History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Why Fiorina Outrages The Left

31 Comments

She has “exposed another socialist bone heap.” They don’t take well to having their mass murder exposed.

And the comparison with Solzhenitsyn is quite apt.

[Wednesday-morning update]

Remember that time the Left said that Fiorina lied about the video? I know you’ll find this shocking, but they lied.

[Bumped]

[Update mid-afternoon]

Thoughts on Planned Parenthood: Our summer of Omelas:

In 1973, award-winning science fiction author Ursula Le Guin published a very short story-essay titled “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.” It described a dreamlike summer festival in Omelas, a beautiful city that embodies everyone’s utopia, a magical place where everyone was joyful, a place where sorrow never touched the citizens or guests. But beneath that city lay a secret: all its joy and pleasure depended on the suffering and misery of a single lonely, abused child living in a filthy basement. If that child were saved, all of Omelas would fall, its beauty and perfection lost.

The citizens of Omelas, when they reached a certain age, were taken below to view the child so that they might understand their civilization. Most rationalized the suffering, as was encouraged: the child was mentally defective anyway, it could never be happy now if taken out, it was incapable of appreciating the beauty of the world like others. Only a few could not bear the truth, but instead of removing the child and Omelas be damned, they walked away, leaving for parts unknown.

America has had a summer of Omelas.

[Update a few minutes later[

Democrats: The party of abortion, not the party of women.

That link via Elizabeth Price Foley, who adds:

Moreover, never mind that Republicans are spearheading the effort to make birth control pills more widely available by classifying them as over-the-counter–something the Democrats and Planned Parenthood vehemently oppose. And never mind that Republicans wish to expand access to all kinds of women’s medical care–not just abortion and contraception–by expanding funding for community health centers. None of that fits with the Democrats’ “war on women” label, so it can’t be too widely discussed.

If the Republicans in Congress were smart (a big if, I know), they would start talking about the Democrats’ “war on birth control” and “war on women’s health.”

Don’t hold your breath. They’re stupid.

31 thoughts on “Why Fiorina Outrages The Left”

  1. To her credit, she has refused to back down even amid a withering assault on her credibility from the left.

    She’s to be admired for sticking to a lie?

      1. You, Rand, along with many other commenters on your fine Web site are probably troubled that someone “pushes back” at you with a remark like “admired for sticking to a lie.”

        You ever notice that you can post on many other topics, even controversial topics with nary a peep of dissent whereas some topics prove to be triggers of sharply worded retorts that in turn generate long threads that turn into food fights?

        I am thinking in terms of the late Herman Kahn and some of the far-out nuclear strategies he and other came up with. The Dense Pack basing mode for missile silos was ridiculed on late-night TV, but there was some tactical reasoning behind it, that the incoming counter-battery against the Dense Pack would anti-missile itself.

        How about doing some quick statistics on the topics that elicit that most push-back and post those topics in a Dense Pack? Your Dense Pack might “pin down” your critics trying to come up with enough retorts fast enough, wearing them out?

        Just a thought . . .

      2. Fiorina stated, in the context of a discussion of Planned Parenthood and abortion:

        Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking while someone says, ‘We have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.’

        Despite repeated requests she has failed to identify or produce any videotape that shows what she described, all the while insisting “I’ve seen the footage”.

        At this point it seems clear that her recollection is an exaggerated mashup of multiple videotapes, tapes which may have nothing to do with Planned Parenthood or abortion. Rather than owning up to a fallible human memory, she has doubled-down on a falsehood.

        1. There is (undoctored) video of the living fetus on the table. There is a description of it (or a similar one) being kept alive to save its brain. That it doesn’t take place in a single scene is irrelevant, and pure desperation.

          1. There’s no indication that the video you are referring to was filmed at a Planned Parenthood clinic, i.e. that it was one of “these tapes” Fiorina referred to “as regards Planned Parenthood.” There is no indication that it shows the aftermath of an abortion; at least one OB/GYN has stated that it looks more like the premature birth of a 17-week fetus, much too immature to survive outside the womb. Fiorina remembers someone talking about harvesting the brain “while” the fetus lies on the table, but the video you cite has no audio track.

            (or a similar one)

            Or a similar one!?! So maybe no brain was harvested from the fetus in the video? And you don’t think that detracts from the accuracy of Fiorina’s statement?

            That it doesn’t take place in a single scene is irrelevant

            Give me a break. She described one scene, with images and audio linked to those images. You’re giving her the latitude to pull imagery from one place, sound from another, mash them together and describe them as a unified scene. If a Democrat did that you’d cry bloody murder.

            Fiorina has been caught describing, in vivid detail, a scene that she manufactured in her imagination. A scene that might well be based on a procedure — the harvesting of fetal tissue from a late miscarriage — that is visually disturbing but completely unrelated to the public policy question at hand.

            Knowing what we know now, Fiorina’s statement comes down to: I dare you to watch gruesome videotapes of medical procedures that may have nothing to do with Planned Parenthood or even abortion, because you’ll be so grossed out that you’ll support cutting funding to Planned Parenthood. And you think it’s “to her credit” that she sticks to that bit of demagoguery?

        2. It turns out she sort of blended together three different parts of one video:

          A) Footage of a baby who survived an abortion — notably, this baby may not have been at Planned Parenthood*, and we have no reason to think he or she was cut up for his or her organs.

          B) Abortion clinic officials saying things that could suggest they may deliver live babies, rather than abort them, in order to preserve the value of the body parts.

          C) The first-hand account of former biotech worker Holly O’Donnell, who described an aborted baby boy whose heart was still beating and who was cut up for his brain.

          http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/article/2572970

          Of course, conflating several topics that are true is completely different than calling her a liar, which you did.

          1. Maybe it’s too harsh to call her first statement a lie; maybe she just misremembered what she’d seen. That would make it a falsehood, but not a deliberate one. Since then, however, she hasn’t tried to clarify that she was conflating different things, she has stood by that original statement — despite abundant evidence that it was false. Here she is on Fox News:

            Wallace: Do you acknowledge what every fact-checker has found, that as horrific as that scene is, it was only described on the video by someone who claimed to have seen it? There is no actual footage of the incident that you just mentioned.

            Fiorina: No, I don’t accept that at all, I’ve seen the footage. And I find it amazing, actually, that all these supposed fact-checkers in the mainstream media claim this doesn’t exist. They’re trying to attack the authenticity of the videotape.

            Not only is she refusing to admit that there’s no tape that matches what she describes, she’s attacking the media for calling her on it!

          3. Fox News wasn’t “defending the indefensible” — they were pressing Fiorina to substantiate her claims. She can’t do that, so instead she attacks the media, and is praised (!) for doing so.

            And “picayune”?!? If Barack Obama answered a question about the Koch brothers by claiming to have watched a disturbing Koch videotape in which you could hear someone describing what was happening, and it turned out that there was no such tape — that he was conflating video from one source, which had nothing to do with the Koch Brothers, with a voice-over from somewhere else, describing a different event — you’d call him a liar and a fabulist. And it wouldn’t be picayune to do so.

    2. Jim, watch the videos for yourself. The “heavily edited” ones your fellow travelers are complaining about are not the only versions available.

      1. Now the Democrats are claiming the videos are CGI. This makes me wonder, since Democrats always do what they accuse others of, what video will be coming out before the election that will use CGI to create political propaganda for the Democrats.

      2. “Jim, watch the videos for yourself. The ‘heavily edited’ ones your fellow travelers are complaining about are not the only versions available.”

        McGehee, you heartless bastard, asking Baghdad Jim to abandon the party-line to cold, cruel facts.

      3. Where would I find a videotape that shows what Fiorina described? Was it shot in a Planned Parenthood clinic? Does it show the aftermath of an abortion?

        1. Step 1: Reach back with both hands, grab your shoulders and pull real hard until you hear a “pop!”

          Step 2: Use Rand’s post to follow the link.

          1. The linked video doesn’t match Fiorina’s description, and it isn’t clear it has anything to do with Planned Parenthood or abortion.

    3. If anybody would recognize “sticking to a lie” it is Baghdad Jim the Obama-fellator. Of course he’s lying about it as usual, trying to push the progressive Narrative.

    4. Jim,

      Will you agree that, whether or not Planned Parenthood has committed such an act, that taking the life of a fetus outside of the mother’s womb is considered murder?

      1. Wrong about what? That video doesn’t match what Fiorina described (for example, it’s silent).

        Fiorina was asked about Planned Parenthood and harvesting fetal tissue from abortions. If this is the video Fiorina was trying to describe, what does it have to do with the question?

  2. It’s the same reason they went after Palin. Fiorina shows that a woman can be a success without clinging to DNC dogma, and if that message sticks, the whores at NOW lose their deal where they trade women votes for preferential policy treatment, and the DNC, having bet on overcoming their deficit with White males by cornering the market on Women and Blacks, suddenly have to go back to the drawing board.

    1. A Carson / Fiorina (or flip it around) ticket would be very entertaining for all the exploding heads it would produce on the left. A Black man and a Woman who both succeeded without following the democrat party dependency plan.

      More so if Bernie or Biden gets the democrat nomination.

  3. I must say it’s hardly surprising. I furthermore predict that at least a few of the True Believers on the Left are going to stop spinning this and tell us all what they really think. They will post on their blogs, and perhaps if we are lucky even say in front of a TV camera, their bulging eyes showing too much white all the way around:

    “It’s MY BODY and it’s MY RIGHT and it’s MY CHOICE and if you take away my LEGAL CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT to convenient infanticide then that’s no better than SLAVERY. YOU WON’T ENSLAVE ME WITH YOUR PARASITE FETUS!”

    The truth has certain virtues. Abortion is regarded as highly desirable from the perspective of Cultural Bolshevism–forcing the proles to pay public lip service to horrific, repugnant evils lest they be made unemployable is held to be a wonderful method of “reeducation” that breaks the “false consciousness” of the “superstitious” lower classes. This idea that human life has value is, after all, a bourgeois affectation that will have no place in the coming perfect culture of perfected Scientific Marxist-Leninism to which the Party Vanguard is leading us (see also, the Gulag Archipelago, the Khmer Rouge’s Security Prison 21, the Laogai “reeducation camps” in China…) and these bourgeois affectations are the “cultural hegemony” that obstructs the proper progress of the Revolution. OLDTHINKERS UNBELLYFEEL INGSOC, you see.

    On the other hand, elections are coming up, and they don’t want to remind the voters too strongly of this sort of “incendiary” topic, so I predict that the mainstream media will attempt to drown it out with more idiotic happy-talk about sports gossip and celebrity gossip, thus dropping it neatly down the Memory Hole.

        1. According to the city council, she didn’t do the same thing. She was a brave women who I guess was cowed by her husband into committing treason, at least in their perverted reasoning.

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