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Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Republicans Set the Stage for ObamaCare

We have repeatedly written about the tremendous financial and moral threats posed by the Democrat’s plan to nationalize health care. A wide range of analysis is available online for American patriots committed to protecting our nation from a certain and unfixable disaster.

There is, for example, an article on the Weekly Standard website – “ObamaCare: It’s Worse Than You Think”. Authors James Capretta and Yuval Levin point out that public opposition is building because of the cost and certainty of government’s rationing of services. But they believe that these two critical flaws are much worse than critics have grasped. Their analysis is that the Obama-Pelosi Plan contains massive hidden costs through its premium subsidy program. Over time, this black fiscal hole is almost guaranteed to swallow federal and state budgets.

Chuck Colson offers another analysis. His recent column, “Quality Control: Who Lives, Who Dies?” is a chilling read. One of America’s darkest thinkers, Princeton philosopher Peter Singer argues in a New York Times essay that it is important for America to accept a more utilitarian view of health care management. In his world, it is obvious that society should be prepared to spend more money on an 18 year old than on a person in their 80’s. He advocates a system called, “quality-adjusted-life-year”, in which handicaps and health conditions can be taken into account to determine the “objective” value of a person’s life. A person with quadriplegia, for example, has a life worth half of someone without that disability. He expressly forbids taking into account life issues like whether a person has children because that could cause the mischief of “subjectivity” in evaluating whether resources should be expended in caring for a person.

Colson correctly points out that the only antidote to such utilitarian logic is a belief in the value of human life because we are made in God’s image. No God – no barrier to the reemergence of a Nazi value system here and elsewhere.

This is but a brief discussion of the dire threat posed to our great nation by President Obama’s deadly prescription. Republican politicians are beginning to rally to the opposition created by sane, grassroots Americans. That is fine. But we ought not let them off the hook just because they see a political advantage in attacking Pelosi’s socialism.

Sen. John McCain did an interview last night with Sean Hannity. He astutely listed many of the dangerous problems present in ObamaCare. McCain observed that America does not have a problem with quality – the health care crisis is one of cost. It was nice to hear a note of sanity – but then the political dribble overwhelmed his insight. McCain claimed that Republicans “have a plan” for bringing down those costs through “reform”, particularly by protecting doctors from frivolous lawsuits.

With all due respect – that is just hooey.

Republicans had years under President Bush to deal with outrageous price gouging by the health care and insurance industries. For decades, the costs of insurance inflation have exceeded the rate of inflation by 3, 4, 5 times. According to a 2008 Statesman article, the cost of medical insurance for Idaho families increased by some 73% over just 5 years (2000-2005). Not a single Idaho or national political leader has offered a coherent justification for this kind of staggering rise in insurance costs – which offer diminishing financial protections for working families.

The tired Republican blather has been to point at the Bogey Man – those evil Trial Lawyers.

More hooey.

We are not here to defend trial lawyers (especially their politics). The point is simply this: American families are hurting because of the patent greed of the Medical-Insurance Cabal which has us by the throat. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist or Harvard Business School graduate to understand that somebody (a lot of somebodies, actually) is making a ton of money. We are simply losing our ability to keep feeding the insatiable beast.

Pain and panic drove many Americans to support Obama last fall – and the dynamic is still fueling Congressional action. If Pelosi and Company succeed at destroying America through their horrible health care prescription, Republicans like McCain will deserve a great deal of the blame. They have failed for years to produce rational and effective reform of the health care financing system; and it may just be too late now.

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Update on ObamaCare

During an interview with CBS news face Katie Couric, President Obama indicated, for the first time, that he was not seeking to establish federal funding of abortions as part of his health care “reform”. According to Life News, Obama claimed that, “I am pro-choice (sic), but I think we also have the tradition in this town, historically, of not financing abortions as part of government-funded health care.”

The strategic retreat by Obama follows a public claim by a pro-Life Democrat, Congressman Bart Stupak, that he has 39 other Democrats in the House who will vote with him to make sure that abortions are not part of the health care package. In fact, Rep. Stupak told reporters yesterday that he intends to help present pro-Life amendments in the House Energy & Commerce committee when it considers the ObamaCare legislation – perhaps as soon as today.

Obama's radical legislation has already passed two key House committees – but its fate in Energy & Commerce is uncertain. Despite blusters by Speaker Pelosi, there is reason to believe that there are not enough votes to pass it out of this crucial committee.

Meanwhile, Congressman Walt Minnick issued a public statement just prior to the President’s news conference last night, indicating that he would vote against the current form of ObamaCare, largely because of fiscal concerns.

That is all well and good; it proves again that Minnick is not crazy. But it is very sad that moral concerns do not inform Minnick’s view of this serious threat to America's welfare.

He is not one of those concerned about using tax dollars to grossly expand the number of abortions committed against America’s preborn children – nor does he seem troubled by the notion of bureaucrats rationing health care for the elderly and disabled.

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Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Minnick Folds Under Pelosi Scowl

Over this past weekend, Minnick staffers distributed an article by the Congressional Quarterly touting Congressman Minnick’s “independence”. According to his staff, “Walt is far and away the most independent person in Congress, and [yet]is still seen as a valuable member of his caucus thanks to his experience outside of politics.”

No doubt many operatives in the state’s media will happily pass along this sales job - so necessary for Minnick to succeed in convincing Republican voters of the 1st CD that he deserves to be returned for another term.

But the truth is something else again.

Many of us have suspected that Minnick is being given wide berth by Democrat leaders to help him con Idaho voters into believing that he is not really a liberal, not really a Democrat. But when the chips are down, leaders like Pelosi know they will get his vote.
That theory was tested and proven just last week.

Democrats are pushing hard to increase the number of abortions committed in America by creating a tax-funded “right” to free abortions. Their first stride in that direction targets low-income residents of Washington, D.C. – most of whom are black – by providing, for the first time since Roe v. Wade, government-paid abortions. Most Republicans and many Democrats were appalled by the action and fought Speaker Pelosi on the House floor to ensure that American taxpayers were not further burdened with the guilt of abortion-on-demand.

For a moment, it appeared that Pelosi might lose. But she held the vote open and began calling her markers. After appropriate pressure, she persuaded four Democrats to switch their votes.

According to the Family Research Council, Idaho’s Walt Minnick was among those who folded like so much wet paper.

There is no big surprise here regarding Minnick’s pro-abortion politics. What is rather surprising is the lack of integrity he demonstrated by switching his vote on such a vital moral question. Rep. Minnick's vote shows a complete disregard for the deeply held religious and moral convictions of most Idahoans; his initial opposition to paying for abortions in the nation’s capital suggests that even he is troubled by the implications of greatly expanding the nation’s abortion rate.

The vote also raises troubling doubt about Minnick’s claims to be a “fiscally responsible” legislator. At a time of astronomical deficits – what can justify expanding government spending on something as heinous as abortion?

Congressman Minnick has repeatedly cast votes designed to confuse voters – but those votes were “throw-away” matters, cases where the radicals running Congress had the luxury of accomplishing their outrageous designs while giving vulnerable members like Minnick a free pass to look good back home.

But when it matters, when push-comes-to-shove, Minnick proved his first loyalty is to Speaker Pelosi – not the people of the First Congressional District of Idaho.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Ginsburg Not Alone in Washington

Unfortunately for America, Justice Ruth Ginsburg is not the only devotee of Eugenics loose in the nation’s capitol.

WorldNetDaily reports (07.13.09) that President Obama’s “Science Czar”, Professor John Holdren, is an advocate of fascist policies to control population growth and save “Mother Earth” from sundry apocalyptic threats. This former “Teresa Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy” at the Kennedy School was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on March 20 as the Director of the White House Office of Science & Technology.

It is probably safe to assume that many members of the U.S. Senate were unaware of his radical policy views at the time of his confirmation, despite the fact that he proudly proclaimed many of his outrageous views in a landmark book published in 1977. Co-authored with Paul Ehrlich, the book was entitled, Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment.

Professor Holdren advocated an international police force to ensure that human populations were forcibly reduced across the globe. This global regime would also have authority to allocate both natural and renewable resources based upon optimal population figures for each region of the planet.

In Holdren’s opinion, the U.S. Constitution could be stretched to accommodate compulsory abortions and forced sterilization.

Holdren and his compatriots went so far as to argue that international law should be established to mandate farming-out children born to teenage mothers to families deemed "more suitable". (One is tempted to accuse Holdren of direct theft from the Official Nazi Playbook on this point).

The WorldNetDaily article documents the rabbit trail Professor Holdren followed when the ‘70s fad of a “population crisis” morphed into the present hype about “global warming”. To be current, Holdren has added a clarion call for a global tax on “greenhouse emissions”, perhaps to pay for his abortion police teams.

As the popular media continues to sedate the American public with stories about Michael Jackson, it is vital that patriots confront the reality that some scary people – very scary people – have gained significant power in the nation’s capital. The drug-induced, utopian fantasies of 60s radicals have been carefully nurtured, repackaged and brought into the White House; these notions now appear as cap-and-trade taxes, government-run health care and nationalized credit markets.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Sanger's Eugenics Vision Influences Supreme Court

Many times over the fifteen years we’ve been battling Planned Parenthood and other allied social engineers, we have charged that the "Sanger Vision" is alive and driving the pro-abortion movement. And each time we are not-so-politely rebuffed and ridiculed by the Abortion Lobby: Sanger may have advocated the purification of the human race through birth control, abortion and forced sterilization – but those thoughts have long been removed from our thoughts, they regularly protest. Please ignore the fact that we target blacks, Hispanics and the poor with our services with great success.

Despite such blather, truth is a powerful thing; it manages to seep out beneath the most tightly locked doors.

In an astonishing interview with the New York Times Magazine, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg boldly admits that she has always understood Roe v. Wade as a mechanism for ensuring that “populations we don’t want to have too many of” would be reduced through the execution of their undesirable offspring. She goes on to bemoan the fact that her colleagues in the federal bench have blocked efforts to provide tax-payer funding of abortions for these “undesirable” peoples.

As we watch the opening hearings on Judge Sotomayor’s confirmation to the Supreme Court, it is well for the nation to take due note of Ginsburg’s comments. It is absolutely appalling that a sitting justice of the U.S. Supreme Court could publicly proclaim such views and remain a member of the bench; it is now beyond debate that she should never have been confirmed in the first place. Nominated by President Clinton, Ginsburg sailed through her confirmation – despite a long and sordid history of working for organizations like the ACLU.

Will Sotomayor be allowed to join Ginsburg on the court without careful scrutiny of her dark prejudices? Does she share Ginsburg’s belief that there are various classes of people – some worthy of survival, and others which should be “weeded out”?

Given the fact that Sotomayor shares Ginsburg’s commitment to abortion “rights” and judicial activism, these are legitimate and crucial questions which ought preoccupy members of the United States Senate these summer weeks.

Is there a hero in the Senate willing to confront Judge Sotomayor and pull the truth out of her?

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Saturday, July 04, 2009

Abortion History Damages Later Parenting

A groundbreaking study by the Elliot Institute has just been published, and finds that an abortion history is “particularly damaging to the parenting process”.

The article has been published in Current Women’s Health Reviews looks at the psychological reactions to various types of child loss and how they might affect a mother’s relationship with children born after the pregnancy loss.

“Losing a child before or at birth, for any reason, can be a profound source of suffering,” said the study’s author, Professor Priscilla Coleman. “However, the emotional responses after an induced abortion are more likely to go unresolved and to persist for a longer time period.”

“In many cases, women may suppress thoughts and emotions related to an abortion because they have not been able to process or openly discuss negative emotions,” Coleman added in a press release from the Elliot Institute.

Coleman pointed out that a modest estimate predicts some 130,000 new cases of abortion-related mental health problems each year.

A recent study out of New Zealand, conducted by a pro-abortion researcher, found no evidence that abortion provided any mental health benefits to women, while many studies have shown profound negative consequences for women who succumb to Planned Parenthood’s propaganda.

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