Rob Ford: "I do not use crack cocaine"

CTV News:

“There are serious accusations from the Toronto Star that I use crack cocaine,” Ford told reporters at city hall on Friday afternoon. “I do not use crack cocaine, nor am I an addict of crack cocaine.”

...

“I cannot comment on a video that I have never seen or does not exist,” he said.

Doesn't mean there isn't something else going on. If his chief of staff is telling to go to rehab, maybe the video is fake, but the substance abuse issue is real. And his staff sees the writing on the wall with this video: don't wait to get help before someone films you doing something worse.
  

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UPDATE:

So I watched the video.

He says "I do not use crack cocaine, nor am I an addict of crack cocaine."

Present tense.

He doesn't deny past use of crack cocaine.

I also noticed he got his hair cut... maybe to make his hair a little different from the video. So that people might think it's not him.

I realize his lawyer told him not to talk, but he's got to handle this politically.

UK: Prostitution is Struggling...

Awwwwww....

I wish I could say it was due to improving morals.

Expert Tells Congress Unborn Babies Can Feel Pain Starting at 8 Weeks

Maureen Condic quoted in LifeNews:

“The neural circuitry responsible for the most primitive response to pain, the spinal reflex, is in place by 8 weeks of development,” she explained. “This is the earliest point at which the fetus experiences pain in any capacity.”

At that point, the scientist confirmed “a fetus responds just as humans at later stages of development respond; by with withdrawing from the painful stimulus.”

...

Rob Ford Scandal: The Person Who Owns the Video is Incommunicado

Alleged Ford crack video seller not responding to calls

I don't know for certain whether this is true or not.

I tend to be skeptical of the video.

The story never made sense to me.

VIDEO: Jesus vs Muhammed by Steven Crowder

Late-term abortion ban would stigmatize abortionists?

How in the world could sticking a needle in the heart of  a late-term fetus ever be stigmatized at all?

But pro-lifers manage to do it. Pro-lifers manage to make pumping a fetus with potassium chloride something that people should be ashamed of.

It would have never occurred to anyone without them pointing it out.

And how could anyone ever conflate feticide with murder? It boggles the mind!

Legalizing Abortion in Nepal Facilitated Sex-Selection Abortion: Study

From a study in the British Medical Journal:

Main outcome measure:


Conditional sex ratios (CSRs) were calculated, specifically the CSR for second-born children where the first born was female. This CSR is where evidence of sex- selective abortion will be most visible. CSRs were looked at over time to assess the impact of legalisation as well as for population sub-groups in order to assess trends and identify characteristics of women using sex selection.

Results:

From 2007 to 2010 the CSR for second-order births where the first born was a girl was found to be 742 (95% confidence interval 599 to 913). Before abortion was legalised (1998 to 2000) the same CSR was 1021 (906 to 1150). After legalisation the CSR dropped most amongst educated and richer women, especially in urban areas. Indeed, just 325 girls were born for every 1,000 boys amongst the richest urban women.

Conclusions:

The abrupt fall in CSRs witnessed post legalisation indicates that sex-selective
abortion has become common. This research also indicates that legalising abortion can have a
substantial effect on sex ratios, even if sex-selection is specifically prohibited.

It's funny but feminists will demand sex-based quotas in numerous fields.

But when it comes to the population of a country, well NO we mustn't legislate on that.

And I realize that sex-selection abortion is illegal in Nepal (unlike in Canada).

However, if it were legal, the situation would be even worse.

If You Teach Catholicism is About Being Nice, You'll Lose Them...

Standing on my head:

We’ve made catechesis nice. It’s all about the sacraments and being nice and the church and being nice and peace and justice and being nice and forgiveness and hugs and being nice. That’s all very nice… but there is another aspect to the gospel which we’ve quietly forgotten. We’ve forgotten that part about, “If anyone would be my disciple he must take up his cross and follow me.” Or that part which says, “The world will hate you as it has hated me.” or “Broad is the way that leads to destruction, but narrow is the gate and few there be that find it.”

So our children aren’t dumb. They grow up and they figure that if it’s all about being nice that you don’t have to go to church to be nice. You can be nice without church. You don’t have to be Catholic to be nice. You can be a nice Methodist if you want. So if they want to be nice they just go along being nice without church, and they believe that because that’s actually what we taught them even when we didn’t know that is what we were teaching them.

Because we never told them it would be difficult and that it would require discipline and that they should have some backbone and determination if they were going to make it in the spiritual life, they learned that lesson, and therefore when it did turn out to require a little bit of grit and determination and difficult things like confession and self discipline and prayer–they went scooting off because they thought it was all about being nice and praise and worship songs that made you feel good and a warm comfy sermon from Father about loving each other more. That’s what they thought it was. That’s what we taught them it was, and when it turned out that being a Catholic required some backbone and self sacrifice and dedication they were disappointed like we are all disappointed when our expectations are shattered. Never mind that they were false expectations to start with.

If you're not talking about the soul, suffering and the afterlife...

You're doing it wrong.

Of course God provides a lot of happiness and solace.

He does it when you understand what the deal really is.

If you understand his love for you, and how you have to take up the cross, that is when you will derive solace.

You don't get it from being nice. Anybody can do that. Jesus said as much.

India probably has better abortion stats than Canada

There was a 44% increase in the number of reported abortions in Mumbai in 2012.

Why?

Dr Rekha Daver, who heads the gynaecology department of the state government-run JJ Hospital in Byculla, believes computerisation is the main reason. "Most hospitals have to report their numbers online to the government or local municipal corporation website. The 44% increase is most likely due to computerised reporting," said Dr Daver. As per the government rules, the hospitals have to upload their statistics by the fifth of every month.

It's really sad that a developing country does better at reporting abortion stats than we do in Canada.

And yes I realize these may be incomplete data due to underground abortions. Still, India does better than Canada in reporting its legal abortions.

When is it no longer a woman’s right to choose?

It’s important to note, though, that analyzing the morality associated with late-term abortion isn’t predicated upon finding dirty and murderous clinics that put women’s lives at risk. While these rogue institutions should be located and shuttered and their leaders prosecuted, there are deeper and more profound issues that deserve discussion and scrutiny.[That pro-choice groups won't address!]


Obviously, most rational human beings would admit that snipping the spines of babies born alive during abortions is a horrific and murderous action. This is what many pro-choice advocates and groups have, themselves, admitted in the wake of Gosnell’s guilty verdict.

Yet these same leaders and institutions virtually never speak out about viable babies that are terminated in utero – children that are, with the help of medical advances, able to live on their own outside of the mother’s body, if afforded the chance. In fact, some of these groups give the impression that they want unfettered access to abortion, regardless of the time-frame.

Quebec Priest Contests Church Teaching on Homosexuality in Fight Against Homophobia

May 17th is the International Day to Fight Homophobia.

Gerard Marier, of the Montfortain Fathers, wrote a letter to homosexuals in which he criticized the Church on its stance on homosexuality. It was published in La Presse. He works in the Diocese of Nicolet. Here's my translation:

Mom Enters Unborn Baby in Beauty Pageant

I was really disappointed in this story.

I thought there was a beauty pageant for fetuses.

Alas, no. There will be no judging of cute yawns and thumb-sucking.

A British mum decided it was a good idea to sign up her baby for a beauty pageant before she was born.

I'm being facetious, by the way.

Slightly. :)

Gosnell Thinks He's Innocent: Defense Attorney

Gosnell's defense attorney, Jack McMahon, told reporters assembled outside the Philadelphia Criminal Justice Center that his client “truly believes in himself” and remains convinced that “he never killed a live baby."

In a somewhat grammatically challenged statement, McMahon said, “Dr. Gosnell, he believes that what he did was not commit homicide.”

Instead, McMahon implied Gosnell should have been released and given an opportunity to ply his trade again.

"Nobody gave him a second chance," McMahon said. "Dr. Gosnell is far from a monster, and this was not a house of horrors."

Another Gosnell-Like Abortionist from Texas

Douglas Karpen. Remember that name. And to add warning to their warning: the pics in the report are absolutely vile. I only looked at them by squinting.

She described how some babies would emerge too soon and would be alive, moving, and breathing. She also told of how Karpen would sometimes deliver the babies feet first with the toes wiggling until he stabbed them with a surgical implement. At the moment the toes would suddenly splay out before going limp. Sometimes he would kill the babies by “twisting the head off the neck,” according to Edge.

British Study Concludes that Fetuses Do Yawn

This was published in November 2012 in an open access journal. The text is free.

It doesn't mean it's invalid, I'm just adding that caveat.

It's also a small study.

But still, very interesting.

And it has some neat pics.