Commentary

A news report from the Washington Post reveals that the Obama Administration is having a tough time finding anyone willing to serve on the 15-member “Death Panel” at the heart of Obama’s plan to cut health care costs.

The legislation passed by Pelosi’s Congress gave extraordinary power to this panel, with power to unilaterally cut payments to doctors and hospitals for services.  This is tantamount to denying services to patients.

You’ll remember that Sarah Palin has received broad condemnation and ridicule from the main stream media for suggesting that ObamaCare even contained the notion of health care rationing. But the fact that no one wants to serve on this panel strongly confirms her charges. It also points out one of the darker elements of ObamaCare.

How else does one explain that no one seems interesting in taking a $165,000 job with the power to restructure health care in America?

It seems that the advocates of health care rationing would rather write articles in academic journals than actually wield the knife. Apparently it is one thing to talk about cutting off older American from health care than being the person who actually votes to shorten lives.

As you think about it, much the same seems true about the Abortion Industry. A story appeared a few weeks back which claimed that there were just four American “doctors” who performed abortions on late-term babies. Just not that much interest in living with bloody hands and conscience, perhaps.

It is a lot easier to talk about politics and bumper stickers and “rights” and profits than it is to hold the carved up remains of an innocent victim of our national hard-heartedness.

But lest you draw too much encouragement from the dearth of applicants for Obama’s Death Panel, the Washington Post story says that the power of life and death it would wield devolves upon Secretary of Health & Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius. Given her ardent support of the death culture over a long public career, it is clear that the disabled, seniors and others deemed “unworthy” of life still have much to worry about.

Four years ago we witnessed the first inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama as the 44th president. His ascension to power coincided with the 36th commemoration of Roe v. Wade – and legalized abortion in the United States.

Today the forces which re-elected Barack Obama will party on the national credit card to celebrate their historic return to power. Such is our national history that the Obama Campaign has the right to claim such spoils.

The national pro-Life movement will conduct a huge pro-Life March down the National Mall on Friday, January 25th.

I had the privilege of addressing the March for Life in Boise in January of 2009, just days after Obama had taken his first oath of office. I read through the notes I made for that speech the other day to see where we were then. I asked the crowd to pray for President Obama, confident that the God who has shown me such mercy was anxious to do the same for Barack Obama and his family.

As Obama took office four years ago, the quasi-official death count due to legalized abortion stood at 49,489,528 innocent lives.

As he starts the second term, that number has risen to 55,808,387 babies destroyed in their mother’s womb through surgical abortion.

6,318,859 lives can be laid at the feet of President Obama and the policies he has pursued with such immoral abandon since placing his hand on the Bible four long years ago. In a very real sense, as he takes his second oath, Obama will be standing upon the broken bones of those innocents needlessly sacrificed.

Of course, Obama is not solely responsible for that carnage. But he is due no excuse or rationalization either.

The tone and content of his last campaign promise an even faster rate of destruction in the second term than in the first.

Implementation of ObamaCare alone nearly guarantees seven or eight million more preborn children will die before the nation finds potential relief in a new president – that is, unless the Lord intervenes in some other way between here and January, 2017.

But in those remarks I made four years ago, I declared we had to be vigilant against despair. I argued that we had to win the battle one baby at time, one heart at a time. Those thoughts are probably more valid today as we grieve over the long road ahead.

There will be all too much time in the coming months to discuss the expanding impact Barack Obama will have on our culture and morals in his second term.

I would like to conclude instead with a quote from Scripture which should help us keep perspective as we suffer the spectacle of the Abortion Industry dancing in the nation’s capitol:

“And now, O kings, give heed; take warning, you rulers of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice before Him; with trembling pay homage to Him, lest He be angry and you perish from the way, when His anger blazes suddenly. Happy are all who take refuge in Him!” (Psalm 2:10-12).

May the Lord speak wisdom into President Obama’s ear and soften his heart in the years ahead.

The National Review has posted an interview on its website with Karen Handel, author of Planned Bullyhood and the woman at the center of the Komen-Planned Parenthood fracas of just a year ago.

She recounts in the interview some of the key material from her expose, as well as a powerful rebuttal of the simplistic definition of “women’s health” used by Planned Parenthood to extort millions from the government treasury.

She identifies the close partnership between government, media and the nation’s leading abortion provider – a partnership which has resulted in the death of millions of American babies. (As we run up to the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, it is important to understand how this abortion culture sustains itself through our tax dollars).

Here is a link to the interview:

An Ada County woman has filed a federal lawsuit against Blue Cross of Idaho for engaging in practices which unfairly limit competition. Melissa Allen wants to get her case treated as a “class action” lawsuit so that all Idaho premium holders could benefit if she wins.

Allen notes in her lawsuit that Blue Cross commands 52% of the entire Idaho market. The next-largest competitor is Regence Blue Shield, which serves 22% of Idahoans with private health insurance.

Ms. Allen charges in her suit that Blue Cross’ dominance is the result of an illegal conspiracy between various subdivisions of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, in which participant organizations have divided up the nation into exclusive territories free of competition.

It is through such a monopolistic arrangement that Blue Cross has amassed some $400 million in assets and profits, according to Ms. Allen.

Blue Cross officials told the media that they would vigorously fight the lawsuit.

The lawsuit has been consolidated with other, similar lawsuits in an Alabama courtroom.

Questions have been asked around the Idaho Statehouse about the lack of competition in Idaho’s health insurance market for years. Those questions have become intense as Blue Cross has pushed legislators hard to create a state “insurance exchange”. Regulators in other states have opposed such a move largely because they believe that Blue Cross’ control of state insurance markets will only expand under governmental sponsorship of their product.

In the rearview mirror, the Komen saga of late 2011 and early 2012 set the stage for Obama’s re-election effort. It was through their coordinated attack on Komen that the Abortion Industry and its purchased political stable launched the “War on Women” charade upon the American people.

Karen Handel, in her new book, “Planned Bullyhood”, details the strange naïveté which drove Komen executives to hire Hillary Rosen as their key media advisor after the decision was made to sever its ties with Planned Parenthood. One of Rosen’s clients was (and is) Planned Parenthood. It is painfully obvious that this operative most likely provided Planned Parenthood with advance notice of Komen’s decision.

It is also quite likely that Rosen was intimately involved in helping Planned Parenthood develop its nasty campaign against Komen which resulted in the charity’s complete capitulation after just 3 days of the Planned Parenthood offensive. (Our readers might best remember Hillary Rosen as the Democrat activist who attacked Ann Romney as “never having worked a day in her life”. She also served as Sandra Fluke’s press agent.)

We may never know for certain how many consultants and “friends” willingly betrayed Komen to serve their masters at Planned Parenthood.

What we can say for certain is that Planned Parenthood demonstrated for all to see its ruthlessness and sinister character by the way it savaged an organization that had provided financial support to Planned Parenthood for decades:

“I did not anticipate that the passion and support for Planned Parenthood would make Komen expendable; that Komen would be seen as necessary collateral damage,” Handel writes.

What should alarm everyone reading Handel’s book is the demonstrable fact that Planned Parenthood engaged in a vicious campaign to destroy Komen in lieu of a surrender. (How dare Komen stop paying protection monies to Planned Parenthood?!) Cecil Richards & Co were perfectly happy to see either outcome. And they were more than willing to sacrifice the health of women suffering from breast cancer – the very people they claim to “serve” – in order to achieve their political goals. Even ardent liberals should shudder at the duplicity and cynicism of this nefarious organization.

What did Handel learn from the sorry experience – which included death threats and libelous accusation?

“Unless Planned Parenthood and its elite liberal forces are stopped, what they did to Komen is just the beginning….Planned Parenthood has honed its political combat tactics and is poised to shape elections today and well into the future. With Komen, they achieved something they never had before: the public (near) destruction of a widely trusted and passionately supported organization dedicated to nonpolitical goals. This has broad ramifications. Planned Parenthood has opened the door to a shakedown of American politics by liberal interest groups, employing mafia-style tactics to hold hostage sponsors and advertisers and even other nonprofits that dare to defy their agenda or support those who do.”

Many of us in the pro-Life movement followed the Komen controversy closely. Yet few of us appreciated the huge significance of the quick surrender and what it tells us of the American social/political scene.

Not only is Handel’s book a moral tale – it should be required reading for conservative activists and politicians. Too long have we underestimated the evil and power of Planned Parenthood, Inc.