House Democrats Reach Deal on Pro-Abortion Health Care Bill, Fall Vote Expected
By Steven Ertelt, LifeNews.com Editor, July 29, 2009
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) – Democrats in the House of Representatives have reached a deal on a health care bill that had the backing of party leaders but opposition from moderate members. The new deal paves the way for a committee vote this week, but a full House vote is not expected until the fall.
With the Senate also waiting until after the August Congressional recess to vote on its health care restructuring bill, pro-life advocates have more time to generate support for amendments to the bill or opposition if those changes fail to materialize.
The pro-life movement opposes the government-run health care plan as the bills in Congress currently stand.
There are dual concerns that the bills would promote taxpayer funding of abortions and insurance coverage mandates and other concerns that it would lead to health care rationing for seniors and the disabled.
Lawmakers in both the House and Senate have proposed more than 30 amendments to the bills and pro-abortion Democrats have opposed those amendments each time.
The deal has some moderate Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee supporting its version of the government-run health care plan in exchange for lowering the costs and exempting small businesses with a payroll less than $500,000 from paying for any government-sponsored health coverage.
Some of the moderate Democrats who are pro-life have already written to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that they will not support any bill that does not include specific language making sure it does not include abortion funding and insurance coverage mandates.
The deal reached today concerns unrelated issues and does not address their worries and, as a result, pro-life groups are still pushing for amendments in the committee. Continue reading
Pope Ends Vacation
29-July-2009 — ZENIT.org News Agency
INTROD, Italy – Benedict XVI will bid farewell to the Italian Alps on Wednesday, ending his annual vacation with a meeting with Salesian youth.
The Pope will receive these young people as a sign of his appreciation for the welcome offered him in the Salesian residence of Les Combes of Introd. He has been staying there since arriving July 13 to northern Italy.
According to Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Vatican press office, the Holy Father will also express his gratitude to the authorities of the region and the people of Introd, the police force, military personnel, civil security, firefighters and all those who collaborated in ensuring a restful stay.
He will also “bid farewell to the children and residents of Les Combes,” Father Lombardi added in declarations today.
In addition, the spokesman reported that Introd’s city council has “decided to offer the Holy Father honorary citizenship.” This is to be followed by an official response detailing the Holy Father’s acceptance of the honor. And in upcoming months, a “delegation will go to Rome for the official conveying.”
More details
Father Lombardi also revealed to the Italian satellite TV station SkyTG24 details about the July 17 fall that led to the Holy Father fracturing his right wrist.
“The Pope got up in the night in a room that he is not accustomed to — different than his room in Rome — and in the dark, he looked for the light switch. He tripped over one of the legs of the bed, fell and injured his wrist,” the spokesman explained.
The Holy Father didn’t call for help in that moment, Father Lombardi added. “Later, the next morning, he saw that his wrist was swollen and it was still hurting.”
Nevertheless, he wanted to celebrate Mass, he had breakfast and afterward, at about 9 in the morning, he was taken to the hospital in Aosta, where he had surgery to repair the fracture.
When the Pontiff arrives to Rome on Wednesday, he will go directly to Castel Gandolfo, where he will spend the rest of the summer.
http://www.ewtn.com/vnews/getstory.asp?number=96834
ENOUGH ALREADY! Iowa Woman’s Answer to Highly Visible Obama–Sell Her TV Sets
Daily Times Herald, IOWA, July 29, 2009
A 78-year-old Carroll woman says she’s so tired of seeing President Barack Obama on the airwaves that she’s selling her television sets – two of them.
Deloris Nissen, a retired nurses’ aide and former Kmart employee who was raised on a farm near Audubon, placed a classified advertisement with The Daily Times Herald for Friday’s paper.
In the $5.50 ad, Nissen tells readers she has two television sets for sale.
The reason: “Obama on every channel and station.”
In an interview Nissen said she is serious about selling two TVs – and genuine about her disgust with what she believes to be an overexposed president.
“I just got tired of watching him on every channel,” Nissen said. “I thought, my gosh, does he ever stay at the White House?”
Nissen, who voted for U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in the 2008 presidential election, said she could live with seeing Obama come on television to make serious announcements. But he seems to be on all the time, Nissen said.
When the president does appear on a channel she happens to be watching, Nissen said, she quickly turns. Continue reading
Constitutionally Astute U.S. Soldier Demands Apology From US Sen. (McCaskill) at Missouri Town Hall
“Her oath took her to Washington.
My oath took me overseas with a rifle.”
FRC Counters ‘Harry & Louise’ Health Care Ads
“They won’t pay for my surgery,
but we’re forced to pay for abortions.”
DO ELITES EVER LISTEN TO THEMSELVES? ‘We Must Immediately Curtail Carbon Emissions, or Face Planetary Destruction’
By Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, July 30, 2009
Scolding Americans for our various sins is proving popular among an elite group of self-appointed moralists.
Take well-meaning environmentalists who warn us that our plush lifestyles heat up and pollute the planet. To listen to former vice president Al Gore or New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, we must immediately curtail our carbon emissions – or face planetary destruction.
Yet these influential prophets of doom do not have lives remotely similar to the lesser folk they lecture. From time to time, Al Gore hops on a private jet – and purchases “carbon offsets” as penances for the privilege. His mansion not long ago consumed more energy in a month than the average American home does in a year. Friedman lives on a sprawling estate reminiscent of the grandees of the 18th-century English countryside.
The rest of us would find these environmental scolds more convincing if they chose to live modestly in average tract homes. That way they could limit their energy consumption and provide living proof to us of how smaller is better for an endangered planet earth.
Elite critics in the business of racial grievance offer the same contradictions.
Recently, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates got into a spat with a white policeman who arrested him in his own home for disorderly conduct. Gates immediately cried racism. He argued that his own plight was emblematic of the burdens that the black underclass endures daily from a racist white America.
But Gates is one of the highest-paid humanities professors in the United States. And Gates – not the middle-class Cambridge, Mass., white cop – engaged in shouting and brought up race. Within hours, the African-American mayor of Cambridge, the African-American governor of Massachusetts, and the African-American president of the United States all rallied to their chum’s side.
Yet this well-connected, well-paid Harvard resident apparently wants us to believe that he is living under something like the United States of many decades ago.
Indeed, citing racial grievance at times proves a valuable asset for wealthy celebrities. Michael Jackson and O. J. Simpson posed as victims of various racial oppressions when they found themselves in self-created legal problems. Another race-baiter, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright retreats to his three-story mansion on a golf course after his day job of denouncing whites as exploiters.
Then we have other aristocrats on the barricades railing about the economic inequality of America. Former senator John Edwards preached about “two Americas”: one poor and abandoned, one wealthy and connected. Edwards should know, since he built himself a multimillion-dollar gargantuan mansion in which he might better contemplate upon the underprivileged outside his compound.
Sen. Chris Dodd sermonizes about corporate greed and credit-card companies’ near extortion. But Dodd managed to squeeze out of the corporate world a low-interest loan, a sweetheart deal for a vacation home in Ireland, and thousands in campaign donations.
Former senator and cabinet nominee Tom Daschle was a big proponent of hiking taxes to nationalize our health-care system. But the populist Daschle both hated paying taxes and loved limousines – and so he avoided the former but welcomed the latter.
In the old days, critics for the most part of what we called the “system” were at least blue-collar workers, underpaid teachers, or grassroots politicians whose rather modest lives matched their angry populist rhetoric. Now the most vehement critics of America’s purported sins are among the upper classes. And their parlor game has confused Americans about why they are being called polluters, racists, and exploiters by those who have fared the best in America.
Do the wealthy and the powerful lecture us about our wrongs because they know their own insider status ensures that they are exempt from the harsh medicine they advocate for others? Millionaire Gore is not much affected by higher taxes for his cap-and-trade crusade.
Or does the hypocrisy grow out of a sort of class snobbery? Do elites hector the crass middle class because it lacks their own taste, rare insight, and privileged style? Judging from the police report, Gates seemed flabbergasted that the white Cambridge cop did not know who he was “messing” with.
Or is the new hypocrisy an eerie sort of psychological compensation at work? Perhaps the more Al Gore rails about carbon emissions, the more he can without guilt enjoy what emits them. The more Professor Gates can cite racism, the more he himself is paid to spot it. And the more a Tom Daschle wants to tax and spend for health care, the less badly he feels about his own chauffer and tax avoidance?
Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a recipient of the 2007 National Humanities Medal. © 2009 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
NRO EDITORIAL: Incurable Obamacare
By the Editors, National Review Online, July 30, 2009
The public option is certainly a weakness of the current House Democrats’ bill, one that could destroy the private-insurance market over time. But the rest of the bill takes the same federal-government-knows-best approach. It uses mandates on employers and individuals to force tens of millions of Americans to buy the level of insurance coverage the federal government demands. For those who cannot afford this level, it offers subsidies in the form of a new entitlement. And it increases the federal role in telling doctors and hospitals what constitutes appropriate medical practice.
The mandates — effectively, they are taxes — will reduce wages, limit new hires, and increase prices. The subsidies, enormously expensive from the outset, can be expected to grow with time to cover a larger and larger share of the population, just as Medicaid has done, and for the same political reasons. And having the government dictate medical practice worsens care and will inevitably lead to rationing.
Even without the public option, liberal health legislation fails the basic tests laid out by President Obama himself. He has called for universal coverage and reduced costs. But requiring people to purchase health insurance, even with subsidies, does not mean that all people will have health insurance, as Massachusetts residents have recently learned. The Congressional Budget Office reports that even the government-run option would leave us with 17 million uninsured. Meanwhile, it is getting harder and harder to find anyone who can repeat the administration’s lines about “bending the cost curve” with a straight face.
If Obamacare is enacted without a new surtax, its immense costs will lead to tax increases soon enough. If it is enacted without a public plan, the federal government will nonetheless be paying a bigger and bigger share of a larger and larger number of people’s health-insurance bills. What we have here, in other words, are amendments that change the speed rather than the direction of the legislation.
Conservative arguments have made great headway in making the Democrats defensive about a public plan. But removing a single objectionable feature from Obamacare does not make the overall package any less intrusive or ineffective. It’s still a pig, even if the Democrats have started taking out their lipstick.
PERKINS: The Naked Politics of Liberal Stimulus; Rallying for Family Health
Tony Perkins, Family Research Council, July 29, 2009
The Naked Politics of Liberal Stimulus
Despite the questionable impact of the first stimulus package, there is actually discussion of a second stimulus package. So far, the states have spent roughly 10 percent of the $787 billion package, but it has yet to register on the “recovery” radar. In fact, the only thing that seems to have changed is the unemployment rate–and not in the direction the President had hoped.
Given where the money’s been directed, maybe none of us should be surprised. Mark Kelly of the Heritage Foundation did some digging on where the House Speaker funneled her District’s dollars, and the list of projects is enough to send taxpayers through the roof. Let me put it this way: Nancy Pelosi is trying to stimulate a lot more than San Francisco’s economy. While the average American is worried about losing his shirt, Congress is funding actors who aren’t wearing any!
According to Kelly, $50,000 was sent to an initiative called CounterPulse in San Francisco that just sponsored a “Perverts [Sleep Around]” event on July 25, urging people to “Join your fellow pervs for some explicit, twisted fun!” Another $50,000 went directly to an entertainment group called Frameline that concentrates on promoting the “lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community” in the arts.
Over at “San Francisco Cinematheque,” organizers raked in $25,000 to promote documentaries like “Thundercrack,” of which a reviewer writes, “Witness if you dare, the world’s only underground kinky art porno horror film, complete with four men, three women and a gorilla.” A company called Jess Curtis/Gravity, Inc. will receive $25,000, presumably to help boost their Symmetry Project, which features nude couples in compromising positions.
Other programs are too crude and embarrassing to even mention. But shouldn’t that say something to the third most powerful leader in America? If these projects are too obscene to talk about, what business does the U.S. government have funding them? This isn’t just waste–it’s reckless, indecent garbage sponsored by Congress and paid for by you. If these are the priorities of America’s new leadership, then we should definitely get a second opinion on their vision for an issue as significant as health care. For more on Pelosi’s “waste” line, visit Mark’s blog at markkelly.posterous.com.
Mark Kelly: Stimulus spending links for Speaker Pelosi’s district.
Rallying for Family Health
Just how concerned are Americans about the President’s health care “reform”? Well, if last night’s webcast is any indication, this issue has completely exploded. Thanks to all of you who tuned in, FRC Action had over 76,000 streams for Tuesday night’s program, which featured a great mix of Hill insiders and health care experts. The demand for the webcast completely exceeded our expectations, so I apologize to those of you who experienced technical difficulties. Our servers were so overwhelmed that there was sometimes a delay for people trying to access the event. If you missed the program or if you didn’t catch the whole stream, it’s available in its entirety at www.frcaction.org/takeover.
Rest assured that we are working out the kinks so that our system can accommodate tens of thousands of viewers in the future. In the meantime, we’re grateful to everyone who participated and appreciate your interest. The FRC team looks forward to keeping your family updated on this and other issues with more events like this one. You can also go to FRC Action’s site and view our TV ad that was shown for the first time last night.
WILLIAMS: Exploiting Public Ignorance–What We’re Witnessing Today is A Massive Escalation in White House and Congressional Thuggery!
….Where in the U.S. Constitution is Congress given the authority to do anything about the economy? . . . the Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt administrations …(intervened) in the economy. As a result, they turned what might have been a two or three-year sharp downturn into a 16-year depression that ended in 1946….
Walter E. Williams, TownHall.com, July 29, 2009
How can political commentators, politicians and academics get away with statements like “Reagan budget deficits,” “Clinton budget surplus,” “Bush budget deficits” or “Obama’s tax increases”?
The only answer is that they, or the people who believe such statements, are ignorant, conniving or just plain stupid. Article I, Section 7 of the U.S. Constitution reads: “All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other Bills.” A president has no power to raise or lower taxes. He can propose tax measures or veto them but since Congress can ignore presidential proposals and override a presidential veto, it has the ultimate taxing power. The same principle applies to spending. A president cannot spend a dime that Congress does not first appropriate. As such, presidents cannot be held responsible for budget deficits or surpluses. That means that credit for a budget surplus or blame for budget deficits rests on the congressional majority at the time.
Thinking about today’s massive deficits, we might ask: Where in the U.S. Constitution is Congress given the authority to do anything about the economy? Between 1787 and 1930, we have had both mild and severe economic downturns that have ranged from one to seven years. During that time there was no thought that Congress should enact New Deal legislation or stimulus packages along with massive corporate handouts. It took the Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt administrations to massively intervene in the economy. As a result, they turned what might have been a two or three-year sharp downturn into a 16-year depression that ended in 1946. How they accomplished that is covered very well in a book authored by Jim Powell titled “FDR’s Folly.” Here’s my question: Were the presidents in office and congresses assembled from 1787 to 1930 ignorant of their constitutional authority to manage and save the economy?
If you asked President Obama or a congressman to cite the specific constitutional authority for the bailouts, handouts and corporate takeover, I’d bet the rent money that they would say that their authority lies in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution that reads: “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Impost, Excises to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States.”
They’d tell you that their authority comes from the Constitution’s “general welfare” clause. James Madison, the father of our constitution, explained, “If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the general welfare, the government is no longer a limited one possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one subject to particular exceptions.” He later added, “With respect to the two words ‘general welfare,’ I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.” Thomas Jefferson said, “Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated.” That means only those powers listed.
The Constitution provides, through Article V, a means by which the Constitution can be altered. My question to my fellow Americans whether they are liberal or conservative: Has the Constitution been amended to permit Congress to manage the economy?
I’d also ask that question to members of the U.S. Supreme Court. I personally know of no such amendment. What we’re witnessing today is nothing less than a massive escalation in White House and congressional thuggery.
Secure in the knowledge that the American people are compliant and willing to cast off the limitations imposed on Washington by the nation’s founders, future administrations are probably going to be even more emboldened than Obama and the current Congress.
Dr. Williams serves on the faculty of George Mason University as John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics and is the author of More Liberty Means Less Government: Our Founders Knew This Well.
http://townhall.com/columnists/WalterEWilliams/2009/07/29/exploiting
_public_ignorance
BIOETHICS DEFENSE FUND: Obamacare and YOUR Mandatory End-of-Life Consultation
Bioethics Defense Fund encourages you to educate yourself:
READ pages 424-434 of the Obama Administration’s Health Care Bill (H.R. 3200) and to be vigilant about this language making its way into compromise bills.
H.R. 3200 seems to give the government power to require “advance care planning consultations” for Medicare recipients to discuss future end-of-life decisions; (pp. 424-434). This consultation may result in “actionable medical orders” for future medical situations that can not be anticipated at the time the orders were written. Read it for yourself at the link below:
The House version of the Obama Health Care Plan provides:
What the bill does NOT say:
SUMMARY: This broad and imprecise bill is wide open to be interpreted as mandating “advanced care planning consultations” — giving the government unprecedented power in shaping who makes the decisions regarding your personal healthcare decisions after the age of 65.
Read the provisions of the bill for yourself here.
Bioethics Defense Fund
Human Rights from Beginning to End
www.BDFund.org
Founder’s Quote Daily
“If, from the more wretched parts of the old world, we look at those which are in an advanced stage of improvement, we still find the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry, and grasping the spoil of the multitude. Invention is continually exercised, to furnish new pretenses for revenues and taxation. It watches prosperity as its prey and permits none to escape without tribute.”
–Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1791
www.PatriotPost.us
GOSPEL & MEDITATION: Powerful Net
Father Ernest Daly, LC
Matthew 13: 47-53
Jesus said to his disciples: “The Kingdom of heaven is like a net thrown into the sea, which collects fish of every kind. When it is full they haul it ashore and sit down to put what is good into buckets. What is bad they throw away. Thus it will be at the end of the age. The angels will go out and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth. “Do you understand all these things?” They answered, “Yes.” And he replied, “Then every scribe who has been instructed in the Kingdom of heaven is like the head of a household who brings from his storeroom both the new and the old.” When Jesus finished these parables, he went away from there.
Introductory Prayer: Lord, I believe in your power. I know that you are the Lord of all history. I trust that you are guiding my life. Thank you for showing me that you will triumph. Thank you for the triumph you have already achieved in my heart and in the hearts of so many people. I want to allow you to have total control over my life.
Petition: Lord, help me to have confidence in the triumph of your Kingdom.
1. Nothing Escapes the Kingdom Christ is reminding us that all souls and all human history are encompassed in the vision of the Father. Both the good and the bad will be brought before him. He is able to see what good has been done and what evil. His power extends over all the failures and successes of human history. I should live with a confidence that God sees the good I do and will make my efforts to spread his love bear eternal fruit.
2. Evil Does Not Have the Last Word I should live with the confidence that evil does not have the last word. The mercy of God has imposed a limit on evil and the Lord will come one day to take away the power of evil. I should use my short time on earth – I should use today – to sow all the good I can, aware that this is what will stand steady at the coming of the eternal kingdom. I should not be so impressed by evil that it paralyzes me from doing good.
3. Already Home The Eucharist is an anticipation of God’s triumph. There we learn to trust that God holds the strings of human history. There his “net of love” brings his children together to feed and strengthen them. When I participate in the Mass my confidence in the Lord’s providence should grow. I should strive to bring others to the Eucharist as well, so they can experience the peace and happiness of anticipating heaven here on earth.
Conversation with Christ: Lord, I know you are all powerful. I believe that your Kingdom will triumph. I believe that you will come to judge the living and the dead. Help me to do all I can to bring others into your Kingdom so they can experience the joy that comes from knowing you and from living ready for the coming of your Kingdom.
Resolution: I will invite someone who is struggling in their faith or who has fallen away from the sacraments to join me this Sunday at Mass.
http://www.regnumchristi.org/english/articulos/articulo.phtml?se=363&ca=975&te=735&id=20302
SAINT OF THE DAY: ST. PETER CHRYSOLOGUS
CATHOLIC NEWS AGENCY, THURSDAY, JULY 30, 2009
St. Peter Chrysologus is a Doctor of the Church. He was born in Italy around 406 and was named archbishop of Ravenna in 439. There he encountered a strong pagan influence and many lapsed faithful. Through his efforts, many people returned to the faith and paganism was eradicated in Ravenna.
St. Peter was a very caring pastor and an excellent preacher. Due to his excellent homilies, the people gave him the name “Chrysologus” (of golden words). Many of these texts still exist. He died at the age of 44 in the year 450.
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/saint.php?n=546
Louisiana Cong. Steve Scalise Explains Health Care Reform, 7-28-09
Congressman Steve Scalise walks us through Nancy Pelosi’s proposed government take-over of health care as well as alternative solutions to reforming health care. Scalise, a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, is in the middle of the health care reform debate.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK!
“[T]he president’s response to Gatesgate actually sheds a lot of light on his approach to health care and other issues, for this reason: Obama adopts his positions before knowing what he is talking about.”
–columnist Mona Charen
Patriot Post, Wednesday Chronicle
Patriot Post, Wednesday Chronicle – Vol. 09 No. 30
INSIGHT
“To be ignorant of one’s ignorance is the malady of the ignorant.” –American teacher, writer and philosopher Bronson Alcott (1799-1888)
“Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action.” –German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1834)
“Back in the thirties we were told we must collectivize the nation because the people were so poor. Now we are told we must collectivize the nation because the people are so rich.” –American author and commentator William F. Buckley Jr. (1925-2008)
UPRIGHT
“Health care cannot be a right, because rights cannot come from government. At best, they can be protected by government. The founders understood this, which is why our Bill of Rights is really a list of restrictions on the government in Washington.” –National Review editor Jonah Goldberg
“Mr. Obama and the Democrats object to the rationing plan being called a rationing plan, so the only way to get a scheme like this past the public, which doesn’t always pay close attention early on, is to do it quickly before a lot of people notice.” –Washington Times editor emeritus Wesley Pruden
“Every doctor knows, as I did when I practiced years ago, how much unnecessary medical cost is incurred with an eye not on medicine but on the law. Tort reform would yield tens of billions in savings. Yet you cannot find it in the Democratic bills. And Obama breathed not a word about it in the full hour of his health-care news conference. Why? No mystery. The Democrats are parasitically dependent on huge donations from trial lawyers.” –columnist Charles Krauthammer
“We hear a lot of talk about eliminating waste and having more preventative health care. But the most powerful health care initiative we could get is the last thing they will propose: Traditional family values. The same values undermined by the liberal abortion regime and moral relativism they promote.” –columnist Star Parker
“Be wary of accepting government largesse. It doesn’t come free, and often accepting it takes away everything that is free. Melting into Washington’s powerful, caretaking arms will just suck incentive to work hard and chart our own course right out of us — and that not only contributes to an unstable economy and dizzying national debt, but it does make us less free.” –former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin
“Those of us who want to see racism on its way out need to realize that others benefit greatly from crying racism. They benefit politically, financially, and socially. Barack Obama has been allied with such people for decades.” –economist Thomas Sowell
Patriot Post, Wednesday Chronicle
Patriot Post, Wednesday Chronicle – Vol. 09 No. 30
THE FOUNDATION
“Fear is the foundation of most governments.” –John Adams
EDITORIAL EXEGESIS
“President Obama is pushing Congress to pass health care legislation that could nationalize as much as 10 percent of the economy. Most members of Congress will vote on this bill with no idea what’s in it. Rep. John Conyers Jr., Michigan Democrat, disparaged lawmakers for even pretending to read the laws they pass. ‘I love these members, they get up and say, “Read the bill,”‘ he said last week at the National Press Club. ‘What good is reading the bill if it’s a thousand pages and you don’t have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you’ve read the bill?’ Mr. Conyers might think it’s an antiquated notion that congressmen actually read legislation, but it is the most fundamental responsibility of elected representatives to know and understand laws and how they will affect the lives of their constituents. That is especially the case with such a gargantuan bill. The House version creates 53 new federal bureaucracies with everything from a Health Choices Administration to a Health Insurance Exchange Trust Fund to a Health Benefits Advisory Committee. Thirty-three entitlement programs are created or expanded. The notion is put to rest that government might cooperate with doctors and patients to work out what is best for providing care. The health care bill uses the assertive word ‘shall’ 1,683 times. These passages are government mandates that force doctors, consumers and others in the health care profession to do what Congress orders. The word ‘penalty’ is used 156 times for those who don’t follow orders. ‘Tax’ is referred to 172 times. Mr. Conyers is right about one thing: A legal education would come in handy when reading through this legislation. The bill is 1,018 pages long, very complicated and surely will cause legal disputes about its meaning for years to come.”
–The Washington Times
THE DEMO-GOGUES
Summer reading: “What good is reading the [health care] bill if it’s a thousand pages and you don’t have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?” –Rep. John Conyers (D-MI)
What’s in the bill: “We also want to start rewarding doctors for quality, not just the quantity of care that they provide. Instead of rewarding them for how many procedures they perform or how many tests they order, we’ll bundle payments so providers aren’t paid for every treatment they offer when they chronic — to a patient with a chronic condition like diabetes, but instead are paid for how are they managing that disease overall.”
–Barack Obama in a townhall meeting **Exactly how is BO or any of his elite minions authorized or qualified to decide the quality of a doctor’s care?
Again, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain: “My interest is not in getting between you and your doctor.” –Barack Obama during the same bogus Town hall meeting as the prior statement
The BIG Lie continues: “Here’s a guarantee that I’d make. If you have insurance that you like, then you will be able to keep that insurance. If you have a doctor that you like, you will be able to keep your doctor.” –Barack Obama **Not if the House has anything to do with the actual legislation.
Regulatory Commissars: “I’ve had people come to us and complain, ‘Well, if you do that, I can’t make any money.’ The answer is that’s not my job. We’re not here to help you make money. We are here to help have a system in which you will make money as an incident of your providing funds to those who will use it productively.” –Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) on regulating the financial industry
On Afghanistan: “I’m always worried about using the word victory, because, you know, it invokes this notion of Emperor Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur.” –commander in chief Barack Obama on winning (or not) in Afghanistan **Maybe Obama should Give Victory a Chance
Let them eat cake: “No, I don’t care. … I don’t know about ‘trust’ — I think I’m trusted. I certainly want to be trusted. I’m not particularly concerned if I’m liked.” –House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on being extremely unpopular
Stuck on stupid: “If I was trying to jigger — well, I guess this is my house now. So it probably wouldn’t happen. But let’s say my old house in Chicago. Here I’d get shot.” –Barack Obama on the flap over Henry Louis Gates’ arrest
Thug: “I’m from Chicago. I don’t break.” –Barack Obama
Obama’s Science Czar Said a Born Baby ‘Will Ultimately Develop Into a Human Being’
House Office of Science and Technology Policy
“The fetus, given the opportunity to develop properly before birth, and given the essential early socializing experiences and sufficient nourishing food during the crucial early years after birth, will ultimately develop into a human being,” John P. Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, wrote in “Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions.”
Holdren co-authored the book with Stanford professors Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich. The book was published by W.H. Freeman and Company.
At the time “Human Ecology” was published, Holdren was a senior research fellow at the California Institute of Technology. Paul Ehrlich, currently president of The Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford, is also author of the 1968 bestseller, “The Population Bomb,” a book The Washington Post said “launched the popular movement for zero population growth.”
“Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions” argued that the human race faced dire consequences unless human population growth was stopped.
“Human values and institutions have set mankind on a collision course with the laws of nature,” wrote the Ehrlichs and Holdren. “Human beings cling jealously to their prerogative to reproduce as they please—and they please to make each new generation larger than the last—yet endless multiplication on a finite planet is impossible. Most humans aspire to greater material prosperity, but the number of people that can be supported on Earth if everyone is rich is even smaller than if everyone is poor.”
The specific passage expressing the authors’ view that a baby “will ultimately develop into a human being” is on page 235 in chapter 8 of the book, which is titled “Population Limitation.”
At the time the book was written, the Supreme Court had not yet issued its Roe v. Wade decision, and the passage in question was part of a subsection of the “Population Limitation” chapter that argued for legalized abortion.
http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=51676
Bully Boys: A Brief History of White House Thuggery
Six months into the Obama administration, it should now be clear to all Americans: Hope and Change came to the White House wrapped in brass knuckles.
Ask the Congressional Budget Office. Last week, President Obama spilled the beans on the “Today Show” that he had met with CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf — just as the number crunchers were casting ruinous doubt on White House cost-saving claims. Yes, question the timing.
The CBO is supposed to be a neutral scorekeeper — not a water boy for the White House. But when the meeting failed to stop the CBO from issuing more analysis undercutting the health care savings claims, Obama’s budget director Peter Orszag played the heavy.
Orszag warned the CBO in a public letter that it risked feeding the perception that it was “exaggerating costs and underestimating savings.” Message: Leave the number fudging to the boss. Capiche?
Obama issued an even more explicit order to unleash the hounds on Blue Dog Democrats during his health care press conference. “Keep up the heat” translated into Organizing for America/Democratic National Committee attack ads on moderate Democrats who have revolted against Obamacare’s high costs and expansive government powers over medical decisions.
Looks like there won’t be a health care beer summit anytime soon.
The CBO and the Blue Dogs got off easy compared to inspectors general targeted by Team Obama goons. Former AmeriCorps inspector general Gerald Walpin was slimed as mentally incompetent (“confused” and “disoriented”) after blowing the whistle on several cases of community service tax fraud, including the case of Obama crony Kevin Johnson. Johnson is the NBA star turned Sacramento mayor who ran a federally funded nonprofit group employing AmeriCorps volunteers, who were exploited to perform campaign work for Johnson and to provide personal services (car washes, errands) to Johnson and his staff.
Walpin filed suit last week to get his job back — and to defend the integrity and independence of inspectors general system-wide. But he faces hardball tactics from both the West Wing and the East Wing, where first lady Michelle Obama has been intimately involved in personnel decisions at AmeriCorps, according to youth service program insiders.
At the Environmental Protection Agency, top Obama officials muzzled veteran researcher Alan Carlin, who dared to question the conventional wisdom on global warming. The economist with a physics degree was trashed as a non-scientist know-nothing.
Obama Treasury officials forced banks to take TARP bailout money they didn’t want and obstructed banks that wanted to pay back TARP money from doing so. The administration strong-armed Chrysler creditors and Chrysler dealers using politicized tactics that united both House Democrats and Republicans, who passed an amendment last week reversing Obama on the closure of nearly 800 Chrysler dealerships and more than 2,000 GM dealerships.
At the Justice Department, Obama lawyers are now blocking a House inquiry into the suspicious decision to dismiss default judgments against radical New Black Panther Party activists who intimidated voters and poll workers on Election Day in Philadelphia. The DOJ is preventing Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., from meeting with the trial team in the case. Wolf has been pressing for answers on what communications Attorney General Eric Holder and his deputies conducted with third-party interest groups and other political appointees about the case. So far: radio silence.
In the mafia culture, bully boys depend on a code of silence and allegiance — omerta — not only among their brethren, but also from the victims. The victims of Obama thugocracy are no longer cooperating. Perhaps it won’t be long until some of the enforcers start to sing, too.
The Pro-Life Movement and the Heath Care Bill
Here’s a YouTube video on the subject:
Mark Shea: My MSM Rules of Thumb
….Bear all that in mind whenever the press covers Benedict too. Sending an MSM journalist to report on the Faith is like sending a color-blind man to do an art review. They can see, but they can’t (and often won’t) perceive because the major factor in the story—the gospel of Jesus Christ—is inaccessible and inconvenient to them….
Posted By Mark Shea, Catholic Exchange, July 29, 2009
Rule One: Take off 50 IQ points whenever the Mainstream Media (MSM) covers religion, and bump that up to about 100 points whenever the religion is the Catholic Church.
Exhibit A: Some months back Pope Benedict gave a homily during Ordinary Time restating basic Catholic teaching about our duty as stewards of the earth to care for the natural world. It was absolutely Not News to anybody with a passing familiarity with Catholic teaching. So how did the MSM treat it?
They explained that Benedict had chosen to wear green vestments to emphasize his new role as the “Green Pope”.
It is to laugh—or weep.
But of course, ignorance doesn’t explain everything.
For good measure, you should also remember Rule 2: Sometimes naked cowardice and the urge to bully is what prompts a story.
This becomes more urgent as Radical Islam continues to press on the West and chicken-hearted journalists want to feel brave in the face of theocratic fascism but don’t want to, you know, actually do something requiring bravery.
Solution: mock the Catholic Church, because Rome does not issue fatwas.
Recognizing this immunizes you against a lot of pain and frustration. When some clever people in San Francisco advertise the Folsom Street Fair (“the world’s largest leather event”) with a billboard depicting the Last Supper as a kinky gay-sadomasochist fete complete with sex toys, you don’t have to spend a lot of useless energy wondering why the MSM has absolutely nothing to say, but spends a huge amount of time carefully tiptoeing around Muslim sensitivities by not reprinting the Danish cartoons.
You already know: Cowards insult people whose creed commands them to turn the other cheek, not people who threaten to kill them.
This combination of ignorance and cowardice explains why—when there are a half a dozen spiritual guides such as St. John of the Cross or Fr. Benedict Groeschel who might have given us some really helpful insights into the phenomenon of the Dark Night of the Soul that Blessed Teresa of Calcutta experienced—the MSM chooses a Christopher Hitchens to sneer and gloat.
Finally, remember Rule 3: The primary function of the MSM is not to inform but to sell beer and shampoo. Informing and enlightening are entirely secondary to that overriding capitalist value. So given the choice between understanding and ratings-grabbing sensationalism, the MSM will choose sensationalism every time: especially when it comes to religion and particularly when it comes to the Catholic Faith. Who wants to hear some dry academic say that the gnostic gospels are a boring falsehood? Let the news shows go on about The Da Vinci Code as if it is something besides baseless second-rate twaddle. For Catholic Faith is not merely exotic (and therefore good television) what with all those smells and bells, it is also the enemy of sensationalism.
The MSM therefore gets a twofer whenever it bashes the Faith:
1) it helps to keep people ignorant of ways of thinking that might jeopardize its grip on how we process information and
2) it helps to sell beer and shampoo.
That’s why MSM headlines periodically blare things like: “Was John Paul II Euthanized?” You can practically see them rubbing their hands with delight. Wouldn’t it be great if the most beloved Pontiff of the past century was himself put to sleep in direct defiance of all that stuffy Catholic teaching? What a joyous kick in the Church’s teeth!
Here’s the thing: John Paul II refused a feeding tube. That’s rather a different thing than being denied one. Very often, the dying simply lose all interest in food and drink. There is no moral obligation to ram food and drink down their throats anyway. In contrast, somebody like Terri Schiavo was not dying. She was forcibly made dead by judicial fiat which decreed that she be killed by thirst. John Paul was neither thirsty nor hungry. So it’s rather a stretch to say the man was euthanized. But such elementary distinctions between murder and allowing natural death are way too much to expect of the MSM. Especially if they sell beer and shampoo.
Bear all that in mind whenever the press covers Benedict too. Sending an MSM journalist to report on the Faith is like sending a color-blind man to do an art review. They can see, but they can’t (and often won’t) perceive because the major factor in the story—the gospel of Jesus Christ—is inaccessible and inconvenient to them.
Mark Shea is Senior Content Editor for Catholic Exchange and a weekly columnist for the National Catholic Register. You may visit his website at www.mark-shea.com check out his blog, Catholic and Enjoying It!, or purchase his books and tapes here.
NY Catholic Nurse Forced To Participate in Abortion Describes Ordeal
…She was threatened with charges of insubordination and patient abandonment which could result in the loss of her job and nursing license if she did not participate…
By Thaddeus M. Baklinski, 7/29/2009, LifeSiteNews
NEW YORK (LifeSiteNews.com) – Catherina Cenzon-DeCarlo, a nurse at Mount Sinai Hospital who was forced to participate in the abortion of a late-term unborn child under the threat of losing her job and nursing license, has given a candid interview to the New York Post. In the interview she describes the ordeal she endured when she was told by hospital administrators to choose between her religious convictions and her job.
“It felt like a horror film unfolding,” said Cenzon-DeCarlo, 35, who claims she has had gruesome nightmares and hasn’t been able to sleep since the May 24 incident.
“I couldn’t believe that this could happen,” Cenzon-DeCarlo told the Post, describing how she was threatened with charges of insubordination and patient abandonment, which could result in the loss of her job and nursing license, if she did not participate in the abortion. “I felt violated and betrayed,” she recalled.
Hospital administrators told the nurse that the scheduled abortion was an “emergency” and that the woman would die if she did not assist.
However, Cenzon-DeCarlo says that she saw no indications that the abortion was a medical emergency while in the operating room, and she later learned that the hospital’s own records deemed the procedure “Category II,” meaning that the situation is not considered immediately life threatening.
Despite repeated and emotional objections, Cenzon-DeCarlo was ultimately forced to participate in the child’s death, and was later pressured to sign an agreement that she would assist in all abortions doctors deemed an “emergency.”
The Post reports that Cenzon-DeCarlo, a native of the Philippines, moved to New York in 2001 and started at Mount Sinai as an operating-room nurse in 2004. During her job interview, an administrator asked Cenzon-DeCarlo whether she’d be willing to participate in abortions. She flatly said no.
The nurse said she put her beliefs in writing.
“I emigrated to this country in the belief that here religious freedom is sacred,” Cenzon-DeCarlo said. “Doctors and nurses shouldn’t be forced to abandon their beliefs and participate in abortion in order to keep their jobs.”
Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) attorneys filed a lawsuit last week against Mount Sinai Hospital on behalf of Cathy Cenzon-DeCarlo, who is asking the court to order the hospital to pay unspecified damages, restore her shifts and respect her objections to abortion.
The suit also seeks to force Mount Sinai to give up the federal funding it receives, the Post report states, because it failed to uphold a federal rule protecting employees who have moral objections to controversial procedures.
To express your opinion to Mount Sinai Hospital:
Kenneth L. Davis, President and CEO
One Gustave L. Levy Place
New York, New York 10029
Phone: (212) 241-6500
Toll-Free: 1-800-637-4624
Founder’s Quote Daily
“As our president bears no resemblance to a king so we shall see the Senate has no similitude to nobles.”
–Tench Coxe, An American Citizen, No. 2, 1787
http://patriotpost.us/
Senate Judiciary Committee Supports Sotomayor 13-6
By Kathleen Gilbert, July 28, 2009, LifeSiteNews.com
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Senate Judiciary Committee today voted 13-6 to support the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court.
While all 12 Democrats voted in favor of the pro-abortion judge, only Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) supported the nominee out of 7 GOP committee members.
“I think this woman has done a splendid job,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein of Sotomayor. “She has shown a dedication to the law.”
Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch said that, while he began the confirmation process with the hope that he could vote for Sotomayor, ultimately “her speeches and articles described a troubling approach to judging that her hearing testimony did not resolve.”
“In some of her most important cases, she gave short shrift to fundamental constitutional rights,” he said.
Sotomayor now awaits confirmation by the full Senate, which will probably vote in the week of August 3, when it is expected to uphold the Judiciary Committee’s decision.
In Judiciary Committee hearings earlier this month, Sotomayor made it clear that she supported Roe v. Wade as “settled law,” and expressed dissatisfaction with the Supreme Court ban on partial-birth abortion.
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/jul/09072804.html
Benedict XVI to Travel to Turin for Shroud Exposition in 2010
Speaking on Vatican Radio, Father Lombardi said the Pope met with Cardinal Severino Poletto, Archbishop of Turin, for lunch in Aosta where he is vacationing. The two discussed the public showing of the Shroud which will take place in the spring of 2010.
“Naturally, Cardinal Poletto informed the Pope about preparations for the event and once again invited him to attend. As he has mentioned in the past when speaking about the public showing, the Pope confirmed his intention to travel to Turin for the occasion, although the date still needs to be determined,” Father Lombardi stated.
PADRE PIO REFLECTION
It is not new to fall; what is wrong is to lie down after you have fallen. Remember where you stood before you fell. The devil once mocked you, but now he will know that you can rise stronger than ever before. . . Do not draw back from the mercy of God.
St. Abraham Kidunaia
http://www.padrepiodevotions.org/reflection.asp