Human Rights

Nā Pono o ka Lāhui Kanaka

A Government that gives a right can take away a right.  The Obama regime claims that a pregnancy is a disease and that contraception must be covered by insurance.  As absurd as that sounds, that is exactly what Obama has demanded by having insurance companies provide, “Free of Charge”, contraception to every woman.  I guess Obama doesn’t want women to be punished with a baby.

During the ABC debates in January, George Stephanopoulos repeatedly asked of Mitt Romney the same question on contraception.  “Do States have the right to ban contraception?” Stephanopoulos asked.  At the time, I wondered what does this have to do with national issues?  Shouldn’t we be talking about the economy?  Now it seems clear that was a planted question to provide Obama and the Democrats a manufactured campaign issue.  It was a setup and I believe Stephanopoulos was working with the democrats to create an issue where none existed.

Then Obama mandated that contraception be provided by employers.  Was this a coincidence?  Hardly!  This caused a maelstrom of protest by religious groups, especially Catholics that claimed this was against their religious beliefs.  I don’t know what the Catholic Church was expecting, for years the church has been supporting socialist programs, so why is this such a surprise to anyone?

I would submit that the bishops, nuns, and priests now screaming bloody murder have gotten what they asked for. The weapon that Barack Obama has directed at the Church was fashioned to a considerable degree by Catholic churchmen. They welcomed Obamacare. They encouraged Senators and Congressmen who professed to be Catholics to vote for it.

Full disclosure, I was born and raised a Catholic.  I no longer am a practicing Catholic, and neither have I received the sacrament for years.  Over the years, I have been disheartened by the Church and their refusal to address their own internal problems, and their willingness to turn a blind eye to Catholic politicians that support the wholesale murder of the unborn.  These morally bankrupt politicians that claim this is about women’s health.  In effect, claiming that a pregnancy is somehow harmful to a woman’s health is preposterous.  It was meant to divide and deflect against Obama’s failed policies.  I would gladly return back to the Church, if the Church would adhere to its beliefs.  With that said, what an individual does that is against their beliefs, is between themselves and their maker.

At her weekly legislative briefing House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi that religious freedom was not at issue in the controversy over the ObamaCare birth control mandate for religious hospitals, but that “this is about women’s health.”

You’ll notice in the video that Pelosi is flanked by several Marxist democrats, in particular Keith Ellison.  Ellison is a Muslim.  Islam is incompatible with the United States Constitution and like Obama, they are in favor of destroying the Constitution.  This is no coincidence; this is a purposeful effort to rewrite the First Amendment and the establishment clause.  This is a direct attack on the Constitution and religious freedoms.

What are basic human Rights?  Other than Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, which are God given rights versus Man given rights!  When did contraception and abortion become a Right?  What of the rights of the unborn child?  I have been asking that question for a long time.  What’s to prevent the government from demanding abortions, whether you want it or not?  For example, if an abortion is cheaper than a full delivery, care and upbringing of a child, can the government force you to have an abortion?  Perhaps if the child either would be born with a disability, or into a poor family, what would be the government’s criteria to determine who will be born and who will not?

“Women still will be guaranteed coverage for contraceptive services without any out-of-pocket cost, but will have to seek the coverage directly from their insurance companies if their employers object to birth control on religious grounds.”

Obama calls this a political football.  How much more callous can Obama get?  Obama went on to claim that women are somehow being discriminated against by insurance companies.  How and where does that happen?  Where are examples of women being discriminated against, by insurance companies, hospitals or any other healthcare organization?  There is a Planned ParentMurderhood clinic in almost every city and town in America.  They can’t wait to murder a child.  Just look at the statistics!

Surgical abortions in the United States (1965-2005)

Since the first states decriminalized abortion in 1967, it is estimated that more than 46,000,000 reported surgical abortions in the U.S. An estimated 1,878,990 were committed before Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court case that lifted all restrictions. An average of 1,300,000 babies are killed annually through surgical abortion.

 Chemical abortions in the United States (1965-2005)

Because many contraceptive measures are abortifacients (drugs that induce or cause abortions), it is important not to overlook the number of children killed by chemical abortions. Since 1965, an average of 11 million women have used abortifacient methods of birth control in the United States at any given time. Unsing formulas based on the way the birth control pill works, pharmacy experts project that about 14 million chemical abortions occur in the United States each year, giving a projected total of well in excess of 560 million chemical abortions between 1965 and 2005.

The Institute of Medicine claims that contraception is medicine:

The IOM defined preventive health services as measures—including medications, procedures, devices, tests, education and counseling—shown to improve well-being, and/or decrease the likelihood or delay the onset of a targeted disease or condition. The IOM recommends that women’s preventive services include:

• a fuller range of contraceptive education, counseling, methods, and services so that women can better avoid unwanted pregnancies and space their pregnancies to promote optimal birth outcomes;

I find it hard to believe there that that many unwanted pregnancies, unless these pregnancies happened through recreational sex.  There are women having multiple abortions and that an abortion will damage the woman’s body.  Not only are there physical effects, but there are also the psychological effects:

Over one hundred potential complications have been associated with induced abortion. “Minor” complications include: minor infections, bleeding, fevers, chronic abdominal pain, gastro-intestinal disturbances, vomiting, and Rh sensitization. The nine most common “major” complications which are infection, excessive bleeding, embolism, ripping or perforation of the uterus, anesthesia complications, convulsions, hemorrhage, cervical injury, and endotoxic shock

In a study of post-abortion patients only 8 weeks after their abortion, researchers found that 44% complained of nervous disorders, 36% had experienced sleep disturbances, 31% had regrets about their decision, and 11% had been prescribed psychotropic medicine by their family doctor.

Of course there are people that want these destructive services and saying anything negative against either contraception or abortion brings calls being selfish and discriminating against women.  Really?!

This narrative that women are somehow being discriminated against is puzzling to me.  In the video that I posted earlier showing Nazi Pelosi standing next to Keith Ellison, a Muslim, whose misogynistic lifestyle that promotes honor killings of women, forced beatings, rapes and a life of second class servitude for women, is hardly the picture of nondiscrimination is it.  In fact, Ellison represents the face of gender and religious discrimination.   Why is the Muslim world population growing faster than other world populations?  In Europe, the non-Muslim populations are in decline.  In the United States, the population is also in decline.  No doubt due to the high levels of abortions, but there is another reason.  The liberal belief in that the world is being over populated, and that the world’s resources are being consumed at an alarming rate.  You see this with these Solyent Green fear mongers, these advocates that want to promote euthanasia and assisted suicide. This is also in the Obamacare, the Death Panels that we now know are part of the rationing process of who gets care and who doesn’t.  It boils down to money.  Those that have outlived their revenue potential will be cut off from healthcare, and those who future potential might be a drain to the system, will be aborted.  It’s simple!  You are measured by your worth as a potential tax payer.  These are people that favor Eugenics.

George Bernard Shaw – Eugenics

But Obama and his Socialist Democrats minions would infringe on religious rights and the establishment clause in the First Amendment.  This is not about healthcare, women’s or men’s, it’s about the government mandating a product, a service and forcing you to pay for it.  It is extremely naive to believe that health insurance will be provided without any out-of-pocket cost.  Nothing is for free!  Except the air that we breathe, and that might be a premium also if Obama’s EPA gets its way.   Somebody ultimately pays for that insurance coverage.  So by mandating insurance companies to provide a service that involves either a product or service that is offensive religiously or by conscience is simply abhorrent and unacceptable.  Declaring contraceptive services as health care is equally as ignorant.

The hostility of Socialist Democrats towards anyone religious is nothing new.  White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew told Chris Wallace on FOX News Sunday morning that the Obama Administration will not budge on the controversial mandate that forces insurance organizations to provide birth control.   Lew was asked where does Obama get the authority to make such an order, and Lew replied, “The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act “gives” him the authority”.  Really, I had no idea Obamacare trumped the First Amendment!?!?  This is a power grab by Obama. Obama cannot force Congress to implement his Marxist policies, and the reason is because the Founders envisioned this abuse of power when they drafted the Constitution.  This is an ugly abuse of power by the Obama Regime.

The Founders knew there would be despots like Obama that would try to “change” the Republic into a European Socialist model.  Obama is violating the Constitution by this blatant usurp of our freedoms.  He knows his policies are illegal, but he’s going to use the Executive Powers to try and force this into law.

The church model the young American state wished to separate from was that of the British monarch, who remains to this day supreme governor of the Church of England. This convenient arrangement dates from the 1534 Act of Supremacy. The title of the law gives you the general upshot, but, just in case you’re a bit slow on the uptake, the text proclaims “the King’s Majesty justly and rightfully is and ought to be the supreme head of the Church of England.” That’s to say, the sovereign is “the only supreme head on earth of the Church” and he shall enjoy “all honors, dignities, pre-eminences, jurisdictions, privileges, authorities, immunities, profits, and commodities to the said dignity,” not to mention His Majesty “shall have full power and authority from time to time to visit, repress, redress, record, order, correct, restrain, and amend all such errors, heresies, abuses, offenses, contempts, and enormities, whatsoever they be.”

The Constitution was formed by those who fled Europe and desired religious freedoms.  This is why in the Constitution, in the First Amendment; it states that the government shall not create any law that respects any religion or impeding the free exercise of religion.  Obamacare has clearly violated the First Amendment.  Obamacare is unconstitutional.

So now this issue of contraception and abortion is now back in the public debate.  It was purposely done to deflect away the failure of Obama’s policies.  The economy meanwhile is not improving.  Despite what the Lame Stream Media is saying.  Obamacare is draining the economy and destroying the medical system.  Obama’s budget increases taxes and spending.  Obama’s Green energy policies have spent Trillions of tax dollars on companies that eventually have either gone bankrupt or moved overseas taking American jobs with them.  A oil pipeline that would have created jobs was halted by Obama to appease to his environmental nutcases.  There are no new jobs being created.  The price of gas is increasing.  That translates into higher food prices.  Higher transportation costs.

Obama believes Life begins when you sign up for entitlements. Obamacare is his crowning achievement and Obama believes you’ll be healthier, wealthier and wiser for it.  Here’s what’s in Obamacare:

Obamacare: You Have No Rights

The Unions are all for this contraception mandate.  The SEIU has publicly come out in favor of the mandate.  That’s to be expected from a corrupt labor organization that supports enslaving workers and stealing their money to prop up Marxist Regimes like Obama.  Essentially saying a woman has the right to a dead baby.

The argument that women’s right to contraceptive information and services is grounded in basic human rights is simply wrong.  To be clear, there is no law, restriction or any other inhibiting force that prevents women from obtaining contraceptive information and services.  This whole basic right nonsense is a farce.  What is a problem is using my insurance premiums, my tax dollars, and my money to pay for someone’s contraception.  There is no right by the government or anyone else to demand I pay for someone’s contraception services, other than for myself.  Individuals can pay for their own contraception services.  It is not a health issue and neither is it a right.

What’s For Dinner?

Our Daily Bread

 

 

 

 

Charting The Future

Charter Schools

On Thursday, February 2^nd, the Hilo Tea Party and The Conservative Forum of Hawai’i sponsored the Heritage Foundation to speak at a dinner event in Hilo Hawai’i.  The dinner was held at the New Star restaurant in historic downtown Hilo where a packed house audience was in attendance.

Jennifer Marshal of the prestigious Heritage Foundation was speaking on “Hope for Hawaii Education: How We Can Win School Choice”.  Ms. Marshall is Director of Domestic Policy Studies for the Heritage Foundation, widely considered one of the world’s most influential public policy research institutes. In 2010, National Journal named her as “one of 12 power players” in Washington, D.C. for her work on school choice and education reform.  The following video explains how in Washington D.C., the Charter schools were successful, and how special interest groups sought to eliminate the program.

 

 

 

The history behind D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program:  In 2004, President George W. Bush signed into law the D. C. School Choice Incentive Act of 2003.  The program provided scholarships to students from low-income families to attend a private school of choice.  The program originally targeted about 2,000 students from low-income families in Washington D.C.  The program was a success.  Graduation rates were up, and the program was scheduled to expand to other locations.  But there was a problem.

In 2009, Dick Durbin (D. Ill) placed an amendment in the Omnibus spending bill to effectively end the scholarship program.  President Obama signed the bill even though he knew the benefits of the scholarship program to children of low income families.  Public Teachers Unions lobbied to end the scholarship program.  The Teachers Unions offer to the Democrats was this: We won’t complain about private or parochial schools for your children, provided you don’t help any other kids get the same chance.  In effect, sacrificing the children of low income families from getting the same educational opportunities as Obama’s and the Democrat congressional leaders’ children receive.  Ironic, because Obama was a graduate of Punahou School, this was a private school he attended.  Obama loyalties were to the Public School Unions and not to the children of the Washington D.C. area.

Obama and Democrats would rather condemn children of low income families to the cycle of poverty and failing public education system in exchange for Union Votes!

Thirty Pieces of Silver

Outraged by Obama and the democrats insensitivity to the needs of low income families desire to see their children get the same opportunities as the elites that inhabit Washington D.C., the Republicans acted.  In 2011, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) and Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) introduced the Scholarships for Opportunity and Results (SOAR) Act.  The law restored funding and allowed students to resume participation in the program.  The program will need reauthorization in five years.  Expect the Marxist Democrats to try and eliminate the program once again to satisfy the corrupt Public Unions.  Trading votes for children’s futures!

 

 

The Demands of Adults over Children:  In Hawai’i, Charter schools are becoming increasingly popular because of the educational success over their public school counterparts.  However, the Teacher Unions are very powerful.  Hawai’i is also not a Right to Work State.  Anyone that wants to be a Teacher in Hawai’i’s public education system must belong to a Union.  You have no choice!  That’s not true in Charter schools.  Even though the quality of education in the public system is woefully low, Charter schools continue to be vastly superior.  Yet, the public teachers’ pay scale is much higher than Charter school teachers.  Why is that?

What is School Choice?  In the video link to the Heritage website, it portrays a “Made Simple” explanation of how school choice works.  It all about value, expense and freedom!  From the example, in the video you will see how a centralized government controlled system that tends to throw money at the education performance problem, and forces rules on how the money is spent.

 

 

 

Qualifying Teachers credentials:  Another issue with the public education system is the teachers and their qualifications to teach.  Here in Hawai’i, the majority of teachers are good teachers and do a very good job.  However, there are some teachers that are clearly not qualified to teach.  Either because of their lack of knowledge in the subject matter, or their political views is injected in the curriculum.  More often, it is the latter.  For example, a teacher told me in very vehemently ways that she required her students to watch Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”.  Why?  Because she truly believes in the false message of climate change and that it is manmade.  Even though there is no actual physical proof that the world is warming, and that much of the global warming data has been proven to be fraudulent.  The teacher also required the parents to view the video or else the students grades would suffer.  Is this the kind of curriculum that will help students be successful, or is this political extortion for good grades?

A parent told me that his son’s teacher was using Monty Python’s Holy Grail as a history lesson.  At first I thought he was kidding, but it was true!  Was that laziness on the teacher’s part, or a deliberate attempt by the teacher to rewrite history?  In the public school system, there is either little or no accountability on the teachers’ performance.  Not so in the Charter schools where the teachers performance is tied to their salary, and their employment.  In the public school system there is no merit system to maintain the quality of any teacher’s performance.  Once a teacher makes tenure, then it is next to impossible to remove the teacher.

In the New York City school system, teachers with tenure and discipline problems cannot be fired.  Instead, they are placed in what it called “Rubber Rooms” where they spend the school day doing nothing and getting full pay for it.

That let rubber-room granddaddy Roland Pierre make a mockery of the system. He finally retired at age 76 last year — 14 years after he was yanked from PS 138 in Brooklyn and never taught again. Criminal charges in 1997 that he molested a sixth-grade girl were dropped. He got $97,101 a year.

This is an example where the teachers’ unions have so totally taken over the school system that it only benefits the adults, and the children are left to the mercy of an uncaring system.  Granted this is not the norm across the nations’ public school system, but it highlights how the system doesn’t work.

What is in the text books?  Even more startling is what’s in the textbooks that students are using to learn.  Equally important, is where these textbooks are coming from.  A recent report concerning history books that contained inaccuracies and in other cases, religious hate indoctrination.

In 2005, Abdurrahman Wahid, the then-president, wrote about the danger of the Saudis’ exported ideology, saying it was fueling a “well-financed, multifaceted global movement that operates like a juggernaut in much of the developing world, and even among immigrant Muslim communities in the West.”

It is disturbing that history books are being littered with omissions and outright distortions of American history.  The review process of these history books is either ineptly done or deliberate.  Public schools tend to remove any parental direction and guidance that reflect the parent’s values.  Instead, the course materials, and the teacher’s overt liberalism, often take a revision of world history.

The creation of many of these materials is made possible by Title VI of the Higher Education Act, under which select universities receive federal funding and prestigious designation as National Resource Centers (NRCs) for the study of places and languages which the government considers to be of vital importance. Eighteen of these centers — based at such institutions as Harvard, Georgetown, Ohio State, UC Berkeley, and the Universities of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Washington — focus on the study of the Middle East. As part of the federal mandate, each center assigns an outreach coordinator to extend its expertise to the community at large and to school-age children in kindergarten through 12th grade. Outreach usually includes workshops, guest speakers, books, pamphlets, and complete syllabuses broken down into teaching modules — with instruction booklets (and sometimes visual aids) for teachers.

If parents are not involved in their child’s learning and reviewing the textbooks, then what the child learns will carry them into their life’s values.  History can be distorted into a reality where the victim is at fault and the perpetrator is the innocent.  This is true when listening to Ron Paul’s political rants against the United States.  He is a perfect example of the “Blame America First” crowd.  When you look at his followers, they repeat his talking points like a broken Rolodex.  When challenging them on the accuracy of their claims, they quickly change the subject to deflect any cogent reasoning.

For example the 911 attacks on America:

A decade after the 9/11 attacks, Blame America-ism still permeates classrooms and the culture. A special 9/11 curriculum distributed in New Jersey schools advises teachers to “avoid graphic details or dramatizing the destruction” wrought by the 9/11 hijackers, and instead focus elementary school students’ attention on broadly defined “intolerance” and “hurtful words.”

Middle-schoolers are directed to “analyze diversity and prejudice in U.S. history.” And high-school students are taught “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs” — pop-psychology claptrap used to excuse jihadists’ behavior based on their purported low self-esteem and oppressed status caused by “European colonialism.”

In Virginia some history books were so filled in inaccuracies it was breathtaking.  For example:

In the version of history being taught in some Virginia classrooms, New Orleans began the 1800s as a bustling U.S. harbor (instead of as a Spanish colonial one). The Confederacy included 12 states (instead of 11). And the United States entered World War I in 1916 (instead of in 1917).

And

The review began after The Washington Post reported in October that “Our Virginia” included a sentence saying that thousands of black soldiers fought for the South. The claim is one often made by Confederate heritage groups but rejected by most mainstream historians. The book’s author, Joy Masoff, said at the time that she found references to it during research on the Internet. Five Ponds Press later apologized.

 

But that’s not all; in the Educational Research Analysis November 2002 Newsletter reported 249 overlooked factual errors in United States history, including the United States Constitution.

“The Judiciary Act of 1789 provided for a Supreme Court ….”

“Judiciary Act of 1789 a law that established … the Supreme Court ….”

– The Americans: Reconstruction to the 21st Century (McDougal, 2003), p. 74, par. 5, lines 2-3; and p. R59, col. 2

When in fact:

The 1789 Judiciary Act did not “provide for” or “establish” the Supreme Court. Article 3, Section 1 of the Constitution did that. The text itself admits this on p. 93, top right margin, “More About … Federal Courts,” lines 1-2. The Act did set the number of associate Supreme Court justices at 5.

In researching this article, I’ve tried to search out those egregious errors that I’ve either read in published newspapers, or in video documentaries that are apart of investigated reporting into education material.  I have fact checked my links to the best of my ability, and I have tried to expand to the reader the scope of the problem in educational material and the problem with inaccuracies.  With the wealth of information, both real and fiction, it can be challenging to provide an objective viewpoint.  So, I welcome any critique of this post.

My question to Ms. Marshal after her presentation was: “What do you suppose is the single reason for the decline in Public education today?”  I asked that question knowingly what the answer was, and I was correct.  Unions!  Adult needs over the children’s!  That’s all I needed to know.

Ka Wā Mahope – Future

 

 

What’s For Dinner?

 

Roast Chicken with Stuffing Mashed Potatoes and Steamed Green Beans