Tens of Thousands to Protest Obamacare in Washington This Weekend

27 Hour Prayer Vigil Begins on Sunday

From LifeSiteNews
By Peter J. Smith

Americans converging on Washington for protests and rallies against President Obama's health-care reforms this weekend intend to fight like it all depends on them, and pray like it all depends on God.

Buses packed with protestors from around the nation, including those on the famous "Tea Party Express," are set to converge on Washington and march upon the nation's Capitol to express their collective dissent with Congressional plans to radically reform the health-care system in the United States. Estimates for the numbers of protestors expected to arrive number anywhere between 50,000 to 100,000.

But after this weekend's marching and meeting with public representatives in Washington is done, a group of pro-life, Christian, and other leaders will initiate a public vigil to pray that taxpayer funding of abortion will not end up the final version of the current congressional health care plans under consideration in Congress.

Twenty-seven hours of prayer will begin on Sunday, September 13 at 7:00 P.M. and will conclude on Monday, September 14 at 10:00 P.M.

"Our nation is in more than an economic crisis or a crisis over health care. We are in a spiritual crisis and the best way to address it, in fact the only way to address it is through prayer," said Rev. Rob Schenck, President of Faith and Action.

"Every American, no matter how young or old, can and must pray."

The current version of the Obama health-care plan in the House of Representatives includes a so-called "compromise" measure on abortion called the Capps Amendment, which pro-life advocates say does not eliminate public subsidies for abortion and is no compromise. Instead, they point out that, thanks to this amendment, H.R. 3200 now mandates that at least one insurance plan provide coverage for abortion in every area in the United States. The bill also creates new streams of revenue not restricted by current federal laws such as the Hyde Amendement, which can be used to subsidize abortions under the public option and go to subsidize insurance companies that cover abortions in the form of "affordability credits."

"In times of great challenge and crisis, Americans have always turned to God in prayer. We have set these 27 hours apart to seek God for his wisdom, direction and counsel for our nation. This is especially true concerning the national debate on health care," said Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney, Director of the Christian Defense Coalition.

Mahoney said that the faith leaders will gather on the West Lawn of the United States Capitol to pray to God that public money is not used to subsidize abortion and that any health reform coming out of Congress will genuinely embrace "social justice and human rights." "We will be a bold public and prophetic witness that abortion is not health care and that health care reform should bring healing and compassion, not violence and brokenness. As people of faith, we do not have to sit on the sidelines and watch as events unfold on the world state," continued Mahoney. "Rather, through prayer, fasting and repentance we can help shape history."

The Audacity of Deceit: Day Gardner, National Black Pro-Life Union, Comments on Obama's Bold Faced Lies Concerning Abortion and Health Care Reform

Commentary by Day Gardner

Last night, President Barack Obama claimed that abortion will not be funded through the new health care legislation.

Shouting liar, liar pants on fire, may be politically incorrect, so I'll just say Mr. President you are wrong!

On July 30, the House Energy and Commerce Committee added to H.R. 3200 an amendment written by staff to Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Ca.) and offered by Rep. Lois Capps (D-Ca.), both of whom have consistently pro-abortion career voting records. This "phony compromise" explicitly authorizes the "public plan" to cover all abortions. This would drastically change long-standing federal policy which means that any citizen enrolled in the public plan will be compelled to purchase coverage for abortion on demand.

Let's follow the money... the federal agency will collect the premium money, receive bills from abortionists, and send the abortionists payment checks from a federal Treasury account.

Hmmm... that sounds like abortion funding to me, Mr. President. What say you?

As the Associated Press accurately reported in its August 5, 2009, analysis, "A law called the Hyde amendment applies the [abortion] restrictions to Medicaid... The [Obama-backed] health overhaul would create a stream of federal funding not covered by the restrictions."

It is paramount that language be added to the health care bill that will clearly restrict funding of any and all abortions. Members of both the Democratic and Republican parties have offered sensible amendments to the bill which you, Mr. President, have ignored.

So, President Obama, for the 29th time… abortion is not healthcare! Can you hear me now?

Day Gardner is the founder and President of The National Black Pro-Life Union and Director of Public Relations for NPLAC on Capitol Hill. She is also anchors a radio program for NPLR.net online and WCAR-1040AM, Detroit.

ACORN Officials Videotaped Telling 'Pimp,' 'Prostitute' How to Lie to IRS

An employee at ACORN's Baltimore office advises a couple posing as a pimp and a prostitute during a videotaped meeting in July.

From Fox News

Officials with the controversial community organizing group ACORN were secretly videotaped offering to assist two individuals posing as a pimp and a prostitute, encouraging them to lie to the Internal Revenue Service and providing guidance on how to claim underage girls from South America as dependents.

The videotape was made public Thursday on BigGovernment.com, a political blog launched by Andrew Breitbart as a companion site to his BigHollywood.breitbart.com blog.

In the videotape, made on July 24, James O'Keefe, a 25-year-old independent filmmaker, posed as a pimp with a 20-year-old woman named "Kenya" who posed as a prostitute while visiting ACORN's office in Baltimore. The couple told ACORN staffers they wanted to secure housing where the woman could continue to maintain a prostitution business.

ACORN — the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now — bills itself as the nation's largest community of low- and moderate-income families "working together for social justice and stronger communities," according to its Web site. The organization has been accused by Republicans and conservative activists with fraud in voter registration drives around the country and has been under fire since last year for its support of President Obama and for its planned participation in next year's census.

Read the rest of this entry >>

Democrats’ Health Care Bills Do Not Require Citizenship Verification

Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., watches President Barack Obama deliver a speech on health care reform at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2009. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

From Cybercast News Service
By Susan Jones

Rep. Joe Wilson’s shout-out Wednesday night came in response to President Obama’s claim that illegal immigrants would not be covered by the Democrats’ health care plan.

“There are also those who claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants,” Obama said. “This, too, is false — the reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.”

"You lie!" Wilson (R-S.C.) yelled, drawing frowns from the podium.

Was Obama lying?

Republicans, in a post-speech “fact-check,” suggested that yes, Obama is stretching the truth:

“Nothing in any of the Democrat bills would require individuals to verify their citizenship or identity prior to receiving taxpayer-subsidized benefits—making the President’s promise one that the legislation itself does not keep,” the House Republican conference wrote in a “Myth vs. Fact” news release.

But Republican Sen. John McCain told NBC’s “Today” show on Thursday that Obama’s health care reforms do not apply to people who come to the United States illegally.

“They do not, as far as I can see, nor should they,” McCain said.

McCain also disagreed with his former running mate Sarah Palin that the president’s plan would create death panels.

”No, but there is a $500-billion ‘savings’ in Medicare which has seniors concerned, and in other countries, where they’ve cut back on spending on health care and then health care is rationed – then similar things have happened. Americans are concerned about that – they have a right to be concerned about it,” McCain said.

The senator also noted that Obama is counting on $500 billion in Medicare savings -- “without any meaningful medical malpractice reform.”

McCain dismissed Obama’s call for tort reform “demonstration projects” in the states. Those pilot projects would not be part of a health care reform bill. According to McCain, “We all know we need medical malpractice reform.”

Both McCain and the House Republican Conference disagreed with Obama’s contention that “nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have.”

If the government option is adopted by your employer, and you have employer-provided insurance, then you are not going to be able to keep your current coverage, McCain said. “So that’s false also.”

The House Republican Conference pointed to independent experts who have warned that the Democrats’ proposed legislation “would result in millions of Americans losing the coverage they have.” The Congressional Budget Office believes several million would lose their current coverage, while the Urban Institute puts the number at 47 million, and the Lewin Group says the number could total as many as 114 million.

On Wednesday night, Obama promised, “I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits—either now or in the future. Period.”

But Republicans say Obama’s math does not add up.

“There is very little, if anything, in this package that calls for real spending reductions, and a trillion dollars is basically what it’s going to cost. -- and that’s according to the Congressional Budget Office,” Sen. McCain said Thursday morning.

“And finally, since the president has not argued against any of these pork barrel projects as he said he would, spending is way up over last year, and ear-marking and pork-barreling continues – his record so far does not indicate any fiscal discipline.”

House Republicans note that the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has found that H.R. 3200 would increase the budget deficit by $239 billion over ten years—and “would probably generate substantial increases in federal budget deficits” thereafter. The Peter G. Peterson Foundation released a study which found that in its second decade, H.R. 3200 would increase federal deficits by more than $1 trillion.

Joe Wilson Found His Voice, Calls Obama a Liar

Courage and conviction might have prompted Representative Joe Wilson, RINO, South Carolina, to speak up when the Republican brand name was being run into the ground, and big government spending was spinning out of control during the Bush years, but at last Wilson found his voice tonight and called Obama what he surely is, a liar.

From Fox News

President Obama's address Wednesday to Congress was greeted warmly with applause from Democrats, but also some disruptions, including one moment in which a congressman accused Obama of lying.

South Carolina Republican Rep. Joe Wilson shouted "You lie!" after Obama had talked about illegal immigrants.

Wilson's outburst caused Obama to pause briefly before he went on with his speech. Overhead in the visitors' gallery, first Lady Michelle Obama shook her head from side to side.

Obama's speech also drew some cheers from Republicans, primarily when he spoke of tort reform.

President Clinton also faced critical Republicans when he addressed Congress on health care reform in 1993. For example, they laughed at a remark about using Congress' deficit projections.

"Well, you can laugh, my fellow Republicans, but I will point out that the Congressional Budget Office is normally more conservative," Clinton said.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wasn't immediately aware who yelled "you lie" during Obama's speech, but she told FOX News that she would not move to sanction anyone for it.

The Case for Irrelevance

From Jewish World Review
By Paul Greenberg

A recession may stunt more than material growth. It can also drain intellectual curiosity. For economic pressure can lead people to settle for what only seems to be security instead of following their dreams. Which can be a tragedy for both the individual and a society that depends on people reaching ever higher, rather than not settling for what only seems safe. Poverty is much overrated as a spur to human achievement. Rather, it's a brake on it. The romantic image of the starving artist creating a masterpiece in his garret, charming as it may be, has little connection with reality. Walking around hungry is not a good thing, no matter what people who've never been hungry say.

Maybe that's why it hurts to learn about the declining enrollments at some of the country's finest liberal-arts colleges. Such schools have long stood out as islands of education in a sea of technical training, but they're short of students these days.

Look what's happening to St. John's College in Annapolis, Md., long an exemplar of classical education in this country. Its students read and discuss Homer, Euclid, Chaucer and Einstein. They don't just read about them. At this school, there are no major and minor fields to choose; all study the same classics and specialize in none. St. John's offers a striking alternative to the typical university with its familiar cafeteria-style assortment of "practical" skills that can prove impractical as soon as the next technology or technique replaces the old.

At St. John's, the object is to broaden the mind, not narrow it. It's an exciting prospect for the intellectually ambitious, but St. John's freshman class, which numbers 137 this year, is about 20 students smaller than last year's. Applications are down 15 percent. The enrollment figures aren't any more encouraging at Reed College in Portland, Ore., or Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania. Or little Lyon and Hendrix Colleges here in Arkansas.

Other fine schools may not stick to the classics as rigorously -- some would say obsessively -- as St. John's, but they, too, try to avoid the trap of teaching students more and more about less and less, putting them on a career track from their first day on campus. Which could mean that, by the time they graduate, all they've learned is obsolete.

One can hope that those who have received a good education will have thought about the permanent things of all time, not just absorbed the fashionable slogans and brittle jargon of our one time.

Why would students choose a general liberal arts education over a job-oriented one even in a recession? Tim McClennen, an entering freshman at St. John's, explained it this way: "If you go to school and you learn to do one thing, and then you change careers down the line, you know nothing that will help you."

Many of the students at St. John's hope to go on to graduate school -- in law or medicine or business -- but they'd also like to be educated. Specialization can wait until after they've had a chance to think about what they might want to specialize in, rather than be funneled into a job that may or may not exist by the time they graduate. Which would seem a prudent way to approach the choice of a career.

The purpose of an education ought to be something more than to prepare the next generation for entry-level jobs in whatever field is hot just now. Or rather was hot four years before they got their degree. Yet too often "educators" in this country have been reduced to telling business or government: You tell us the kind of worker you want, and we'll mass-produce them. Which is a formula for turning out ranks of robots.

Our educantists produce one fad after another in education. And each is scarcely introduced before it is discarded in favor of the next. While the permanent things are ignored.

Perhaps even now, in the early morning hours, on some small campus somewhere in the dark fields of the Republic, a young student is putting aside the old book she couldn't close all night. Maybe it will be Thucydides' history of the Peloponnesian War, with its description of Themistocles, who "was the best judge of what was about to happen and the wisest in foreseeing what would happen in the distant future," and so "surpassed all others in the faculty of intuitively meeting an emergency."

From whence will come our Themistocles? Maybe from the ranks of students like her at our small, struggling liberal arts colleges.

Obama Approval Numbers Still Dropping, While Petitions Mount Against Health Care Plan

From LifeSiteNews
By Kathleen Gilbert

A series of recent public opinion polls and anti-Obamacare petitions have shown that President Obama and his health care overhaul are continuing to decline in popularity at the end of a turbulent Congressional recess.

The public disapproval rating of Obama's handling of health care has jumped nine points since July to 52 per cent, according to an Associated Press-GfK survey released today. In the same poll, 49 said they disapproved of Obama's overall performance, up from 42 per cent in July.

The most recent Rasmussen Reports Daily Presidential Tracking Poll shows that 31 per cent of the nation's voters strongly approve of Obama's presidential performance, while 39 per cent said they strongly disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -8.

Scott Rasmussen noted in an August Wall Street Journal opinion piece that the polls indicate Obama's efforts to galvanize support for his plan have grim prospects of success: only 25 per cent of American voters strongly favor the health care reform, while 41 per cent strongly oppose it. Among independent voters in August, 60 per cent opposed the bill while 35 per cent were in favor, with 47 per cent strongly opposed and 16 per cent strongly favoring.

Obama is scheduled to speak today to a joint session of Congress, presumably the latest attempt to persuade reluctant bipartisan lawmakers to accept his health reform agenda.

A Zogby Interactive Survey released August 31 noted that the August drop in support ran across several of Obama's core constituencies. Democrats, liberals, African-Americans, and young voters in the survey who approved of Obama's job performance all showed a drop of about 8-9 points since July 24.

Meanwhile, an online petition this summer sponsored by Townhall.com called "Free Our Healthcare Now" has raced across the Internet, and now touts over 1.3 million signatures - which its sponsors say makes it the largest public policy petition ever delivered.

The anti-Obama group Grassfire.org claims that its own online petition against the health care overhaul has reached nearly half a million signatures.

Grassfire is also circulating a critique of the health care overhaul by ABC reporter John Stossel, republished by America's News Today on Youtube last month.

In the report, Stossel encapsulates many of the fears expressed by citizens across the country in townhall meetings by showing the pitfalls of government-run health care systems. Though President Obama has denied that he intends to bring about a single-payer health care system, the ABC report points to a video of then-Senator Obama specifically advocating for a "single-payer health care system."

Another video showing Obama advocating for a single-payer plan in 2003 and 2007, and linked by the Drudge Report, was blasted by the White House early last month as "taking sentences and phrases out of context and cobbling them together to leave a very false impression" of the president's stated position. The White House attempted to prove its position by showing more recent videos of Obama denying a future government takeover. However, the Drudge Report quickly linked to an uncut version of Obama's 2003 remarks that verified the message of the first video. The White House did not respond to the later video.