Friday, October 17, 2008

Obama Paper Dolls

Well we knew Google had a liberal bias. Here's further evidence.

I searched for "dover books". The first resultant link was to www.doverpublications.com: no surprise, just what I wanted. I clicked the Google link that says

More results from doverpublications.com ».

At the bottom of the first page I find:

Obama Paper Dolls

pad, Dover Home, pad, Store Directory, pad, Customer Service, pad ... Here's a sample of other books in this Dover category pad ...
store.doverpublications.com/0486469786.html - 27k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

Interesting: what a curiosity! Is Dover campaigning for Obama? I click through and see Dover also has McCain paper dolls.

So it's not that Dover is promoting Obama by printing paper dolls of the Democratic Presidential candidate, but that Google is promoting Obama by selectively linking to the Obama paper dolls over the McCain doll (and "above the fold" so to speak).

Of course, the comeback is "they had to link to one or the other!" My response: no they didn't. Why link to either?1

Besides it turns out that Dover has a page that lists both products.

Google's personnel are known to be liberal. So what I wonder is: Is this bias the manual result of the human agents involved in selecting which links to present, or is it an automatic result encoded in the software? How systematic is the bias?


Obama and Abortion

If you're pro-life to any extent and supporting Obama, you might want to think again, as Professor Robert P. George of Princeton explains in this excellent article (h/t Touchstone):

Obama's Abortion Extremism

Here's a good paragraph (and just the tip of the iceberg):

But this barely scratches the surface of Obama's extremism. He has promised that "the first thing I'd do as President is sign the Freedom of Choice Act" (known as FOCA). This proposed legislation would create a federally guaranteed "fundamental right" to abortion through all nine months of pregnancy, including, as Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia has noted in a statement condemning the proposed Act, "a right to abort a fully developed child in the final weeks for undefined 'health' reasons." In essence, FOCA would abolish virtually every existing state and federal limitation on abortion, including parental consent and notification laws for minors, state and federal funding restrictions on abortion, and conscience protections for pro-life citizens working in the health-care industry-protections against being forced to participate in the practice of abortion or else lose their jobs. The pro-abortion National Organization for Women has proclaimed with approval that FOCA would "sweep away hundreds of anti-abortion laws [and] policies."

(And there's MUCH more in the article.) Not that I particularly like McCain, but Obama is simply beyond the pale. Forget the spiel about his associating with terrorists. A friend of mine has a bumper sticker that says

Terrorist have killed 3,000 Americans since 1990.
Abortionists have killed 4,000 Americans since yesterday.2

The most ironic part is that over a third of those abortions are African-American babies. Those number of abortions can only increase (and be funded by your federal tax dollars) if Barak Obama is elected to the White House; he would be backed by the likes of Nancy Pelosi as majority leader in Congress. Here's what Wikipedia says about her abortion stance:

Pelosi supports the legality of abortion. She voted against the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 and earlier attempts at similar bans. She voted in favor of the 1998 Abortion Funding Amendment, which allowed the use of district funds to promote abortion-related activities.

She has also voted in favor of using federal funds to perform abortions in overseas military facilities, against parental notification when a minor is transported across state lines for an abortion, and in favor of providing funding for organizations working overseas that promote or perform abortions and abortion-related activities.

And as Dr. George makes clear, Obama is even more extreme on this issue!

Paper dolls will never replace those aborted children.


Note

1. One might also ask where the dolls for the minor-party candidates are. But then it's hard to blame Dover for following demand.

2. The bumper sticker points out the stupidity of prioritizing the fight against terrorism over the fight against abortion. Unfortunately, this is the stupidity (or the major example of stupidity) that Republican Party has come to indulge under the Presidency of George W. Bush (or maybe the Vice Presidency of Dick Cheney?). That McCain is pointing to Obama's Ayers ("terrorist") association instead of his abortion extremism (which goes against the 90% of Americans who think abortion should be restricted in some way) only shows the extent to which McCain is brainwashed by the military-industrial culture of death and blind to the real interest of his country. I'll vote for McCain, but only because I live in a "battleground state" that I don't want Obama to win.

4 comments:

Lawrence Gage said...

The social justice crowd is making a lot of noise that Obama is more pro-life because he supports social programs that reduce the need for abortions and thus reduce the number of abortions. But this claim is belied by Obama's actions, as described in this paragraph from Dr. George's article:

But it gets even worse. Senator Obama, despite the urging of pro-life members of his own party, has not endorsed or offered support for the Pregnant Women Support Act, the signature bill of Democrats for Life, meant to reduce abortions by providing assistance for women facing crisis pregnancies. In fact, Obama has opposed key provisions of the Act, including providing coverage of unborn children in the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP), and informed consent for women about the effects of abortion and the gestational age of their child. This legislation would not make a single abortion illegal. It simply seeks to make it easier for pregnant women to make the choice not to abort their babies. Here is a concrete test of whether Obama is "pro-choice" rather than pro-abortion. He flunked. Even Senator Edward Kennedy voted to include coverage of unborn children in S-CHIP. But Barack Obama stood resolutely with the most stalwart abortion advocates in opposing it.

LG

Lawrence Gage said...

In case there are any Catholics claiming that the issue is still undecided, Archbishop Chaput speaks powerfully on abortion and Obama here.

LG

Anonymous said...

This is a tough election. I don't think there are any "if only"s in God's economy, since he puts rulers in their places, but it's tempting to ask for another choice at this point.

Lawrence Gage said...

You said it, Jennifer!

I think the problem is systemic. The country is so large and out of control that honest men don't want to go through the enormous trouble of doing what it takes to win the White House. There's too much power in the Presidency to be attractive to any but the bad, the venal, the vain, or the power-hungry.

We weren't meant to have such a distant, all-powerful government--that was why we had a Revolution (actually a secession) in 1776.

LG