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Planned Parenthood: The Bigger Picture

by The Association of Mature American Citizens    |     Found in the Simply Jedediah category

Jedediah Bila

By Jedediah Bila, Author and Political Commentator

Planned Parenthood has once again proven what many know all too well:  the organization’s mission, despite its charming title, has little to nothing to do with family planning or parenthood.

Footage released on December 9, 2009 from a Live Action undercover investigation in Appleton, WI titled The Rosa Acuna Project, reveals a Planned Parenthood counselor and an abortion doctor providing medically inaccurate, misleading information to a female “patient” in order to encourage her to have an abortion.  Some of the more alarming statements include:  “It’s not a baby at this stage or anything like that,” “You know, women die having babies,” and an insistence that the “fetus” does not possess a heartbeat, but rather a “heart tone.”  According to Live Action, leading embryologists Dianne Irving and Ward Kischer have labeled the statements by the counselor and doctor in the video “scientifically erroneous and absurd.”  The video complements former Texas Planned Parenthood clinic director Abby Johnson’s declaration that “Planned Parenthood really tries to instill in their employees and the women that are coming in for abortions that this is not a baby, that this is just a mass of cells.”

This is not the first time Live Action, a self-proclaimed non-violent “youth led movement dedicated to building a culture of life and ending abortion…” has brought Planned Parenthood’s dishonorable activities to our attention.  Their summer 2008 Mona Lisa Project exposed several acts of negligence on the part of Planned Parenthood to report cases of statutory rape.  In another Live Action undertaking, Planned Parenthood clinics in Ohio and Idaho were eagerly willing to accept donations from a caller—an undercover actor—who wished to ensure that his/her money was targeted toward aborting African-American babies.  Despite these occurrences, Planned Parenthood snatched $349.6 million of government funding in 2007-2008.  Visit Live Action’s national Planned Parenthood Violations Map for a peek into what your hard-earned tax dollars have really been up to.

Although these findings are heinous enough, there is a bigger picture that must be acknowledged.  Planned Parenthood has been long championed by the left as an honorable protector of women’s rights in much the same manner that the National Organization for Women—despite a single-issue, pro-abortion agenda and an ongoing commitment to crucify pro-life females—has been promoted as a beacon of feminism.  The results?  Thousands of women flock to Planned Parenthood each day with the false expectation of impartial guidance and sound medical advice.  They join NOW because their college Female Studies professors—and the NOW website—tell them that Sarah Palin “is a woman who opposes women’s rights.”  And ultimately, they head to the voting booths and pull the lever for the likes of Barack Obama because academia failed to mention that feminism and ownership of one’s body has everything to do with personal responsibility and the gift of womanhood, and nothing to do with the left’s sanctimonious right to kill.  FYI—NOW, the supposed champion of the rights of all women, features a page on their website devoted to “Fighting the Right Wing.”

Planned Parenthood, NOW, and the “feminist” left have long been the architects of a powerful disservice to women in the name of protecting them.  The distortions should not and cannot be tolerated, so let me break down just a few final equations:

Planned + Parenthood = Abortion Crusade.

NOW + Feminist Left = Oppression of Pro-Life Voices.

And while I’m at it, Hope + Change = Government Overtake of Your Liberty.

There comes a time to say enough is enough. That time is now.

Jedediah Bila is an author and commentator living in New York City. She holds a Master of Arts from Columbia University and completed her first novel in December of 2009. For more information on Jedediah, please visit JedediahBila.com.

Obama Speech Fact Check

* Posted September 10th, 2009 at 4.43pm in Health Care.

Fact checking President Barack Obama’s health care speech from last night, the Associated Press reports: “The president’s speech to Congress contained a variety of oversimplifications and omissions in laying out what he wants to do about health insurance.” That is an understatement. We counted no less than 10 spurious claims made by the President, including:

1. OBAMA: “There are now more than thirty million American citizens who cannot get coverage.”

THE FACTS: On August 8th, President Obama said: “Reform is obviously essential for the 46 million Americans who don’t have health insurance.” So did 16 million uninsured people just disappear in the span of two months? Not quite. The problem is that the 46 million number was always highly misleading and the new 30 million number isn’t much better. According to an analysis based on the 2007 Census data there were 45.7 million uninsured people in the U.S. in 2007. But 9.3 million of those were non-citizens. Another 6.4 million actually are enrolled in Medicaid but mistakenly tell the Census they have no health insurance. Another 4.3 million are eligible for Medicaid or SCHIP but have not signed up. Another 10 million have no insurance, but also make more than 3X the poverty level. That means only 15.6 million U.S. citizens with incomes below 300% of poverty and that are nor already eligible for taxpayer-subsidized health insurance, are uninsured.

2. OBAMA: “First, if you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance through your job, Medicare, Medicaid, or the VA, nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have. Let me repeat this: nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have.”

THE FACTS: First, the statement is just false. According to the America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) 4.5 million Americans are covered by Health Savings Accounts. H.R. 3200 gives the Secretary of Health and Human Services the authority to make such plans illegal. In both the House Energy and Commerce Committee mark up and the House Ways and Means Committee mark up, Republicans offered amendments that would have guaranteed Americans’ right to keep their Health Saving’s account. All of these amendments were defeated by Democrats on their respective committees. These 4.5 million Americans will lose their insurance under Obamacare

Second, Americans should never forget that Obama is a lawyer. Here is how Obama used to issue the same promise: “Under the reform we’re proposing, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.” See the difference? Obama used to promise that under his plan “you can keep your doctor.” But now Americans are only promised that nothing in the plan “requires you to change what you have.” This is a night and day difference. Obama is correct that nothing in H.R. 3200 requires people to change their insurance. But H.R. 3200 does allow all businesses to shift their employees into the public plan over time. Under a strong public plan 88.1 million people would be shifted from their employer-sponsored coverage to the federal plan.

3. OBAMA: “And insurance companies will be required to cover, with no extra charge, routine checkups and preventive care … That makes sense, it saves money, and it saves lives.”

THE FACTS: Preventative care does not save money. So says the Congressional Budget Office and so says the New England Journal of Medicine.

4. OBAMA: “That’s why under my plan, individuals will be required to carry basic health insurance – just as most states require you to carry auto insurance.”

THE FACTS: No states require all adults, let alone all citizens, to carry auto insurance. Only those who choose to exercise their privilege to drive are required to purchase auto insurance. Even with that requirement, many still don’t. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), a federal individual mandate for health insurance would be unique and unprecedented because it would “impose a duty on individuals as members of society” and would “require people to purchase a specific service that would be heavily regulated” by the government. According to President Barack Obama HHS nominee Dr. Sherry Glied: “Developing a system to promptly identify and penalize scofflaws will take effort and ingenuity, particularly in our diverse and mobile country. It may require a degree of intrusiveness and bureaucracy that some will find unpalatable.”

5. OBAMA: “There are also those who claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false – the reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.”

THE FACTS: H.R. 3200 does not explicitly pay for health benefits for illegal immigrants. It never has, and no one has ever said that it did. The issue is enforcement and the provisions in H.R. 3200 are completely inadequate to ensure that illegal immigrants do not illegally obtain health care through the bill. In the House Ways and Means mark up of H.R. 3200, Rep. Dean Heller (R-NV) introduced an amendment that would use two citizenship status verification systems, the Income and Eligibility Verification System (IEVS) and Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) programs, to establish an individual’s eligibility to obtain the bill’s proposed affordability credits or enroll in the public insurance option. Both programs are currently used to determine citizenship status and eligibility for other public assistance programs. The Heller amendment failed on a straight party-line vote.

6. OBAMA: “And one more misunderstanding I want to clear up – under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place.”

THE FACTS: In all four mark-ups of health care legislation (three in the House and one in the Senate), Conservatives have offered amendments that would have specifically prohibited federal funds from being used to cover abortion. None of them passed. Instead, the House Energy and Commerce Committee passed an amendment by Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA) that actually requires at least one insurance plan to cover abortion in every geographical region and requires the newly-created public plan to cover all abortion services. Furthermore, President Obama told Planned Parenthood on July17, 2007: “We’re going to set up a public plan that all persons and all women can access if they don’t have health insurance. It will be a plan that will provide all essential services, including reproductive services.” Candidate Obama either was not telling the truth to Planned Parenthood then or President Obama is not telling the truth to the American people now.

7. OBAMA: “They argue that these private companies can’t fairly compete with the government. And they’d be right if taxpayers were subsidizing this public insurance option. But they won’t be. I have insisted that like any private insurance company, the public insurance option would have to be self-sufficient and rely on the premiums it collects.”

THE FACTS: Obama refutes his own argument in the same paragraph: “It would also keep pressure on private insurers to keep their policies affordable and treat their customers better, the same way public colleges and universities provide additional choice and competition to students without in any way inhibiting a vibrant system of private colleges and universities.” No public university is self-sufficient. None of them rely solely on student tuition. All of them require taxpayer subsidies every year.

8. OBAMA: “I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits – either now or in the future. Period. And to prove that I’m serious, there will be a provision in this plan that requires us to come forward with more spending cuts if the savings we promised don’t materialize.”

THE FACTS: According to the Congressional Budget Office, not only does H.R. 3200 increase the deficit by $239 billion in just the first ten years, but CBO director Doug Elmendorf told Congress that the bills crafted by House leaders and the Senate health committee “significantly expands the federal responsibility for health care costs.” And according to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, H.R. 3200 would run a $1,010 billion deficit in the second decade.

9. OBAMA: “Reducing the waste and inefficiency in Medicare and Medicaid will pay for most of this plan.”

THE FACTS: The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that Title VI of the House bill dealing with Medicare program integrity will save just $1.3 billion over ten years. That is roughly how much Medicare spends in a single day. CBO estimates ZERO savings from Subtitle F in the House bill that deals with Medicaid program integrity.

10. OBAMA: “This reform will charge insurance companies a fee for their most expensive policies, which will encourage them to provide greater value for the money – an idea which has the support of Democratic and Republican experts. And according to these same experts, this modest change could help hold down the cost of health care for all of us in the long-run.”

THE FACTS: These “fees” are nothing more than taxes hidden behind a thin veil of “fairness” rhetoric. They would actually fall on ordinary Americans, not insurance executives or stockholders. When you buy something that is subject to a sales tax who pays the tax – you or the vendor? Just look at the line “sales tax” on your bill. And if you tax insurance companies the cost is passed through in the same way.

* Author: Conn Carroll
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* Tagged with abortion
* illegal immigration
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* individual mandates
* Obama Health Care Plan
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The Rise and Fall of Tyranny – Part 2 – The Traits and Tactics of Tyranny
May 28th, 2009 |

Once tyranny is established in a nation, how does it perpetuate itself? Again, let us use Biblical references for a foundation to find the answer to this question. In John 8:44 Jesus says, “You are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father you will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.” In John 10:10a Jesus tells us, “The thief comes not, but for to steal, to kill and to destroy:…”

The first tyrant was the devil. The Lord Jesus Christ tells us his tactics as stated above. First, the devil is “a murderer.” He steals, kills and destroys. Next, the devil is “a liar.” By means of deception, he herds people into perverted lifestyles. We see this happening before our very eyes. This has been going on for some time. Homosexual lifestyles, abortion on demand and the like that are corrupting our nation, are based on lies. Then, the devil goes about as “a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.” He also comes as “an angel of light to deceive.”

Lenin is an example of a person who was controlled by the devil. As we stated in part 1, a tyrant rises out of lawlessness. Tyranny cannot take root and grow in a nation that has absolute standards of right and wrong. Our Founding Fathers fought tyrants. For this reason, they gave us a constitutional republican form of government with checks and balances, rather than a democracy, to safeguard us against tyrants. A democracy leads to anarchy. A constitutional republic based on the ten commandments leads to a stable law abiding society. To perpetuate themselves, tyrants must destroy our form of government. A tyrant must have absolute control over everyone to administer his evil empire. He must have people who will administer his wicked schemes.>

Lenin’s diabolical plan that was used to bring a nation under tyrannical control is stated in his “Blueprint for World Dominion.” His first overt act against a nation was to corrupt its youth. He instructed his mindless followers to destroy the youths’ morals by getting them involved in drugs, alcohol and sex as well as getting them addicted to privileges and rights. Then he instructed them to take complete control of all mass media and thus control the peoples’ minds, then they were to encourage public indifference to their government, to encourage public bickering so they would fight one another, to seize power and censor anyone who disagreed with them, to bankrupt the government, to destroy national values by ridiculing religion, patriotism and honesty, to take control of its guns to disarm its citizens, to undermine their armed forces and to cause the people to desire peace at any cost. When you see an organization or government doing the things listed above, you are looking at a system that is rules by the brute force of a tyrant. The only way tyranny can perpetuate itself is to constantly keep the people in a state of confusion with a well organized war against their moral and spiritual values.

My book, Deceitful Masters, in Part III, Chapter 3 shows the traits of tyranny. You may want to check out my website at http://www.DeceitfulMasters.com that shows you how to protect yourself against the tyranny that is fast coming upon us.

Feel free to buy a copy of my book, “Deceitful Masters” from Amazon.com.

Dear Gilbert,

I was interviewed by FOX News this morning (watch it here) discussing the reports that Justice David Souter is about to tender his resignation from the Supreme Court to President Obama.  (I’m scheduled to be on The Sean Hannity Show tonight as well.)

Any time there is a shift of personnel on the Supreme Court of the United States, it has significant consequences. 

Although Justice Souter was appointed by former (Republican) President George H.W. Bush, he tended to vote with the liberal wing of the Supreme Court of the United States.

President Obama’s upcoming appointment will likely serve for three decades.  It should be no surprise that the President’s judicial philosophy will be reflected in his Supreme Court nominee. 

This being said, the reality is that a Justice Souter replacement will more than likely maintain a strict view of church-state separation, will apply international precedence to the U.S. Constitution, and will be strongly in favor of abortion rights.

It is also important to note that while the Constitution gives the President the authority to nominate and appoint, the same Constitution gives the Senate the role of advice and consent.  While it is true that there is almost a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, it is imperative that there be fair and open hearings exploring the judicial philosophy of the nominee.  One critical question that must be asked concerns the role of the judge in our constitutional republic.
 
Any nominee the President puts forward must understand his or her role as judge -specifically, that he or she is NOT to be serving in a legislative capacity. 

Based on what the President has stated during the campaign, I have serious concerns about the nature of the next nominee, specifically with regard to judicial philosophy. 

I have already instructed our office of Governmental Affairs in Washington, D.C., as well as our Senior Research Counsels, to begin the preparation process to review each and every opinion of any nominee to the Court.  We will probe the judicial philosophy and the Court’s opinions in order to understand the nature and temperament of the President’s nominee.

There is no doubt this will be another significant change for the Supreme Court … and the future of our nation.  The fact is that the Constitution must be followed.

Thank you for your support.  Visit www.aclj.org and listen to Jay Sekulow Live! today and next week - we’ll be releasing more details as they become available.