Who Harvested the Conservative Brain?
-Carly Fiorina
Carly Fiorina seems intent on proving the adage that “a lie told often enough becomes the truth.” During the September 16, Republican debate, she gave a detailed description of a scene from the “highly edited” videos from the Center for Medical Progress, an organization that sounds like it could be lifted straight out of an Orwellian 1984. Problematically, “the exact scene, exactly as Ms. Fiorina describes it, is not on the videos.” Politifact rated the statement as “Mostly False,” saying that while “Fiorina makes it sound as if the footage shows what Planned Parenthood is alleged to have done...stock footage was added to the video to dramatize its content.” The anti-abortion group that produced the video admits that one of those images was “of a stillborn baby that was made to look like an aborted fetus.” At best, the actual quote cited is poorly paraphrased as the transcript states “this is a really good fetus. It looks like we can procure a lot from it. We’re going to procure a brain.”
Read moreTesting for Religion
-The United States Constitution
The members of the Republican party may want the voters to believe that the country was founded as a Christian nation (or if they are feeling generous, a “Judeo-Christian nation”), but this view was not unanimously shared by the Founding Fathers. For example, the Constitution specifically prohibits a religious test for “any office or public trust.” Religious freedom was further expanded with the passage of the First Amendment, which prohibited Congress from making laws “respecting an establishment of religion” and building what Thomas Jefferson called “a wall of separation between Church and State.” In 1797 the Senate ratified and President John Adams signed a treaty between the United States and Tripoli that stated “the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded in the Christian Religion.”
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Trump Card
Stereotype: “A widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing.”
-Oxford Dictionaries
Under President Obama, there have been a record number of deportations. He has also employed the largest amount of border patrol agents. These have combined with other factors to drive a zero percent migration rate from Mexico, a trend that some expect to continue into the future. However, none of this is good enough for the xenophobic wing of the Republican party who still see the value of a good scapegoat - especially one without the power to vote. According to this point of view, we should ignore the hard working people in search of a better life whose labor is exploited by American businessman and instead claim that “they’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bring those problems with us [sic]. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”
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