Tennessee lawmakers who fight for laws to “choose life” now want to cut funding that helps keep the babies alive once they are born.
Have they no shame? No moral compass whatsoever? Tennessee ranked an abysmal 47th in the nation for the number of babies who die before their first birthday in 2003, and Gov. Phil Bredesen dedicated $4.6 million — matched dollar for dollar by federal money — to stop that.
Guess what Senate Republicans stripped from the state budget late last week? Yep. The folks who fight abortion as immoral and anti-Christian don’t seem to care too much what happens once a mother gives birth. Can you imagine how they’ll explain that on Judgment Day?
“Well, Lord. It was like this. We believe life begins at conception, and we’re against ending those lives. Once the babies are born? You’re on your own, kiddo. It’s a tough world. And we don’t tolerate slackers.”
It’s heartbreaking hypocrisy.
“If you are going to have a baby, let’s give that baby a fighting chance,” said Bob Duncan, head of the Governor’s Office of Children’s Care Coordination, which is on the chopping block. “This is real stuff. This is lives that are being saved and babies getting a chance to live. It just breaks my heart to know what is going to
happen.” If the Senate’s budget passes, this office will close.What is going to happen? Newborns are going to die. It’s that simple. Politicians cannot hide the chilling statistics: In 2006, nine out of every 1,000 babies born in Nashville died before their first birthday. Today, thanks to this program that rate is down to six out of 1,000 births.
“There are three babies alive today that wouldn’t have been in 2006,” Duncan said.
Preventing Answers
It’s progress. But it’s not enough. The money state senators cut is used to methodically study infant mortality across the state. Area by area, why are babies dying?
“We basically can do a community review of every infant death, the community issues, the family issues, all the systems that could have intervened,” said Dr. Bill Paul, head of the Metro Health Department.
Using an evidence-based practice — meaning it has been proved to work — the state funds programs at nonprofits, hospitals and health departments that treat pregnant mothers so babies are born on time, not prematurely, and at a healthy weight. And they continue monitoring and offering services after the baby is born. Specific examples include prenatal vitamins, nutrition counseling, help quitting smoking, regular physician visits and distribution of safe bassinets.
How can any reasonable person turn that into a political football? It’s one thing to get into a fistfight in the waning days of the legislative session over projects like a fish hatchery and museums.
But this? If the house doesn’t put the money back, Senate Republicans will have balanced the state budget on the fragile backs of newborns, who cannot vote. And Tennessee babies will keep dying.
Pro-life? Really?
Archive for the ‘Family Values’ Category
Columnist Gail Kerr Blasts GOP For Killing Infant Program
Tuesday, June 1st, 2010Indiana Congressman becomes 15th “Family Values” Republican Elected in ‘94 Takeover To Resign Amid Sex Scandal
Thursday, May 20th, 2010
The Newt Gingrich-led “Republican Revolution” of 1994 touted “family values” as its #1 concern. Now 15 of those “family values” republicans first elected in the 1994 GOP sweep of Congress have resigned when news of their sex scandals went public. Indiana Republican Mark Souder is the latest, admitting he had an affair with the co-host of his “abstinence-only” TV show. Dana Millbank provides a look back at the fate of the “family values” republicans:
When was it, exactly, that the Republican revolution merged with the sexual revolution?
With each passing year, the class notes for the famous House Republicans Class of ‘94 get more lurid. The latest entry was submitted Tuesday morning by Rep. Mark Souder (Ind.).
“I sinned against God, my wife and my family by having a mutual relationship with a part-time member of my staff,” he announced in a resignation statement.
And it wasn’t just any part-time staffer, according to sources in Souder’s office. Five months ago, Tracy Jackson was his, er, “co-host” in a video the pair produced for his congressional Web site. The topic: abstinence education.
In his downfall, Souder appears likely to join classmates Mark Foley (lewd text messages to House pages), Mark Sanford (hiking the proverbial Appalachian Trail with his Argentine mistress) and John Ensign (whose parents paid the family of his ex-mistress $96,000) in the sex-scandal hall of fame. Another of their classmates, Bob Ney, did prison time for his role in the Jack Abramoff scandal.
Goodbye Dr. Bob, We’ll Miss You
Monday, April 19th, 2010
“Dr. Bob” as he was affectionately known passed away Saturday morning. Here is the DNJ article in its entirety:
An MTSU education professor for more than half a century, Bob Womack had not officially retired when he died Saturday of heart failure. He was 86.
Womack, a noted Civil War and Tennessee walking horse historian, started teaching at MTSU in 1957 and planned to retire in May. He was a member of the Tennessee Walking Horse National Celebration Hall of Fame and was the state’s only higher education professor to be inducted into the Tennessee Teacher Hall of Fame.
Womack had been battling congestive heart failure and kidney failure and had been undergoing dialysis for at least five years before he died Saturday. Friends and family remembered him Sunday for his dedication to family and the university.
“The main thing, he was a great father to me,” said his son, former state Sen. Andy Womack of Murfreesboro. “What I will miss is his counsel and example as a father.”
The elder Womack was a professor in the Department of Educational Leadership at MTSU, which was recently renamed the Womack Family Department of Educational Leadership. He had been serving as a guest lecturer and would have celebrated his 53rd year at the university in July. He loved MTSU, as displayed by the fact that five of the six children in his family, his own four children and three grandchildren earned degrees there.
“He made the ultimate commitment to MTSU with his family,” Andy said. “The thing he valued most in life was a good education.”
The former senator described his father as an “open-minded” person who challenged his four children to seek out information before forming opinions.
“Dr. Bob,” as he was affectionately called by friends, incorporated the same philosophy into his classroom teaching, his son said, encouraging students “to develop views based on facts and research and not just opinions of others.”
A native of Flat Creek in Bedford County, he was the son of David Andrew and Georgia Price Womack. Womack graduated from Shelbyville Central High School and enrolled at MTSU before being drafted during World War II and serving as an officer in the U.S. Navy as part of the Pacific campaign. When the war was over, he returned to MTSU and finished his degree before he began teaching at Shelbyville and Lebanon while earning his master’s and doctorate from Peabody Teachers College in Nashville.
He returned to MTSU in 1957.
“He was a good man,” said Martin McCullough, who taught with Womack in the education department at MTSU. “He was a renaissance man.”
McCullough became familiar with Womack when he taught Andy in the eighth grade, and they later became good friends, sharing lunch four or five times a week, after McCullough began teaching at MTSU in the 1980s.
A regular at City Cafe for more than 20 years, Womack could often be found leading a discussion about a variety of topics.
“He was a fun and interesting conversationalist,” McCullough recalled. “He always enjoyed the give and take of ideas.”
Womack was the author of “The Echo of Hoofbeats,” “Call Forth the Mighty Men,” “A History of Tennessee” and many other books.
“He had an abiding interest in Civil War history, and he was the definitive historian of the walking horse lineage,” McCullough said. “I remember him taking me out to these obscure farms where some of the walking horse champions had come from.”
Bob Bullen, a Rutherford County commissioner, retired MTSU professor and longtime friend to Womack, remembered him as a mentor and a “man of all seasons.”
“He set a high standard for intellectual activity for his classes, demanded (students) learn critical thinking skills and to learn to appreciate, and challenge, ideas,” Bullen said.
Bullen said that Womack was a gifted singer and a talented pianist, who also was generous, kind, and a true family man.
“He did everything for his family,” Bullen said.
Bullen called Womack “a walking university.”
“He could have easily taught and flourished in other departments, including English, math, agriculture, one of the sciences, history, and philosophy, as well as his own,” he said.
But one thing Bullen really appreciated about his friend of more than 40 years was that he had a wonderful sense of humor and loved a good joke, no matter how many times he had heard it.
“Sometimes you could just mention a joke and he would start laughing,” Bullen said. “And he had a hard time telling a joke, because as he got closer to the punch line he would start cracking up and would have a hard time getting to the end.”
With a son in the state Senate, Womack kept an eye on politics, too.
“The Rutherford County Democratic Party lost a faithful member with the passing of Dr. Bob.” said Jonathon Fagan, chairman of the Rutherford County Democratic Party. “He leaves a legacy of working for the education of all, regardless of class or race. He truly cared for those least among us, as Jesus taught.”
Womack is survived by his sons, Andy (Cherry) Womack and Ricky Womack, daughters Lara (Steve) Daniel and Lynn Womack, grandsons David (Cheryl) Womack, Jackson Short and Samuel Short, granddaughters Dana Womack, Marguerite (Rob) Sims, Sara Womack and Meaghan Daniel, and great-grandchildren Molly Womack, Mason Womack, Riley Sims and Emery Sims.
Visitation will be held from 4 to 8 p.m. today at the Jennings & Ayers Funeral Home, located at 820 S. Church St. in Murfreesboro.
A graveside service will be conducted at 11:30 a.m. Tuesday at the Rosebank Cemetery in Flat Creek in Bedford County.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the MTSU Foundation for the Womack Family Endowment.
MA Republicans Send Nude Model To Washington As U.S. Senator
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010(parental advisory: THIS photograph may not be suitable for younger viewers)
Meet Scott Brown, the new Family Values Republican Senator from Massachusetts, who posed nude for Cosmopolitan Magazine’s “America Sexiest Men” issue of 1982.
A Christmas Message from our Chairman…
Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009
Folks have told me a great many things about Christmas lately - how and with whom to celebrate it, what to buy and where to buy it, and even how to talk about it. I have actually heard folks in the pulpit, at the lunch table, and even on my television speak fervently on the subject of the season’s greetings, whether “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays” is more proper. Bless their hearts, they just get so excited about Christmas and they should. It is only recently that we have had the freedom to celebrate it!
Following the English Protestant Reformation, groups such as the Puritans, the forefathers of today’s evangelical Christians, strongly condemned the celebration of Christmas, considering it a Catholic invention and the “trappings of popery” or the “rags of the Beast.” Following Oliver Cromwell’s victory over Charles I during the English Civil War, England’s Puritan rulers banned Christmas in 1647. Protests followed as pro-Christmas rioting broke out in several cities and for weeks Canterbury was controlled by the rioters, who decorated doorways with holly and shouted royalist slogans. In Colonial America, the Puritans of New England shared radical Protestant disapproval of Christmas. Christmas celebration was outlawed in Boston from 1659 to 1681, but was revived by the Royal Governor. The celebration of Christmas fell out of favor after the Revolutionary War because it was seen as an English custom, but it was revived in the 1820s by several short stories by Washington Irving depicting harmonious warm-hearted holiday traditions he claimed to have observed in England.
I hope you can forgive me for not joining those important high-minded debates at Christmas time. I’m sure they’ll work it out. Meanwhile, I’ll be visiting family and trying to pick out some gifts while trying to keep perspective on what its all about. Dr. Suess has always been helpful in that regard:
“”And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. And he puzzled and puzzled ’till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before. What if Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store. What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.
Welcome, Christmas, bring your cheer. Cheer to all Whos far and near. Christmas Day is in our grasp so long as we have hands to clasp. Christmas Day will always be just as long as we have we. Welcome Christmas while we stand, heart to heart and hand in hand.”
In Christmas Spirit,
Jonathon Fagan
Chairman, RCDP
Tennessee GOP Spokesman Charged With Domestic Abuse
Friday, December 11th, 2009
Bill Hobbs & Robin Smith, Republican Congressional Candidate in the TN 3rd District
An arrest warrant was issued October 12, 2009 charging William H. Hobbs with domestic assault. His bail was set at $1,500. You can view the public documents here.
Here’s what the affidavit of complaint says:
On 10-12-2009 at approx 5:30 PM, BPD Officer Huddleston was dispatched to Vanderbilt Med Ctr, 21st Ave, Nashville, in response to a reported domestic violence assault. Upon arrival, Officer Hudleston spoke with Anna Hobbs. Mrs Hobbs stated that on 10-11-2009 at approx 11:15 PM she and her husband William got into an arguement that turned physical when Mr. Hobbs struck the left side of Mrs Hobbs head and knocked her down. Mrs Hobbs also suffered visible injuries to her left wrist. A short time later, Mr Hobbs left the residence. On 10-12-2009 Mrs. Hobbs head was so painful that she went to Vanderbilt ed Ctr for treatment. Vanderbilt reported the incident to BPD. Mrs Hobbs gave a written statement to Officer Huddleston.
Hobbs is widely considered an alter ego for 3rd District Congressional candidate Robin Smith, who chaired the Tennessee GOP during his tenure as spokesman. During that time Smith and Hobbs worked together to craft GOP statements touting the superior morality and “family values” of republicans. Apparently, assaulting one’s spouse is one of those “family values”.
UPDATE: Mr. Hobbs has threatened to sue the Rutherford County Democratic Party for this story, claiming that he was never convicted, which the original story reported. He is technically correct due to the fact that the judge has dismissed the case because of 3 months good behavior by Mr. Hobbs and mandatory marriage counseling. The story has been changed above to reflect this. The word “convicted” has been changed to [charged]. You can read more about this development here.


BY CONGRESSMAN BART GORDON





