining itself between now and 2017.

Read more at Hoosier Access.

Thoughts on the new Google Plus comment system

I have experimented with other platforms, but I have ultimately decided that Google's Blogger is the blog platform that best meets what I want to do with my blog. If I had the whole thing to do over again from back in 2003, I would have stuck with Blogger the entire time instead of jumping around.

Blogger's comment system has needed an upgrade for some time now. You can use third party commenting systems such as Disqus and IntenseDebate with Blogger, but Blogger's commenting system itself has been stuck in the past for a while now. Google has finally stepped up with the new Google Plus commenting system. As cool as it is, though, I cannot help but think of this as a huge missed opportunity.

When Google Plus launched two years ago, there was some huge buzz surrounding it. I signed up right away but I didn't do anything with it for several months. Google eventually allowed you to merge your BlogSpot profile with your Google Plus profile, and you were given the option of posting to G+ when you posted something to your blog... but posts would not be shared on your G+ profile automatically. Furthermore, Google never opened its API to allow things like Hootsuite, Twitterfeed or NetworkedBlogs to post automatically to a G+ profile.

Google Plus has a large number of users, but it has not come anywhere close to challenging Facebook's supremacy in social networking. Part of the reason for this is the bungled rollout for the service. Blogger already had a large user base, so G+ should have had full compatibility with Blogger the day it launched when the buzz was the highest. Had this been done then, that would have had a much bigger impact than it has to this point.

It does not help that the "circles" system on Google Plus is not at all intuitive like "friends" on Facebook or "followers" on Twitter. "Circles" does not pass the "grandmother" test - if your grandmother cannot figure it out in less than a couple minutes, you need to simplify it. I consider myself to be a tech-savvy person, and it took me a while to wrap my head around the "circles" concept on Google Plus. I still don't think I can explain it in ten words or less.

As to the comment system itself: It is really cool but it definitely needs improvement - especially if Google wants the comment system to challenge other third-party comment systems for platforms like WordPress. (There is a Google Plus plugin for WordPress.)You must have a Google account to comment using the Google Plus comment system, while Disqus and IntenseDebate allow you to log in using an existing account with another service. There is no way to comment without logging in, which is allowed by Disqus and IntenseDebate and even Blogger's old comment system. This should be fixed right away before people lose interest.

The integration of comments with Google Plus is really cool though, and shows some real potential. If I share a post on my Google Plus profile, it shows up as a comment on the blog, and any comments to my post on Google Plus also show up on the blog. Furthermore, if someone else shares the post on Google Plus, it also shows up as a comment on my blog, as to the comments to that post on Google Plus. This accomplishes two things: It allows you to see comments from multiple sources in one place and can be used to increase traffic to the blog.

It actually gets better. The cross-platform comments between Blogger and Google Plus is retroactive! So if you shared a post from your BlogSpot blog on Google Plus in December 2011, all of the comments on that post now show up as comments on the blog. Now that is really cool and a very nice feature.

Like I said before, this commenting system should have been implemented two years ago when interest in Google Plus was at its peak. That said, if Google makes it possible to comment without logging into Google, and more heavily promotes it as a commenting system, this could help overcome the bumbling manner in which Google Plus was launched - but the opportunity to maximize the new social network's reach has been lost forever.

Final Fantasy V for iOS - First Impressions

Though I do not have nearly as much time to play video games as I did a year and a half ago, I have been a big fan of Square-Enix role-playing games for a while now. Final Fantasy VI (released for the Super NES as Final Fantasy III) is my favorite game of all time and Chrono Trigger is a masterpiece. I had played the Game Boy Advance version of Final Fantasy V but never got all that far, so I purchased the game for the iPod Touch.

Right off the bat: The biggest complaint about this adaptation of FFV is that the controls are "broken." I agree. It does not ruin the game, but it can be very annoying. This, like the 8-bit and 16-bit versions that came before and after, is meant to be played with a four-direction control pad, not in eight directions. Making it eight-direction makes it too easy to get hung up on doors and environmental hazards that were easy to avoid on consoles are more difficult to avoid on the touch screen - especially without the tactile sensation of the control pad on your thumb.

Like I said, this does not ruin the game. This is not a fast-reaction game where precise control is required, like a platformer would be. Your challenge here is strategy and figuring our where to go and what to do, as well as making sure your party is sufficiently leveled up and equipped for the task ahead. However, this would definitely be a better game if you moved in four directions. Perhaps Square-Enix can release an update allowing this option, but this mistake definitely needs to be avoided if Final Fantasy VI is to be released for mobile devices.

Unlike the game immediately preceding and following this one, there are very few characters - only five of them. Final Fantasy IV had 11 characters and Final Fantasy VI had 14. To make up for this, there are a number of "jobs" that you can master. You can even carry skills over from job to job - you can have a Knight who hurls black magic spells or a Monk who can use the "Jump" command. The possibilities are not infinite, but it will feel that way.

Twenty years ago, a game like this would have sold for $60 for the Super Nintendo or Sega Genesis - and when you factor inflation it is even more. So while $16 may seem like a lot in the App Store, it actually is not. If you are a fan of role-playing games, I would recommend downloading this one. It is well worth it.

Activism for a cause or activism for fun?

Are homeless advocates in Bloomington serious about solving the problem of homelessness, or are they satisfied with making themselves feel morally superior? What is the endgame of this activism?

Last week, several activists were arrested when they camped out in a parking garage. They had signs with slogans such as "Sleeping is a human right," mirroring a similar protest the previous week where they laid sleeping bags in the hallway and camped out during a City Council meeting. A couple days before that, the city ordered Occupy Bloomington to remove a tent they had erected for the homeless after complaints from neighbors about trespassing, vandalism and "verbal confrontations." After the parking garage protest, a friend posted on Facebook on Tuesday morning that the garage "had vomit and fecal matter in it this morning."

I understand the concern that homeless activists have, and the frustration they have with city government. But from the way they are behaving - making a spectacle of themselves in city hall, a downtown march after their tent was removed and getting arrested for squatting on city property - it appears they are much more interested in being activists for the sake of being activists than they are in actually working to reduce the problem of homelessness in Bloomington. They have managed to make themselves feel morally superior to city officials, but what concrete steps are they willing to take?

One of the main concerns appears to be the lack of a low-barrier shelter - meaning a shelter that does not turn people away because they are under the influence of alcohol or drugs. While people addicted to drugs or alcohol also have physical needs, it is those very addictions that are major contributors to homelessness in the first place. The problem is much more complicated than simply providing a temporary structure. The most loving and compassionate option is to train the homeless to be self sufficient.

There are often beds available in traditional shelters.

Furthermore, with as many people participating in the marches and other forms of protest, they should be able to pool their money to at least begin the process of fundraising to establish the kind of shelter they are advocating. But if I may be cynical, that work is a thankless behind-the-scenes task that does not generate publicity or allow activists to claim moral superiority in the streets or on the Internet. If activists are truly interested in helping the homeless, some of the effort that now goes to activism should be instead funneled into concrete solutions.

This man is my hero

Children are a blessing...

Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward. -- Psalm 127:3

One of the biggest challenges the pro-life movement has as it attempts to reduce (and eventually criminalize) abortion is the popular view that children are not a blessing from the Lord (as God tells us in His Word) but that they are a burden, a hindrance and maybe even a curse. Barack Obama famously said a few years ago that if his daughters "make a mistake, I don't want them punished with a baby." A new life is not a precious thing, but a punishment.

There are certainly other problems we have to deal with - one them being that a lot of people simply do not know what abortion really is - but even that is less of an issue than the basic orientation of our culture against children. We see this in our pop culture and our Internet memes, and we see it in our political debates. We see it from feminists who argue that unless women have the right to kill their children they cannot have the same rights as men.

Children do bring challenges. Waking up at 3:00 am to change and feed a baby can play havoc with your body and sleep schedule - something I became very familiar with 15 months ago. The child needs to be fed, cared for, changed and dressed, and taken to the doctor. No one is saying it is all hugs and laughs. Furthermore, undisciplined children can indeed be a burden - though well-trained children are a joy to be around.

But the basic problem is that we are trying to stop the termination of an innocent life when all of American culture is telling us that babies are bad. We hear a never ending drumbeat of claims that babies are bad for our independence and our quality of life, they are bad for the environment and they are bad for the economy. As long as we're fighting a culture oriented toward hedonism, we are not getting to the root of our problem.

The solution, as usual, is with the church - because the church is the problem. The church has said that the God we supposedly worship is a liar and our post-Christian culture is telling us the truth. We need to reject the teachings of these false prophets and demand our shepherds be faithful to God and His Word.

Most adorable baby ever:

The simple dog's adventure

The story of the simple dog's adventure at Hyperbole and a Half had me laughing so hard it literally brought me to tears when I first saw it a couple years ago. The simple dog reminds me very much of Nano, who is also not very bright. Nano also has sudden unexplained phobias of random things.

It's open line Friday!

It's open line Friday! Any topic is fair game for the comments in this post. If you have any questions for me, or any topic you wish to discuss, have at it.

The idea is shamelessly stolen from Rush Limbaugh.

Trusting in God

Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths. -- Proverbs 3:5-6

Fifteen years ago today, I graduated from Indiana University. This coming August, it will be twenty years since I moved to Bloomington to begin my college career. (I took an extra semester to graduate, and lost an entire semester when I had to drop out to deal with having cancer.) My life today is not what I had imagined it would be in 1993 or 1998. Instead, it is far better than I expected. God's plan for my life was far better than mine.

Four years ago, when I was contemplating the ten year anniversary of moving back to Bloomington as a "townie" instead of as a student, I was floored when I saw how God's plan for my life had unfolded. It amazed me how one thing had led directly to another to put me in a wonderful position. Even a particularly disappointing hardship I experienced was necessary for God to open a different door in order to put me in a better place.

The path that I have traveled is not something I could have possibly planned myself. The only explanation is that my Father was guiding my life. Through the last fifteen years (and indeed the last twenty years) I have seen how God's loving discipline in my life has been necessary for me in so many ways. I look back at God shattering my pride and arrogance, especially when I was doing something I swore I would never do again - because I was "too good" for that. I could almost feel Jesus standing at my side saying "You're not too good for that after all, are you?"

Trust God. When things happen that you do not think you can handle, and when life takes a turn that you do not expect and did not plan, trust Him. Our Father loves us and His sovereign will is perfect.

I cannot (and will not) say that everything will work out for the best from a human standpoint. We are not better than our Master, who was brutally tortured to death by the Roman authorities after being handed over by His own people. We are not better than the Apostles, who suffered brutal deaths for their faith in Jesus Christ. We are not better than the countless Christians who have suffered for their faith over the last two thousand years.

We may lose our children, our health, or our homes, and we may suffer in many other ways. If there is one thing I have learned in my life, it is this - the blessings I have in my life (including the incredible blessing of being a father) are not things that I have earned and are certainly not things I deserve. Even my own earthly "accomplishments" are a gift from God because He is the one who gave me the talent to do those things. Whether we are comfortable or suffering, God loves us, God is faithful, and we should always trust Him.

This is why we can't have nice things

ClashDaily.com sent out their "Liberal Chick" parody to get students to sign a petition to ban pressure cookers. In the state of Florida, a 16-year-old girl is facing felony charges for an unauthorized science experiment on school grounds that caused a reaction that was not much more severe than mixing vinegar and baking soda.

This is literally insane. We live in a nation of paranoid, hysterical wimps.

Regarding the pressure cookers, a friend of mine mentioned recently that the improper use of a tool does not invalidate it's proper use. I thought at first he was overreacting with the example he used, that no one would be that stupid. It turns out that many people - including university students who are supposed to be the future leaders of America - actually are that stupid. There is no reason to ban product (pressure cookers) that presents no inherent danger because some people have criminally misused the product. But given the hysteria surrounding over-the-counter cold remedies, I never should have doubted him.

So do I really need to comment further on this nonsense? How far are we going to go to eliminate common household items that could be used criminally? Are we going to have to invent heat-resistant Nerf skillets so that we can ban the use of metal skillets? After all, a heavy metal skillet can cause quite a bit of damage - and may even be lethal - if you bash someone over the head with it.

As to the other case, if this were 25 years ago Kiera Wilmot would have been dressed down by the principal and (hopefully) her parents for making a foolish decision, and may have been suspended from school. Perhaps she might have even faced a citation from the civil magistrate to drive the point home. The punishment would have been reasonable and proportional to the offense. In today's insane world, she is charged with a felony and could have this mistake haunt her for the rest of her life, including future employment opportunities.

If I was the governor of Florida, I would announce that if she is convicted I will immediately pardon her. I would also do whatever I could to end the employment of the law enforcement and school officials responsible for this nonsense and cut off every penny of state funding to the school and law enforcement agencies - including salaries for anyone paid by the state. Cutting off the money is the most effective way to terrorize government officials into not abusing their authority.

The best solution, though, is for everyone to grow up and not react hysterically to every little thing.

No corporate welfare for the merchants of death

The following is an open letter to the Bloomington City Council.

Councilors,

I am writing you to once again express my opposition to Planned Parenthood's request for funding through the city's John Hopkins social services funding program. I would like to draw your attention to two statements made by Planned Parenthood representatives:

When Planned Parenthood lobbyist Alisa LaPolt Snow was asked what should happen to a baby that survives an abortion and is born alive, she said "We believe that any decision that’s made should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician."

This is shocking extremism. While I oppose abortion, there are well-intentioned people who legitimately believe the fetus is not a "person" and does not have the rights that go along with "personhood." But Planned Parenthood's ideology is so extreme that they actually believe it should be legal to kill a newborn baby. This is no different from the practices in the house of horrors operated by notorious butcher Kermit Gosnell. Should city government really be funding an organization that embraces such extremist ideology, that is so radically out of the mainstream even in famously liberal Bloomington?

CNN.com reports that Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards said "Age barriers to emergency contraception are not supported by science, and they should be eliminated." This is also shocking extremism. Richards (and by extension Planned Parenthood) is openly lobbying for the government to take away parental authority and violate the God-given right and responsibility of parents to protect their daughters from sexual predators. This is the ultimate "nanny state" move by government, and Planned Parenthood's support of it demonstrates their lack of trust in and respect for American families.

Again, is an organization with such extremist views something that city taxpayers should be supporting?

My other objections should be familiar to you. In my letter to you last year, I pointed out that Planned Parenthood of Indiana reported taking in over $900,000 more than they spent in what was then their most recent fiscal report. In the report currently available on PPIN's website, they report $14,336,668 in revenue and $13,984,785 in expenses - a profit of $351,883. Do they really need another $5,000 handout from city government, given the amount of money they have. I do not need to remind you that many local charities who are seeking funds from you do not have the backing of a highly profitable state and national organization.

The only reason they are seeking a grant is to get a political endorsement from city government. This is shameful. They are showing a grave disrespect to the taxpayers of Bloomington and the other social service organizations by seeking funding they do not need and could be much more helpful were it given to a worthy organization that actually needs it.

A year ago, Planned Parenthood's request for funding was not approved by the city council. I thank you and praise you for making this wise and fiscally prudent decision. I respectfully ask you to make the same decision in 2013 and reject PP's request for funding.

Scott Tibbs
Resident of City Council District I.

Authoritarian Leftists and censorship of abortion opponents

And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. -- John 3:19-20

It is interesting how often Leftists try to silence dissent, demonstrating their authoritarian streak and the lack of confidence they have in the validity of their own positions. In the comments for my letter to the editor (which had nothing to do with abortion) last month, the following three comments were posted:

The First Amendment is a one-way promise from the Federal Government to the People and the Press. It imposes no requirement on the Press. It should not be misinterpreted by any Editor as requiring an equal voice to every jackass in the community. Who is the HT responsible to? Its readership? The question before the Editor is this: is it reasonable for the HT to continue to provide a podium for Tibbs to continue to attack the women’s clinic in our community? When is enough, enough?

I think it should be HT policy, forthwith, that in light of the alleged violent attack on the women's clinic in our community, the HT and the HTO will no longer facilitate any type of attack, dialog, or whatever, on Planned Parenthood, or settled law, regarding the right of women to seek legally protected medical services. Enough is enough.

I think what the HT has to decide is whether or not they feel they are being used by this individual and his "church" to incite violence against women and homosexuals, or if it is merely a speech issue. Given the amount of times this individual spews his hatred on these pages and links back to his own extremist, hate filled blog, I fear that the HT is just being used as a vehicle to incite the kind of violence we saw perpetrated against PP.

Again, it is interesting to note that my letter to the editor had nothing to do with abortion. I used the 20th anniversary of the massacre of the Branch Davidian cultists in Waco to warn against the use of force by government - not only with the use of military force (including tanks) against the Branch Davidians but also paramilitary tactics by local law enforcement. The overuse and abuse of SWAT teams has terrorized many and resulted in unnecessary deaths for both law enforcement and (much more often) innocent civilians - including children.

So, in the comments for a letter that had nothing to do with abortion or Planned Parenthood, why are local Leftists publicly lobbying the Herald-Times to ban me from commenting on HeraldTimesOnline.com and stop publishing my letters to the editor in the print edition?

What is evident here is, once again, the totalitarian wing of the Left cannot abide any dissent. (Though to be fair, other Leftists disagreed with the above calls for censorship.) They clearly do not have confidence in the validity of their own arguments, or they would not be openly advocating for censorship of arguments they dislike. It is typical behavior of the authoritarian Left, as we have seen with illegal "speech codes" on college campuses for decades now. Speech the authoritarian Left dislikes must not only be countered, it must be silenced.

The whining about "violence" against Planned Parenthood (or abortion providers generally) is a fraudulent smokescreen. No one at my church is inciting violence against anyone, and I have been very clear for many years that violence in the name of stopping abortion is not acceptable. If the authoritarian Left was serious about rhetoric "inciting" violence, they would silence their own advocacy of abortion rights and criticism of abortion opponents. After all, the violence against actual people at Planned Parenthood has been perpetrated by pro-abortion terrorists.

The reality is actually very simple. Advocates of "abortion rights" know they are advocating for the "right" to commit a terrible evil. Their consciences are tormented by this, so they want to silence any speech that exposes this evil.

Google Plus comments

Google Plus comments have been enabled for the blog. Now when I share a post on Google Plus, any comments under that post will automatically appear as comments on the blog post that was shared. You will need a Google account to post, though I am not sure if you need to have a Google Plus profile or not. I experimented last night with a brand new "dummy" account that did not have a Google Plus profile, and it created a Google Plus profile automatically when I tried to post a comment.

As always, please follow the comment guidelines.