December 29, 2009
December 28, 2009
The Manhattan Declaration addresses the sanctity of life, traditional marriage and religious liberty
http://www.manhattandeclaration.org/
On Nov. 20, 2009 a group of prominent Christian clergy, ministry leaders and scholars released the Manhattan Declaration, which addresses the sanctity of life, traditional marriage and religious liberty.
The Manhattan Declaration
A Call of Christian Conscience
Christians, when they have lived up to the highest ideals of their faith, have defended the weak and vulnerable and worked tirelessly to protect and strengthen vital institutions of civil society, beginning with the family.
We are Orthodox, Catholic, and evangelical Christians who have united at this hour to reaffirm fundamental truths about justice and the common good, and to call upon our fellow citizens, believers and non-believers alike, to join us in defending them. These truths are:
- the sanctity of human life
- the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife
- the rights of conscience and religious liberty.
Inasmuch as these truths are foundational to human dignity and the well-being of society, they are inviolable and non-negotiable. Because they are increasingly under assault from powerful forces in our culture, we are compelled today to speak out forcefully in their defense, and to commit ourselves to honoring them fully no matter what pressures are brought upon us and our institutions to abandon or compromise them. We make this commitment not as partisans of any political group but as followers of Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Lord, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
December 25, 2009
The Climate Change Scam: A Concise Summary
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/12/025239.php
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December 25, 2009 Posted by John at 4:16 PM
In the wake of Climategate, common sense deniers like to say that there is lots of other evidence for global warming, in addition to that which has been debunked by the East Anglia whistleblower. Actually, however, the scientific evidence for AGW is remarkably weak. At Icecap, Lee Gerhard, geologist and reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, sums up the key scientific evidence with admirable brevity:
It is crucial that scientists are factually accurate when they do speak out, that they ignore media hype and maintain a clinical detachment from social or other agendas. There are facts and data that are ignored in the maelstrom of social and economic agendas swirling about Copenhagen. Greenhouse gases and their effects are well-known. Here are some of things we know:
• The most effective greenhouse gas is water vapor, comprising approximately 95 percent of the total greenhouse effect.
• Carbon dioxide concentration has been continually rising for nearly 100 years. It continues to rise, but carbon dioxide concentrations at present are near the lowest in geologic history.
• Temperature change correlation with carbon dioxide levels is not statistically significant.
• There are no data that definitively relate carbon dioxide levels to temperature changes.
• The greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide logarithmically declines with increasing concentration. At present levels, any additional carbon dioxide can have very little effect.
We also know a lot about Earth temperature changes:
• Global temperature changes naturally all of the time, in both directions and at many scales of intensity.
• The warmest year in the U.S. in the last century was 1934, not 1998. The U.S. has the best and most extensive temperature records in the world.
• Global temperature peaked in 1998 on the current 60-80 year cycle, and has been episodically declining ever since. This cooling absolutely falsifies claims that human carbon dioxide emissions are a controlling factor in Earth temperature.
• Voluminous historic records demonstrate the Medieval Climate Optimum (MCO) was real and that the “hockey stick” graphic that attempted to deny that fact was at best bad science. The MCO was considerably warmer than the end of the 20th century.
• During the last 100 years, temperature has both risen and fallen, including the present cooling. All the changes in temperature of the last 100 years are in normal historic ranges, both in absolute value and, most importantly, rate of change.
Contrary to many public statements:
• Effects of temperature change are absolutely independent of the cause of the temperature change.
• Global hurricane, cyclonic and major storm activity is near 30-year lows. Any increase in cost of damages by storms is a product of increasing population density in vulnerable areas such as along the shores and property value inflation, not due to any increase in frequency or severity of storms.
• Polar bears have survived and thrived over periods of extreme cold and extreme warmth over hundreds of thousands of years extremes far in excess of modern temperature changes.
• The 2009 minimum Arctic ice extent was significantly larger than the previous two years. The 2009 Antarctic maximum ice extent was significantly above the 30-year average. There are only 30 years of records.
• Rate and magnitude of sea level changes observed during the last 100 years are within normal historical ranges. Current sea level rise is tiny and, at most, justifies a prediction of perhaps ten centimeters rise in this century.
The present climate debate is a classic conflict between data and computer programs. The computer programs are the source of concern over climate change and global warming, not the data. Data are measurements. Computer programs are artificial constructs.
Public announcements use a great deal of hyperbole and inflammatory language. For instance, the word “ever” is misused by media and in public pronouncements alike. It does not mean “in the last 20 years,” or “the last 70 years.” “Ever” means the last 4.5 billion years.
For example, some argue that the Arctic is melting, with the warmest-ever temperatures. One should ask, “How long is ever?” The answer is since 1979. And then ask, “Is it still warming?” The answer is unequivocally “No.” Earth temperatures are cooling. Similarly, the word “unprecedented” cannot be legitimately used to describe any climate change in the last 8,000 years.
December 24, 2009
The Senate healthcare bill was passed because votes were bought and sold using the issue of abortion as a bargaining chip.
December 24, 2009
Voting Against Government-Run Health Care
This vote is indeed historic. This Congress will be remembered for its arrogance, corruption and stupidity. In the year of 2009, a Congress ignored the coming economic storm and impending bankruptcy of our entitlement programs and embarked on an ideological crusade to bring our nation as close to single-payer, government-run health care as possible. If this bill becomes law, future generations will rue this day and I will do everything in my power to work toward its repeal. This bill will ration care, cut Medicare, increase premiums, fund abortion and bury our children in debt.
This process was not compromise. This process was corruption. This bill passed because votes were bought and sold using the issue of abortion as a bargaining chip. The abortion provision alone makes this bill the most arrogant piece of legislation I have seen in Congress. Only the most condescending politician can believe it is appropriate to force Americans to pay for other people’s abortions and to coerce medical professional to take the lives of unborn children.
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The president and his allies genuinely believe that expanding government’s control over health care is the way to control health care costs, improve lives and extend life spans. I don’t question their motives, but I do question their judgment. History has already judged this argument and put it in its ash heap. The experience of government-run health care in the United States and around the world shows that access to a government program is not access to health care. Forty percent of doctors restrict access to Medicaid patients. Medicare already rations care and denies medical claims at twice the rate of private insurers. Nations like the United Kingdom with government run health care routinely ration care based on cost, and Canadians flock to the United States to escape waiting lines. Neither nation, incidentally, has managed to control costs as promised.
Our health care system needs to be reformed not because government’s role has been too small but because it has been too big. Since the 1940’s, government’s role in health care has been expanded to the point that it controls 60 percent of our health care economy, according the non-partisan Congressional Research Service. If more government were the answer, health care would have been reformed long ago.
Finally, like many Americans, I’ve been disappointed by the lack of civility in this debate. The backers of the Reid bill, in many cases, have been unwilling argue for what they believe in – a single-payer health care system controlled by Washington. Their hide the ball strategy led them to rush this process and ram the bill through on the eve of the most important Christian holiday when they hoped the American people wouldn’t be watching.
The rhetoric that will be remembered in this debate was not between elected officials but between elected officials and concerned citizens. The clear will of the public was not only ignored, but concerned citizens were personally attacked by politicians in power. The American people were derided as an angry mob, and were called evil-doers and unpatriotic by the leaders of the House and Senate.
The civility double standard in the Senate has been beneath the dignity of this body. Throughout this debate, backers of the Reid bill argued that more Americans will die if we do nothing than if we pass their bill. In their view, those who disagreed were not advancing a different vision for reform but were using scare tactics.
In my 25 years of practicing medicine I’ve treated countless patients who would have had their lives cut short had the Reid bill been in effect. I don’t need to conjure up scare tactics or rely on talking points written by staff. I’ve seen cancers that would have gone undiagnosed, treatments that would have been denied, and care that would have been delayed had this bill been in effect.
On the final day of debate, one of my colleagues said my argument about rationing was Exhibit A in their case about scare tactics before ignoring every substantive argument I’ve made against this bill. I would contend this bill is Exhibit A in the American people’s case against Washington. Soon enough, the American people will have the opportunity to ration the terms of the elected officials in Washington who sought to impose their will on the public.
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December 23, 2009
Democrats Ensure America Will No Longer Be the Last Best Hope of Earth
From http://townhall.com/Common/PrintPage.aspx?g=e9f8f293-9b92-4969-ae31-c94a109f36ad&t=c
Dennis Prager
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
As the passage of the bill that will start the process of nationalizing health care in America becomes almost inevitable, so, too, the process of undoing America’s standing as The Last Best Hope of Earth will have begun.
That description of America was not, as more than a few Americans on the left believe, made by some right-wing chauvinist. It was made by President Abraham Lincoln in an address to Congress on Dec. 1, 1862.
The bigger the American government becomes, the more like other countries America becomes. Even a Democrat has to acknowledge the simple logic: America cannot at the same time be the last best hope of earth and increasingly similar to more and more countries.
Either America is unique, in which case it at least has the possibility of uniquely embodying hopes for mankind — or it is not unique, in which case it is by definition not capable of being the last best hope for humanity — certainly no more so than, let us say, Sweden or the Netherlands.
Indeed, President Obama acknowledged this in April, when asked by a European reporter if he believes in American exceptionalism. The president’s response: “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.”
The president was honest. In his view, as in the view of today’s Democratic party, America is special only in the same way we parents regard our children as “special.” We all say it and we all believe it, but we know that it is meaningless except as an emotional expression of our love for our children. If every is child is equally special, none can be special, in fact. If every country is exceptional, then no country is exceptional, or at least no more so than any other.
With the largest expansion of the American government and state since the New Deal, the Democratic party — alone — is ending a key factor in America’s uniqueness and greatness: individualism, which is made possible only when there is limited government.
The formula here is not rocket science: The more the government/state does, the less the individual does.
America’s uniqueness and greatness has come from a number of sources, two of which are its moral and social value system, which is a unique combination of Enlightenment and Judeo-Christian values, and its emphasis on individual liberty and responsibility.
Just as the left has waged war on America’s Judeo-Christian roots, it has waged war on individual liberty and responsibility.
Hillel, the most important rabbi of the Talmud (which, alongside the Hebrew Bible, is Judaism’s most important book), summarized the human being’s obligations in these famous words: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?”
What does this mean in the present context? It means that before anything else, the human being must first take care of himself. When people who are capable of taking care of themselves start relying on the state to do so, they can easily become morally inferior beings. When people who could take care of their family start relying on the state to do so, they can easily become morally inferior. And when people who could help take care of fellow citizens start relying on the state to do so, the morally coarsening process continues.
There has always been something profoundly ennobling about American individualism and self-reliance. Nothing in life is as rewarding as leading a responsible life in which one has not to depend on others for sustenance. Little, if anything, in life is as rewarding as successfully taking care of oneself, one’s family and one’s community. That is why America has always had more voluntary associations than any other country.
But as the state and government have gotten bigger, voluntary associations have been dying. Why help others if the state will do it? Indeed, as in Scandinavia, the attitude gradually becomes: why even help myself when the state will do it?
Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are right about one thing — they are indeed making history. But their legacy will not be what they think. They will be known as the people who led to the end of America as the last best hope of earth.
Lincoln weeps.
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
December 22, 2009
December 21, 2009
December 19, 2009
An Urgent Plea Against Obamacare by Republican Senators
Are taking this lying down or are you repeatedly voicing your opposition through e-mails, letters and phone calls to Congress?
House or Senate 877-210-5351, 800-828-0498, House (202) 225-3121, Senate (202) 224-3121, White House comment line 202-456-1111
These 10 medical care reforms below would make healthcare dramatically more accessible, affordable, portable, efficient, effective and innovative.
Both the House and Senate’s 2000 page proposals are a statist exploitation of current health insurance government-caused deficiencies and tragically prevent all these critical reforms below.
1. Stop costly government mandates and regulations.
2. Stop the unfair tax on the uninsured (and self-insured), giving them a tax-break similar to that which is already available to those with employer-provided insurance. Provide refundable and advanceable tax-credits.
3. Allow Americans to shop for coverage from coast to coast. Allow plans bought in one state to be transported to another. Allow states to create their own innovative reforms to lower costs, such as retail health clinics.
4. Allow Americans’ to keep their insurance when they leave their job.
5. Allow lower premiums for healthier lifestyles.
6. Stop junk lawsuits (tort reform) that force physicians to order unnecessary tests and procedures.
7. Provide further help for those who are uninsured and have expensive preexisting conditions by increasing federal support for state-run high-risk pools. Provide vouchers for the working poor and chronically uninsured and CHIP Registration for eligible children
8. Allow individuals, small businesses, and trade associations to pool together and acquire health insurance at lower prices, the same way large corporations and labor unions do.
9. Force Medicare and Medicaid into more competition, less monopoly, less cost shifting, less innefficiency and less fraud.
10. Allow recipients of healthcare to know the actual costs of the services billed and received (price transparency).
