TELLING IT LIKE IT IS !

Style over substance

Jane Jimenez

There is an irony in recommitting myself to a career of writing in the wake of four debates in this 2008 presidential election. I am personally motivated to write because I believe words matter. Alas, they don’t matter to everyone.

Words don’t matter. Glib is what works. Style is cultivated. A smooth voice that glides over the top of words, served up with a charming smile. The package delivered to voters is beautiful. Inside? Inside the Obama package, unwrapped after the election, what can we expect?

• Partial-birth abortion and infanticide, ensuring that babies die who “accidentally survived abortion,” will be finally and permanently be entrenched as lawful “choice” in America.
• School “choice” will be limited to “choosing” to stay in the public school system, denying parents a real choice to use their own tax dollars for top-quality charter and private schools.
• Our American president will be able to further cultivate the already glowing approval of Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, Hamas leaders, and Louis Farrakhan, all of whom praise Obama’s politics.
• The Supreme Court will be used to make law in the United States, nine men and women overriding the will of the American people expressed in elections and the legislative process. We will work hard to make laws. The Supreme Court will work harder, striking down our laws and replacing them with theirs.
• Marriage will no longer mean one man and one woman.
• Legal immigration will be replaced by a U.S. citizenship conferred on people who happen to merely “show up” at the window to fill out paperwork.
• Taxes will be increased on entrepreneurs and investors from less than 38% to more than 50%.
• Entrepreneurs and investors will take their money…and their jobs…out of the country to countries like China and India where lower taxes will reward their investment. American jobs will move overseas.
• New American jobs will be created when taxes on Americans are increased to build new social programs to provide FDR-style governmental work project jobs.
• Healthcare will be nationalized, paid for and controlled by the federal government…just as countries like Canada and England admit failure with their own nationalized healthcare. They want what we have. Our president will want what they wish to abandon.

The majority of Americans are opposed to what is inside the Obama package. Amazingly, it seems that they might vote for him anyway. The wrapping paper and ribbons on the package look so pretty.

Obama’s objectives and the direction of the Democratic Party have been disguised by words that mean nothing. Media-speak. Instead of clearly stating that Obama supports the brutality of partial-birth abortion, he slips and slides all around the issue. He never personally would “choose” to stab a baby with scissors. It’s just that he won’t stop someone else from stabbing the baby.

Brutal words? Yes, only brutal words can fully describe brutality. But we are no longer about words that tell the truth. We are about wrapping paper and ribbons. The package.

Americans seem poised to vote for the prettiest package. Style over substance.

What a surprise, the day after the election, when we realize we are in for four years of substance that will take us away from where we really want to go. Some call this hope. It is a word of style that rings pretty.

But this is the kind of hope built on a list of destructive policies, including the legal killing of infants. It is the hope that motivates lemmings to the edge of the cliff.

Style has our attention now. But it will not last. Eventually, the package will be unwrapped. Inside? Like it or not, we will hold in our hands what we did not want to see. Substance.

Jane Jimenez (speakout@fromthehomefront.org) is a freelance writer and former elementary school teacher dedicated to issues of importance to women and the family. She writes a regular column titled “From the Home Front.” Jane and her husband Victor live in Phoenix and have two children.

Putting Obama before Christ

James L. Lambert

A few days ago, I happened to be in the lobby of a medical office discussing politics with a woman who shared with me an interesting story. She had a friend recently tell her that even though Sen. Obama “advocated everything [she] didn’t believe in” — abortion, gay marriage, a bigger role of government in people’s lives, higher taxes, etc. — she was still “thrilled” to vote for Obama as president because he’d be the first black president in our country’s history.

While an Obama presidency admittedly would be historic, a person’s skin color obviously shouldn’t be a criteria for voting for that candidate. Religion — especially the Christian religion — has deep roots in this country. Yet it seems that many people who claim the Christian faith are casting their religious values to the curb in favor of being able to claim a role in “a historic event.”

Rev. Adlai E. Mack, senior pastor and founder of Christians United Church in San Diego, is alarmed by this trend. It was during the early 1970s, while working toward his bachelor’s degree from Princeton University, that Mack was introduced to moral dilemmas such as abortion. He was influenced by Dr. Paul Ramsey, professor of ethics, who decried the technique of ending human life so cavalierly in the womb.

Rev. Mack agreed with Ramsey, and remains grieved that abortion harms so many — especially those in the black community. According to the Life Education and Resource Network (LEARN) — the largest African-American evangelical pro-life ministry in the country — three out of five pregnant African-American women will abort their child.

Besides currently performing his full-time duties as a local pastor, Mack is a longtime Christian activist who routinely visits abortion clinics with the mission to persuade mothers to forgo terminating the life of their unborn child. Last week, Mack directed his thoughts to fellow believers in the church and to the black community at large.

He told this writer on Thursday: “If you’re willing to sacrifice your babies, your children, and your business for Mr. Obama, you have that choice — but I will not.”

Mack continued: “If Obama wins, the babies lose. If Obama wins, your children will be discipled by homosexual [activists] in the public schools. If Obama wins, small businesses will suffer. Raising taxes would be the worst remedy during an economic downturn.”

Rev. Mack notes that Senator Obama has the most liberal voting record in the U.S. Senate and is a longtime friend of abortion providers. Since joining the Senate in 2005, the Illinois senator has received a 100-percent rating from NARAL Pro-Choice America, the leading abortion advocacy group in the United States.

Furthermore, Obama has injected himself into the debate on gay marriage by denouncing Proposition 8, the California initiative that defines marriage as between one man and one woman. Biblical Christians agree that Christ himself has already defined marriage as between one man and one woman (Matthew 19:4).

On election eve, Mack concludes by asking his fellow believers: “Are you willing to sacrifice [your beliefs, your convictions] for this one man?”

I ask: Are you willing to put Obama before Christ?

I’m Voting For Those Not Yet Born

By Chuck Norris

My, how the landscape of elections has changed. Remember when the issue of abortion used to matter to conservatives in political races? Today presidential nominees can get away with murder, literally. They can smoke, toke and hang out with terrorists who do. What were once considered legitimate leadership litmus tests are now regarded as off-limit character assassinations and hate language. Recently, some nonprofit organizations have been threatened with the withdrawal of their tax-exempt statuses because their leaders merely voiced opposition to what they consider a moral issue: abortion.

Some people think after 35 years of ceaseless controversy since the Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade that abortion is an “old” issue better dropped. I disagree. I do believe the economy is an important issue in this election, but it’s certainly not the only issue. We can’t just be concerned about our finances. We also must be concerned about America’s future and those who will occupy it. Our posterity matters. Their rights matter. And that includes their “unalienable Rights,” with which they have been “endowed by their Creator,” and among them are the quintessential rights: “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

Abortion is not about a woman’s “right to choose”; it is about a more fundamental “right to life,” which is one of three specifically identified unalienable rights in the Declaration of Independence (and the Constitution, through Article VII and the Bill of Rights). And it is a violation of government’s primary purpose: to protect innocent life.

Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1809, “The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.” He was not, of course, writing about the America of today, with state-sanctioned and even subsidized abortion and a movement to promote the killing of the elderly through euthanasia. But he could have been. His belief in what should be “the first and only legitimate object of good government” still should stand. Like Jefferson, our next president needs to uphold those same concerns, not say that such arenas are “above his paygrade.” If he and his administration won’t protect the rights of the living (even in the womb), then who will? A left-leaning Congress?

The truth is if Obama is elected, we will place a man in the highest office in the land who has the most liberal views and voting record on abortion of any president in American history. As a state senator in Illinois, he led opposition three years in a row (2001-2003) to a bill similar to the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, which prevents the killing of babies unintentionally left alive by abortions. He also opposed the ban on partial-birth abortion and strongly disapproved of the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the partial-birth ban. He also voted to block a bill that would have required a doctor to notify at least one parent before performing an abortion on a minor from another state. He does not support the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits taxpayer funding of abortion through Medicaid. Before a Planned Parenthood Action Fund last year, Obama promised to give first priority as president to the signing of the Freedom of Choice Act, which would make partial-birth abortion legal again. Strangely, Obama even once said he would not want his daughters to be “punished with a baby” caused by an unwanted pregnancy. With the next president likely adding two justices to the U.S. Supreme Court, it is clear that as president, Obama would appoint and support the most liberal judges and legal eagles, resulting in a pro-abortion advantage in our courts that would push abortion liberties to every extent of the law and land.

America’s Founders shared a basic view of human life and conception: Humanity is special, unique and should be set apart from the rest of creation. In fact, in early America, there were two basic beliefs that shaped most people’s views of humanity: God created us equal, and we are the highest creation of God. Their views were based on creation narratives in the Bible and expressed in the Declaration of Independence. In order for us to get back to our Founders’ understanding, we need to get back to a view of humanity that emphasizes the immortal worth of every human being. (That’s why I’ve devoted an entire chapter to “Reclaim the value of human life” in my new cultural manifesto, “Black Belt Patriotism.”)

My friend and prolific author Randy Alcorn recently was asked by a young woman, “Should we vote for who we think should lead our country solely based on their stance on abortion?” You can read Randy’s insightful response to that question on his Web site and blog (www.epm.org). I would respond to it by simply saying we all will answer that question in just one week, when we go to the ballot boxes.

Winning the election is not just about what the underdogs – such as John McCain and Sarah Palin, two maverick pro-life advocates – should do. But it’s about what the citizens who are fighting for the underdogs can do. We the people must stand up, go back to the basics, and once again vote our values.

America‘s future and the future of our children are at stake.

The election of senators and representatives is very important. If the liberals win enough seats to kill a filibuster in the Senate, then there will be no stopping the damage they can do in just two years. Do want that much power in the hands of liberals?

Activist justices who will be appointed to the Supreme Court for 20 to 40 years can make any law they wish, or override any law they wish. The liberals are already planning to remove every law prohibiting abortion, make homosexual marriage legal, and take away our religious and First Amendment freedoms.

A veto-proof Senate would guarantee that every bill the liberals want to pass, they can. In two short years, the liberals can undo every law that it has taken conservatives 40 years to accomplish.

When you vote, be sure that you keep this in mind! The election of one conservative senator could make the difference!

What Would Jesus Do?  Well, it depends on who you ask.

According to Dr. Marc Lamont Hill, Jesus, the Son of God and Author of life would be in favor of suctioning viable babies from their mothers’ wombs and killing them.

On last night’s interview with Bill O’Reilly, the Obama supporter claimed that God’s Son would be “even more radical” than Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) on partial-birth abortion.

Hill tried to rationalize his wildly implausible claim to a skeptical Bill O’Reilly, who ended the interview with a challenge for Obama to explain this position.  Hill, an Associate Professor of Urban Education and American Studies at Temple University, who should never be teaching anybody, made this pronouncement when O’Reilly asked him to reconcile Obama’s faith with his distinction as America’s most pro-abortion politician.

Like many in the political arena, Hill has it backwards.  Instead of bringing his political views under the authority of Scripture … as God calls us to do … Hill is seeking to make Christianity conform to his liberalism.

As such, the interview speaks to a much broader problem in modern politics.  Leaders like Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) have tried for years to redefine Christianity so that it is compatible with their anti-life, anti-family agenda.  Many, like Obama, have turned the Bible into a theological smorgasbord where people are free to pick and choose their convictions.

When you untether Jesus from His Word, as Hill has done here, and Obama and other socialists have done, you can turn Jesus into an advocate of almost anything.  What matters, however, is not what Hill or anyone else says, but what the Bible says.  In Jeremiah 1:5, we read, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.” Psalm 22:10 says, “… from my mother’s womb you have been my God.” And perhaps most importantly, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6)

In another attempt to lay a guilt trip on the United States for not signing Kyoto, a UN report will soon tell us that developing nations such as China and India are reducing greenhouse gas emissions by more than Kyoto Protocol standards. The implication of course is that if China can do it, then why not the USA and Western Europe? Once again, it’s America’s fault!

The UN report is an outright fabrication, even preposterous! But even more shocking is how the UN and China say they’ve accomplished this great feat.

The fact is China is awash in unregulated pollution. The respected journal, Geophysical Research Letters, recently reported that air pollution is out of control in China. “Antiquated factories billow smoke, many residents still use coal to heat their centuries-old houses, and a sharp increase in car ownership has bathed the motorways in exhaust fumes,” the report concluded. USA Today wrote in April 2007 that outside of Beijing, local chemical factories dump wastewater directly into the Feng Chan River, which is now black as ink. Nearby canals are so discolored, locals call it xiao hong he, or “little red river.”

Do you want to see if for yourself? NASA images trace the Asian plume as it propagates out over the Pacific Ocean all the way to the West coast of the United States! See it with your own eyes: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/natural_hazards_v2.php3?img_id=5378

What makes the UN draft report even more outrageous is the manner in which China claims to have reduced emissions. Hu Tao of China’s State Environmental Protection Administration proclaimed at a conference in Oslo last month that China “is doing a lot” to control emissions by enforcing it’s one-child policy. The less kids … the less pollution. Is this what’s next for Kyoto? Save the earth: Kill babies!

Human rights organizations, including the left-leaning Amnesty International, say that China enforces its one-child policy through bribery, infanticide, selective-sex abortions, and even forced abortions. Gao Xian Duan, former Chinese population control administrator, testified before a US House subcommittee in 1998 regarding her participation in nationwide forced sterilizations and abortions. http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/asiapcf/9806/11/china.abortion/

This is one more reason the United States should not only abandon any attempt to sign on to Kyoto, and keep the control of emissions in the hands of America, but to abandon the UN altogether. What is a cooler earth worth when babies are slaughtered anyway? Indeed the polar bears will not only live long and prosper … they will have the earth to their own.

An estimated billion people celebrated Earth Day around the world yesterday, but few seem to understand the true motivation for this day. It is not just another reminder to use recycled paper or drive energy-efficient cars … one day out of the year to make everyone feel like they have contributed to save the earth, which is very much alive, from dying. The greater, usually lower key, objective is a calculated attack on the sanctity of human life. Population control is, and has been, inextricably linked to the environmental and abortion movements.

For years, the Sierra Club and other “green” militants have said that the best way to consume fewer resources is to have fewer children. Their own website says, “Talk to your decision-makers and demand an increase of funding for voluntary family planning programs and access to comprehensive sex education for young people.” This is the plan to keep the abortuaries and Planned Parenthood busy.

Last year, Optimum Population Trust released a paper that was even less subtle. It claimed that children are “bad for the planet” and called on nations to reduce the global population by five billion – which would only be possible by forced abortion and sterilization. Something they are willing to do … something that is unnecessary.

And how could we forget Barry Walters? This is the Australian professor that published an article last year advocating a “baby tax” for every couple with more than two children. The interesting thing is that most of the people having more than two children could never pay such a tax.

The driven “so called crisis” of the day is global warming. Not only is it alarmist capitalism trying to find a new way to extract money from everybody possible, it is not even true. We have had weather and climate cycle changes for years and it will not change. But even this is just another excuse to fund “Planet” Parenthood and similar groups.

The bottom line is that the stewardship of God’s creation is the responsibility of every Christian. Yes, take care of the earth in a responsible manner but let’s use a balanced manner to do so – not an extremist.

We must realize that there is a greater threat to the environment than climate change or scarce resources – and that’s the threat of environmental extremism that elevates the planet above people. That is exactly what the global warming scare tactics do.

Maybe Christians should do this on another day to show good stewardship … not on the day where the focus is the worship of planet earth and the support of population control via abortion, sterilization and euthanasia?

We Should Be Embarrassed !

While most companies have started to feel the squeeze of our sagging economy, business has never been better for Planned Parenthood. Although the organization couldn’t be more controversial, its profits have never been higher, according to the group’s just-released 2006-07 annual report.

For the first time in history, Planned Parenthood has surpassed the $1 billion mark, a milestone made possible by the government’s hefty $336 million investment.

Despite the rash of bad publicity, Planned Parenthood was entrusted with a $31.4 million raise in taxpayer funds – a 10.8 percent increase in the ”nonprofit’s ?” government revenue.

Adding to the financial windfall, Planned Parenthood’s clinics performed an extra 24,707 abortions in 2006, six times the number of casualties from the entire Iraq war. All together, its abortion mills put 289,650 unborn babies to death in the year 2006 alone. And let’s not forget that Planned Parenthood also makes a tidy sum sowing its wild oats in the next generation of abortion customers. The group sold more than 1,400,000 emergency contraception kits, in many instances making transactions without as much as a medical exam. While the public is increasingly skeptical of Planned Parenthood’s operation, it has yet to put a dent in the organization’s bottom line. For that to happen, you have to get involved. The majority of Americans wouldn’t invest in a company that conspires in sexual crimes against children, accepts racially-motivated donations, promotes pornography to kids, devotes millions to the election of pro-abortion leaders, and uses unsanitary equipment to treat patients. Unfortunately, through Title X and Medicaid, the federal government is forcing taxpayers to do just that.

Obama: Sermon on Mount OKs Same-Sex Unions

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) told a crowd at Hocking College in Nelsonville, Ohio, Sunday that he believes the Sermon on the Mount justifies his support for legal recognition of same-sex unions. He also told the crowd that his position in favor of legalized abortion does not make him “less Christian.”

“I don’t think it [a same-sex union] should be called marriage, but I think that it is a legal right that they should have that is recognized by the state,” said Obama. “If people find that controversial then I would just refer them to the Sermon on the Mount, which I think is, in my mind, for my faith, more central than an obscure passage in Romans.” Obviously Obama believes his opinion is more important than the Apostle Paul’s verses to the Romans that condemns homosexual acts as unnatural and sinful.

Obama’s mention of the Sermon on the Mount in justifying legal recognition of same-sex unions may have been a reference to the Golden Rule: “Do to others what you would have them do to you.” If it was then his opinion would cause the Bible to contradict itself in this matter because the Bible condemns the sin of homosexuality – and the Bible does not contradict itself.

The Sermon, recorded in the Gospel of Matthew, includes the Lord’s Prayer, the Beatitudes, an endorsement of scriptural moral commandments (“anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven”), and condemnations of murder, divorce and adultery. It also includes a warning: “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.”

False prophet … wolf in sheep’s clothing? Yes, that would fit Obama!

The passage from Romans 1:24-32, which Obama dismissed as “obscure,” discusses people who knew God but turned against him. “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator – who is forever praised,” wrote the Apostle Paul. “Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.”

On the topic of abortion, Obama said his support for keeping it legal does not trespass on his Christian faith. “I think that the bottom line is that in the end, I think women, in consultation with their pastors, and their doctors, and their family, are in a better position to make these decisions than some bureaucrat in Washington. That’s my view,” Obama said about abortion. “Again, I respect people who may disagree, but I certainly don’t think it makes me less Christian. Okay.”

When did women, pastors, doctors, or anyone else override Scripture?

Last Thursday, as reported by Cybercast News Service, Obama published on his Web site an “open letter concerning LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) equality in America.” In that letter, Obama said he favored same-sex unions that were equal to marriage – including adoption rights – and that he was open to states codifying same-sex marriages.

“As your President, I will use the bully pulpit to urge states to treat same-sex couples with full equality in their family and adoption laws,” Obama said in the letter. “I personally believe that civil unions represent the best way to secure that equal treatment. But I also believe that the federal government should not stand in the way of states that want to decide on their own how best to pursue equality for gay and lesbian couples – whether that means a domestic partnership, a civil union, or a civil marriage.”

In Ohio on Sunday, before mentioning the Sermon on the Mount, Obama insisted he was against “gay marriage” and did not mention his support for allowing same-sex couples to adopt children and have the same “family” status as heterosexual couples. Way to talk out of both sides of your mouth Obama!

Obama also has been more aggressive in framing his pro-abortion position previously than he was on Sunday. When he was in the Illinois Senate, for example, he repeatedly opposed a bill that would have defined as a “person” a baby who had survived an induced-labor abortion and was born alive.

In a 2001 Illinois Senate floor speech about that bill, he argued that to call a baby who survived an abortion a “person” would give it equal protection rights under the 14th Amendment and would give credibility to the argument that the same child inside its mother’s womb was also a “person” and thus could not be aborted.

When the Illinois Senate bill was amended to make it identical to a federal law that included language to protect Roe v. Wade – and that the U.S. Senate voted unanimously to pass – Obama still opposed the bill, voting it down in the Illinois Senate committee he chaired.

Yet, in Ohio on Sunday, Obama depicted abortion as a tragedy to be avoided, while being kept legal. “On the issue of abortion, that is always a tragic and painful issue,” he said. “I think it is always tragic, and we should prevent it as much as possible …

Who is he trying to fool? … oh yes, everyone!

Before discussing his views on same-sex unions and abortion, Obama told the crowd he was a “devout Christian.” “In terms of my faith, there has been so much confusion that has been deliberately perpetrated through emails and so forth, so here are the simple facts,” he said. “I am a Christian. I am a devout Christian. I have been a member of the same church for 20 years, pray to Jesus every night, and try to go to church as much as I can when they are not working me.”

Used to go quite often. “These days, we haven’t been at the home church – I haven’t been home on Sunday – for several months now. So, my faith is important to me. It is not something that I try to push on other people. But it is something that helps to guide my life and my values.”

Let me give you the facts. If a person is a devout Christian by biblical standards they do not promote abortion, homosexual domestic partnerships, civil unions, or civil marriage, and kind of, homosexual relationships. Instead they value life of all ages, including the preborn, and recognize all homosexual activity and associations as sin.

It really is that plain and simple … if you are a real Christian ! A real Christian would not vote for Obama.

Racism Alive And Well At Planned Parenthood

A shocking set of recordings was released this week that could prove disastrous for Planned Parenthood’s ties with the African-American community. Lila Rose, a pro-life student and reporter at UCLA, launched an undercover investigation aimed at exposing the racism of the nation’s largest abortion merchant. With the help of an actor, she contacted Planned Parenthood clinics in seven states, inquiring if they would be willing to accept a donation earmarked for the abortion of black babies. The results were jaw-dropping.

Rose was appalled to discover that every last clinic agreed. Not one employee objected or questioned the request, even when the actor insisted that the purpose was to “lower the number of black people” in America. When the caller phoned an Ohio branch, he was told that Planned Parenthood “will accept the money for whatever reason.” Video: Planned Parenthood Racism Investigation.

Actor: …I really faced trouble with affirmative action, and I don’t want my kids to be disadvantaged against black kids.
Planned Parenthood: Yes, absolutely.
Actor: And we don’t, you know, we just think the less black kids out there the better.
Planned Parenthood: (Laughs) Understandable, understandable… This is the first time I’ve had a donor call and make this kind of request, so I’m excited and want to make sure I don’t leave anything out.

Students at UCLA are so infuriated by the investigation that they are petitioning the university to cut all affiliation with Planned Parenthood. What few people realize is that the organization has a history of racism that has been ingrained since Planned Parenthood’s earliest days, when founder Margaret Sanger advocated negative eugenics and spoke to a woman’s branch of the KKK (Margaret Sanger, An Autobiography , 1938, p. 336-367). However, as is customary for Planned Parenthood, the organization has managed for decades to cover its tracks – and the facts. That task has just been made monumentally more difficult. Abortion has taken the innocent lives of over 14 million black children – a national tragedy that has begun uniting and mobilizing African-Americans across party, state, and financial lines.

At the National Black Pro-Life Gathering in Washington, D.C., which drew pastors, parents, leaders, and activists from across America to commemorate Black History Month, abortion merchants like Planned Parenthood we called on to stop preying on their community.

As these abortion clinics continue to demonstrate that blood money is not colorblind, we need to call on Congress to de-fund and disavow Planned Parenthood. Taxpayers should not be forced to spend over $300 million on an organization whose scruples are for sale, even to those who seek racial genocide.