Canadian Health Care: Best in the World?

I just saw this article, and I had to post it. It seems that the Premier of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador needs heart surgery. So, of course, he's checking into one of Canada's fine hospitals for his procedure--paid for by Canada's universal health care system. A system that is, so I've been told, lights years beyond the U.S. health care system.

Oh, wait. I guess he's going somewhere else to get treatment.

I hope the good premier has a full and speedy recovery. And I hope he's thankful that there's a country he can go to where he'll get the medical care he needs...

What torture really looks like...

...in case anyone was wondering...




(H/T: Gateway Pundit blog)

Gender-driven abortion: coming soon to a country near you

Caught this from the Washington Times today.  Apparently, Sweden has ruled that it's A-OK for women to abort their babies based on the sex of the fetus.  It's already a common practice in China, which has a one-child per family policy. 

In China, couples don't want a girl for their only child, so they abort them at very high rates.  Sweden doesn't have a one-child policy.  Gender-driven abortion is just a matter of choice for them.

The reasoning seems to be that in Sweden, women have the unfettered right to abort until the 18th week of pregnancy, no matter the reason.

I have two thoughts about this,a side from the fact that it makes me ill.  First is that since the current president is extremely pro-abortion, as is the Congress, I see no reason to believe that this couldn't become standard practice in the US.  And, it would have the full blessing of the government.

Second, this is nothing less than war against women.  These babies are being destroyed solely based on the fact they are female.  This gives me great confidence that feminist groups, and lawmakers who champion women's rights, are going to jump all over this.  I'm sure we will see protests in front of the Swedish embassy in Washington, DC.  We should see the condemnation of this practice starting anytime now.

In fact, I'll just right here until the protests start...

(H/T: Hot Air)

The consequences of China's war on girls...

This article from Associated Press talks about something that is going to become a big problem for China in the coming years. Because of their strict one-child per family policy, they now have a lot more boys than girls. (The policy has been in effect since the 1970s.) Their 2005 census indicates that "males under age 20 exceeded their female counterparts by a whopping 32 million."

The reason for this is that many families, faced with only having one child, have chosen to abort female babies so they could have male babies. Apparently abortion is widely available, even in the last trimester of a woman's pregnancy.

Chinese officials are afraid that they will face increased crime rates as these boys grow up, and are unable to find mates.

The real tragedy is that because of the population control policies of the Chinese government, girls have become a burden for many Chinese families. In addition to the baby girls who have been aborted, many are abandoned, or even killed, after birth.

Of course, the Chinese government has no moral qualms about having babies killed. But because they see that trouble is on the horizon, they are loosening some of the restrictions on families having more than one child. Hopefully, it will mean that some of these precious girls will survive.

That would be a good thing. But the root of the problem is that the Chinese government doesn't see the Chinese people as valuable in themselves. Their value comes from their usefulness to the state. I can only hope that the US never gets to that place...

I'm glad we are all tightening our belts...

I caught this in the headlines today.  I thought we were all supposed to be sharing the economic pain! 

At least we the taxpayers aren't picking up the tab for this.  Oh, wait...

Does anyone know my website number???

I'm so happy that the world's smartest people are in charge of things now...

http://wbztv.com/video/?id=73411@wbz.dayport.com

China setting new standards for religious freedom...

This story from ChinaAid.org tells the story of Zhu Baoguo, a house church pastor in China. He was arrested in mid-October for the crime of being a leader of an "evil cult," namely Christianity. On October 30 he was sentenced to 1 year of "re-education through labor."

This is obviously wrong, but it doesn't look like the Chinese government is going to stop persecuting Christians anytime soon.

How can Christians affect what's going on over there? I see a few ways:

• Pray! Pray for Pastor Zhu, who is going to be away from his friends and family for a while. He also has a heart condition, which makes matters worse. Pray for God's protection and comfort for him and his family.
• Pray! Pray for the leaders of the Chinese government. The most powerful force for change in the world is still God's saving work in a person's heart. We are one revival away from seeing the end of persecution in China.
• Inform U.S. government leaders that this is an important issue to you. We hold massive amounts of power over the Chinese if we choose to use it. Unfortunately, the vast majority of our politicians are more concerned with pocketing money from those who do business with China than they are with how Chinese Christians are treated. Maybe those politicians need to know how we feel.
• Remember that all that cheap stuff we buy from China comes with a heavy price, including the blood and freedom of our brothers and sisters in Christ. Keep that in mind while your doing that Christmas shopping...
  

What matters to me--Obama vs. McCain...

I haven't talked a lot about the presidential campaign. Mostly that's because I'm pretty disgusted by the whole system. And, between the voter registration fraud that's going on all over the country, I'm afraid we're slipping ever closer to being a third-world country, politically-speaking.

I also have a firm belief that God is totally in control of what happens. He is not bound by political systems, poll results, or voting trends. And there is no doubt He is at work, no matter who's in that fancy house on Pennsylvania Avenue.

That being said, there are a few issues that are important to me as a Christian (and not just as an American). I think they should be important to people of faith. The biggest question is one that is really foundational: what value do we put on human life?

It's an important question, and there is a portion of society that seems determined to lower the value we place on human life. (Don't believe me? Look here, here, here, and here for details.) And unfortunately, the guy who is probably going to win the election believes that unborn humans have no rights, even if they are born alive after a botched abortion.

Obama's views on life issues make it impossible for me to even consider voting for him, even if he was good on every other issue (which he isn't).

We'll know for sure what happens in just a few hours. Either way, we believers need to remember where our hope lies...

Obama cares deeply for a child--or a fetus--or whatever...

From Jill Stanek. More stuff on Obama's pretty radical views about abortion. This is from 2001, when the Born Alive Infant Protection Act was being debate in the Illinois State Senate:



So basically, Obama trusts that a doctor who was trying to kill a baby would then turn around and give that baby medical care if the baby survived the abortion? Either he is very naive, or he wants to protect abortionists more than he wants to protect babies.

Either way, I don't want him running the country...

Making infanticide safe, legal, and rare...

This video was produced by Students for Life of America. In it, a Planned Parenthood nurse is very clear about one thing: sometimes babies are born alive after abortions. The solution? According to this nurse, “They wouldn’t be able to live on its own. So, eventually, the baby does die.” Eventually.



I can't believe we're about to elect a president who supports letting babies die...

(H/T: Hot Air)

Alabama voters are also VERY excited about the election...

In 6 Alabama counties, there are more registered voters than people living there.

Most revealing paragraph from the story:

Lucy Kynard, chairwoman of the Perry County Board of Registrars, said she wasn't sure why registration would exceed the Census Bureau's population estimate. She said the county's voter rolls are updated regularly to remove voters who have died or moved their registration elsewhere.

Me neither Lucy. There's no chance that it would be in any candidate's interests to have thousands of fraudulent votes cast for them.

Good thing I believe that our election is on the level. Otherwise, I might come to believe that there was an attempt going on to steal an election with illegitimate votes. But that could never happen in the U.S., right?

Right?

People in Indianapolis are REALLY excited about the election!

This blog post by a University of Indiana prof talks about the voter registration in Marion county, Indiana (where Indianapolis is located). Seems that a lot of people there are very excited about the upcoming election.

The post is pretty interesting. I recommend that you read it for yourself. But the interesting numbers are these: there are about 650,000 people over the age of 18 in Marion county. Of that 650,000, there are over 677,000 people registered to vote! You did read that right--there are more people registered to vote than there are people living in the county.

Typically, a little over 70% of eligible voters actually register to vote. But in Marion county, they've got about 105% of eligible voters registered!

I'm sure there must be some reasonable explanation. I mean, it's not like one presidential candidate used to work for a group that has been involved in massive amounts of voter fraud.

The new Marion county motto? "Vote early! Vote often!"

Who decides which lives are valuable?

It seems like there's a lot of news this week regarding pro-life issues. Most of the news isn't good, because it seems clear that there is a growing number of people who believe that some humans have less value than others. This story comes from London, where a woman who is called "Britain's leading moral philosopher" has suggested that people suffering from dementia should kill themselves because they are "wasting people's lives."

Warnock's main argument is that people with dementia take up too much of the health care system's resources. If they kill themselves, it will free up resources for other, more "worthy" people to be cared for. At this point, she is only suggesting that people with dementia be allowed kill themselves for the common good. But it seems like a short step from suggesting to demanding. After that, maybe the English government will just decide to end the lives of people who refuse to do it themselves.

I mean, if a government bureaucrat isn't qualified to decide who lives and who dies, who is?

There are really 2 huge problems here. First, this woman sees some people not as people, but as burdens on the state. Therefore they need to go away, so the state can operate more effectively. The idea is that people are valuable if they add something to society, but should be discarded if they impede progress (as defined by the state).

Second, these issues will always be a problem when the state controls and pays for health care. This is the aspect of nationalized health care that people don't want to acknowledge. In a nationalized system, people will always be seen as burdens on the system. And some burdens just can't be carried indefinitely. They will need to be purged.

And who does the purging, and why, should be important questions in the US at a time when one major political party advocates a government-run health care system...

The world's silence on the Georgia invasion is deafening...

Does anybody else wonder about this? When the US invaded Iraq, hundreds of thousands of protesters marched in cities all over the world, denouncing our country's actions. The protesters claimed our actions were a naked power grab. One of the slogans that was chanted constantly was, "No blood for oil!"

My, how things have changed! Russia invades Georgia under the pretext of protecting ethnic Russians who live in a Georgian province. Then the Russian troops kept pressing on, and now they control a large portion of Georgia.

Why is Russia doing this? Well, they certainly want to assert their control over the states that used to be in the Soviet Union. Russian prime minister has said that the breakup of the Soviet Union was the worst mistake of the 20th century.

But this is also about oil. There are oil pipelines that go through Georgia that lead to Turkey and to the Black Sea. Russia would love to get control of those pipelines so they could control even more of the oil that goes to Europe. (Russia already supplies much of the natural gas that Europe uses.)

So it seems pretty clear that this is a war for oil. Where are the protesters? Where are the people comparing Putin to Hitler, like they did to Bush? Where is the outrage over Russia's actions? I haven't heard a peep out of the usual suspects.

I know a lot of Europeans are scared of Russia, and they don't want to say anything to upset Putin. But the hypocrisy is overwhelming. Will anyone hold Russia to account? I'm not holding my breath...

China welcomes freedom of expression...

China is really trying to clean up its country before the Olympics. By clean up, of I mean "get rid of anyone who might embarrass the government." One of the latest outrages comes from this story. China arrested a guy on parole violations after being convicted of subversion in 2004.

What is this guy's crime? Has he plotted the violent overthrow of the Chinese government? Did he attempt to assassinate Chinese officials? Not quite. He was arrested for "posting online essays" in support of another dissident.

That's right. He's part of that infamous group of extremely violent and dangerous criminals known as "essayists." No wonder he had to be stopped. Who knows when he might have written again.

The article mentions some other dissidents who have also been rounded up in recent weeks. It's obvious that the Chinese government wants to stamp out anything that might make them look bad. And they don't care about minor things like human rights and morality.

It's so bad that even these clueless people can see how bad things are. It's still amazing to me that so many of our leaders seem bent on celebrating China and its oppressive government. Not only is President Bush a big fan of the Chinese leaders, but now Barack Obama is joining the fan club. He's pulled a flip-flop after saying that Bush should not attend the opening ceremonies. Now he's buying $5 million in ads for the Olympics telecast.

Unless the ads detail the human rights abuses of the Chinese government, I'll mark this as a mistake by the Obama campaign...

China welcomes dissidents for Olympics...

When China was given the right to host the 2008 summer Olympics, they promised the International Olympic Committee that they would start allowing more freedom to Chinese citizens, and free access for foreign reporters covering the Olympics.

Shockingly, it turns out that China may not be keeping its word.

According to this story from an Australian paper, China is shipping off people who come to Beijing to protest government corruption. On the morning that the reporter was on hand, they had already sent six busloads of troublemakers off to who-knows-where.

Also, the reporters were questioned and hassled, and their interpreter was taken into a security guard office to be questioned. So much for letting the press do its job.

The article also talks about the crackdowns that are happening in other provinces, all because China is determined to present a "perfect" country to the world. And they don't care who needs to be crushed to do it.

I really have trouble understanding how US media can go over and report on all the greatest of the Olympics, with hardly a mention of the oppression by the Chinese government.

Most of all, I don't get where President Bush is in all this. I mean, doesn't he say he's committed to spreading freedom throughout the world? Isn't that one reason we went into Iraq (supposedly)? Yet, not a peep from him when it comes to China's human rights abuses. In fact, he'll be right there at the Olympic opening ceremonies, celebrating while his fellow Christians are rotting in Chinese prisons for their faith.

Why won't he boycott the opening ceremonies? He doesn't want to insult the Chinese government. I guess I shouldn't expect our president to side with people being oppressed by an evil Chinese government. But I'm still disappointed...

The cost of illegal immigration...

This is a tough video to watch, but get through it if you can. It's a poor woman whose husband and 2 of her sons were gunned down in San Francisco by some monster.

The worst part: the killer is an illegal alien gang member who was convicted of a couple of violent crimes. But he was never deported, because San Francisco is a "sanctuary city" that refuses to alert the federal authorities when they have illegals in custody. Because of this policy, this woman is left without a husband and two sons, and she has another son and a daughter that will grow up without a father, or their brothers.


This is the real cost of illegal immigration. When we don't control who comes into our country, scum like this murderer are going to come in and destroy innocents. That's not to say that every illegal immigrant is a killer. Of course that's not true.

But the inescapable fact is this: if this guy had been deported and not allowed to return, these people would be alive today. And this family would not be paying for our unwillingness to secure our border...

Apparently, babies CAN be thrown away...

It's been a pretty outrageous couple of weeks for the American legal system. I'm going to hold off on my opinions over the recent Supreme Court decisions. But this story really gets to me, and it happened not too far from me.

It's the story from 2005 of a USC student who gave birth, then threw her baby into a trash dumpster. A homeless man found the baby's body later on. The coroner concluded that the baby had been born alive. The county DA tried twice to charge her with murder, but the judge wouldn't allow it. (The woman claims that the baby was stillborn, contradicting the coroner.) The DA wasn't left with a lot of options, so they worked out a plea deal.

She pled no contest to a child endangerment charge. (Does that make sense? If the baby was stillborn, how did she endanger it? The whole thing is screwy.) Her sentence? The 30 days she's already served. That's it. 30 days and a stern lecture from the judge, and you can throw your baby away.

Here's the kicker: it isn't the first time this has happened with this woman. The year before, in 2004, she went to an LA hospital because she was bleeding. She told the doctors then that she had given birth to a stillborn baby. But she didn't know where the baby's body was, and it was never found. She wasn't arrested that time.

So that's 2 dead babies, and she gets a total of 1 month in jail. It just shows how little we really value children in this society. Despite the fact that every law and regulation that's passed seems to be about protecting the children. We really don't care. This case just illustrates the point...

Something else homeschooled kids miss out on...

...quality personnel in the schools. Look at this. I can't even form words to describe it...

China "welcomes" the world (just don't get out of line...)

CNN published this story on its website today. China has released a document detailing what foreigners can and can't do when they visit during the summer Olympics. (Olympic slogan: "One world, One dream.") Some of the highlights:

• no protests without government approval (they don't even let their own people protest, let alone foreigners),
• Tibet is completely closed to visitors (I thought the Tibetan people were very happy to be part of China),
• people with "mental diseases" cannot enter the country (sorry Michelle!),
• all foreigners must register at the local police station within 24 hours of arriving,
  
• no banners or displays at the venues that "disrupt the public order (so much for free speech),
• visitors can't bring in any materials "that are harmful to China's politics, economics, culture and morals". Does that include Bibles?

Basically, they don't want anyone to embarrass them in any way. So, if you go, please don't mention their religious persecution, their support of the murderers who run Sudan, or their occupation of Tibet. And also keep in mind that war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength.



p.s.--There's actually no proof that Michelle has "mental disease." Although some of us have wondered...