Wednesday, August 24, 2011

I "Fully Understand" that Joe Biden is an embarrassment and an idiot

Perhaps the worst Vice President in my lifetime. Such a poor representative for our country.

The odds of him remaining on the Obama ticket (assuming Obama runs) keep getting lower and lower.


Mr. Vice President, Can You Second-Guess Yourself on UNFPA Funding Now?

Blasted with criticism, Vice President Biden is trying to take back what he said in Sichuan, China: that he “fully understands” China’s one-child policy, but is “not second-guessing” it. Chastened, Biden now says that China’s coercive population-control program is “repugnant.” Indeed, his spokeswoman insists that the entire “Obama administration strongly opposes all aspects of China’s coercive birth limitation policies, including forced abortion and sterilization.”

Words spoken before the world in an official capacity cannot be unspoken. The bell, once rung, cannot be un-rung.

However, the Obama administration now has publicly admitted it knows that China practices forced abortion and sterilization. This is progress.

Should we believe that this administration “strongly opposes” these practices?

If the Obama administration “strongly opposes” forced abortion in China, then why did they restore funding to UNFPA (United Nations Family Planning Fund), an operative “abortion provider” in China? In 2001, the U.S. cut funding to UNFPA because an investigation, headed by then–Secretary of State Colin Powell, found that UNFPA was complicit in the coercive implementation of China’s one-child policy. In 2008, the U.S. State Department reaffirmed that determination, and yet the Obama administration resumed funding in 2009. President Obama’s FY 2012 budget requests $47 million for UNFPA.

The current administration also funds the International Planned Parenthood Federation. The IPPF works hand in hand with the coercive Chinese Communist population-control machine. Their website declares, “The China Family Planning Association (CFPA) plays a very important role in China’s family planning programme. It supports the present family planning policy of the government . . .”

Funding UNFPA and IPPF is not “strong opposition” to coercive family planning. It is support. At issue are the true aims behind the actions of the Obama administration. Are they “pro-choice,” as they say, or is their real aim population control, even if coercive?

Earlier this year, U.S. citizens voted to cut UNFPA funding under the new YOUCUT program. Because of this vote, Rep. Renee Ellmers (R., N.C.) will introduce legislation to cut UNFPA, saving $400 million over the next ten years.

If the Obama administration is sincere in saying it “strongly opposes . . . forced abortion and sterilization,” then it will either insist that UNFPA and IPPF cease operation in China, or it will defund these organizations.

Reggie Littlejohn is president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers.


Mr. Vice President, Be a Leader

Also grateful that a spokesman for Joe Biden says he is opposed to forced abortion, former Tiananmen Square democracy activist Chai Ling calls the Chinese one-child policy “an ongoing Tiananmen massacre every hour.” In response to the Biden clarification, she writes, as president of All Girls Allowed:

Where are the political left in this modern-day freedom movement? Forced abortions and mass gendercide certainly call for action from both sides of the aisle. The challenge: End the cruel One-Child Policy. The Obama Administration has yet to issue a clear call to end the Policy, which is harmful both to the Chinese and American people.

The political right is exposing the injustice, calling on leaders, and pushing a new bill to act on China’s repugnant policy. The ”China Democracy Promotion Act of 2011” (H.R.2121), would give the President authority to deny entry into the U.S. of Chinese officials and individuals who participate in human rights abuses, including China’s coercive birth limitation policy. The political left has been conspicuously silent.

Democrats, we know you also stand for justice. We know that you love freedom, that you are willing to put aside differences and work alongside others to protect the oppressed. We know that you believe women deserve a choice when it comes to their own bodies. Where are you in this movement? Will you stand alongside your fellow Americans to call for an end to the One-Child Policy?


‘The White House has checked a political box on this side of the Pacific’

And John Boehner urges White House action to go along with a vice presidential aide’s talk. The Speaker of the House actually raised the issue of human-rights abuse with Chinese President Hu Jintao when the Chinese president was in Washington, D.C., earlier this year.

Meanwhile neither the president nor vice president has taken leadership on the matter — when Hu Jintao was here and when Biden was in China this weekend. To the contrary, as Chai Lingand Reggie Littlejohn have pointed out.

Boehner writes:

If the Obama Administration truly opposes the one-child policy and truly cares about undoing the damage the Vice President’s comments have caused, the Vice President himself – or his boss, the President of the United States – should personally go on record immediately and unequivocally right the wrong.

Secondly, if the Obama administration is serious about its opposition to the one-child policy, the President should immediately halt U.S. contributions to the U.N. Population Fund, which has been linked in China to the one-child policy. President George W. Bush stopped U.S. contributions to the UNFPA in 2002, but they were resumed by President Obama when he took office in 2009, on the grounds that the fund doesn’t “directly” support abortion.

Until these two basic actions have been taken, the effect of the Biden incident is that the perpetrators of the one-child policy – the people with the power and authority to reverse it, and end the forced sterilizations and coercive abortions the policy has spawned – have been given further reason to believe that the United States government does not object to the one-child policy and doesn’t mind if it continues. They have been left with the impression that while some American leaders strenuously object to the policy – such as Speaker Boehner, who raised concerns about the one-child policy directly to Chinese President Hu Jintao in a meeting earlier this year – there are other American leaders, including the Vice President and President of the United States, who are willing to offer a wink and a nod, and let the Chinese government simply carry on with its reprehensible business.


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