Category Archives: Life

The Road to Rome

July 28, 2008

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

It is a saying most people smile at, “All roads lead to Rome.”  It resonates with the national American desire to affirm diversity, the modern whatever culture, building the future for our children on a tolerance accepting any and all roads leading to any human desire.  If we can dream it, we can do it.

In this climate, it is easy to understand why Obama quickly captivates the hearts of people.  He smiles, and he points down the path.  “All you need,” Obama promises, “is hope…and change…and me.”  Eagar to “catch the wave,” many people are standing on the platform ready to buy a ticket on the Obama Express.

While all roads may lead to Rome, Obama is beckoning for us to follow him down a singular road with few sign markers.  Focused almost entirely on the journey, we have lost sight of where we are headed.  The road is only the first part of the trip.  But where are we going?  Destination matters.

How can I agree to follow a leader to the place of “his heart” when out of the overflow of his heart he believes that babies are punishment?  What kind of hope will Obama fulfill based on the fact that every vote of his career has supported, without compromise, death to babies in the womb?

Traveling companions on this Obama Express to Rome also matter.  What kind of unity will Obama build across America, fueled as he is by Planned Parenthood and their allies, organizations that fight against common sense legislation to inform women about stages of life in the womb, to halt the barbarism of partial-birth abortion and that repeals legal cover for rape, incest and pedophilia?

Just eight years ago, five Supreme Court justices in a 5-4 decision in Stenberg v. Carhart [1] (2000) were unable to defend the life of a baby in the womb, giving legal permission to a brutal “procedure” of dismemberment and death.  In his dissenting opinion, Justice Kennedy outlines the gruesome details of this procedure, concluding with his assessment of the Court’s decision:

The State [of Nebraska] chose to forbid a procedure many decent and civilized people find so abhorrent as to be among the most serious of crimes against human life, while the State still protected the woman’s autonomous right of choice as reaffirmed in Casey. The Court closes its eyes to these profound concerns.

After more than thirty-five years of abortion on demand, finally in 2007, by upholding the right of Nebraska citizens to protect the unborn, the U.S. Supreme Court in Gonzales v. Carhart [2] has concluded that the brutal assault on life must end.  Is this the change that Obama speaks about…a change he and his supporters intend to upend and undo?

Once again in its opinion, the Supreme Court decision fully outlines the brutality of the abortion procedure.  It is a must-read for every person who considers life worth defending.

For over eight years, using a pro-abortion litmus test, Obama and his Democratic party have blocked hundreds of appointments of federal judges.  Why?  They await an opportunity to fill courts across the nation with judges immune to the horror of dismemberment of a living baby.  The next President, in concert with the Democratic Congress, will determine the fate of the unborn for the next century.

Poet Robert Frost says it all.  The road Obama takes…and the road untaken…like paths in the forest, diverge.  There is a difference…and, oh, the difference.

In the world of Obama, what matters most is that we feel good.  He promises to unify us all in a grand group hug.  Destinations don’t matter, thus roads don’t matter.  After all, they do all lead to Rome.  Get there…and you will love it, they will love you, and…according to Obama…we will all melt into global peace.  Don’t you believe it.

Obama…his destination…his traveling companions…in the dark of the forest…will necessarily diverge, Obama leading down a path most in our nation do not wish to travel. The scenery along the road may be pretty.  And we can enjoy the companionship of fellow travelers.  But, at end of the road, destination is everything.

Knowing how way leads on to way, this is something I cannot vote for.  Somewhere ages and ages hence…our children will be telling this with a sigh…two paths diverged in a wood.  And that makes all the difference.

 

[1] http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/99-830.ZS.html

[2] http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/06pdf/05-380.pdf

Tax Dollars Pay for Fraud

October 15, 2007

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

Impressive federal agencies listed on Consumer Sentinel’s website are leading a battle to protect Americans against fraud:  U.S. Secret Service, U.S. Postal Service, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Better Business Bureau…and more.  They brag about their successes.

The Federal Trade Commission just announced complaints against seven online sellers of alternative hormone replacement therapy (HRT) products, alleging that they made health claims for their natural progesterone creams without supporting scientific evidence. Six of the sellers have signed consent orders barring them from making such unsubstantiated claims in the future. The seventh did not respond to staff’s repeated contacts, and the case will now be heard by an administrative law judge.

“Millions of women seek safe, effective alternatives to hormone replacement therapy,” said Lydia Parnes, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “These companies violated their trust by making claims they just couldn’t prove.”

Meanwhile, the largest consumer fraud case in our nation’s two-hundred year history continues unchallenged right under the noses of our best Consumer Sentinels.  The worst of it is that this fraud on American taxpayers is financed by our tax dollars, yours and mine.

Defrauding “millions of women” with claims of “safe, effective” medical procedures, Planned Parenthood sells abortions to minors, evading legal requirements put in place to protect our daughters against rape and incest.

For over ten years, Planned Parenthood has demonized those who have worked to collect evidence of their fraud.  But thanks to the growing ability to share information through the Internet, this evidence can now easily be reviewed by every American taxpayer.

In May of this year, Lila Rose, a UCLA journalism student, set out to prove that Planned Parenthood is not following California’s mandatory reporting laws.  Posing as a 15-year-old impregnated by her 23-year-old boyfriend, she secretly captured 2 different Planned Parenthood clinics coaching her on how to avoid the law.   “You could say 16…just figure out a birthday that works…and I don’t know anything.”

Clearly unafraid of any law enforcement effort, Planned Parenthood moved immediately to preserve their right to break the law and defraud American taxpayers.  Instead of offering promises to comply with laws protecting minors against sexual abuse, they threatened to sue Lila Rose for exposing their law-breaking.

This case finally brought to light a practice that has gone on for over a decade.  In a nationwide telephone “sting”, volunteer citizens made calls to Planned Parenthood abortion clinics around the country.  Posing as a girl 14 and her 22-year-old boyfriend, a young girl asked clinic staff if she could get an abortion.

Recorded on YouTube, time and again, Planned Parenthood staffers coach the minor on avoiding mandatory reporting laws in their states.  “There is complete confidentiality,” one Colorado operator advises her, “You need to call completely anonymously…and don’t tell us anything about who the partner is.”  An Alaska woman advises, “have a girlfriend come with you and tell them your boyfriend is 16.”  Iowa, Connecticut, Missouri, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Texas, Tennessee, New Jersey, Utah, Kentucky…caught on tape…each clinic staff person gives the minor a plan to avoid state law.  ”As long as you have the money and yourself,” the New Jersey Planned Parenthood receptionist assures her, “you’re fine.”

This deception has dire consequences for our young daughters.  As Lila made plans for her investigation in Los Angeles, across the country, a lawsuit filed in Ohio revealed that Planned Parenthood had failed to report a known case of incest.  As alleged in the suit, in November, 2004, a 16-year-old girl paid for her abortion and informed Planned Parenthood staff that her own father was the father of her baby and that the abuse had been on-going since 2000.  Incredibly, Becki Brenner, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Southwest Ohio, told Cybercast News Service the young girl was a “victim of pro-life activists.”

The fraud does not stop here.  Intent on expanding the network of clinics that promote breaking our laws, Planned Parenthood has resorted to deceit, sneaking into towns with false identities in order to build abortion super-clinics.  Ainsley Earhardt on Hannity’s America filed a detailed report from Aurora, Illinois, where Planned Parenthood’s scheme involved filing false building permits under business names intended to mask Planned Parenthood’s identity.  The fifth permit fraudulently stated that the tenant was unknown.

Illinois Zoning Attorney Vince Tessitori defines the series of five permits as fraud…purposely deceiving public authorities in the approval process.  This is a scheme being used by Planned Parenthood around the country.  In Texas, construction workers realized the deception when they discovered plans to install bulletproof windows and surgery recovery rooms.  They refused to continue construction.

Last year Planned Parenthood’s financial statements disclosed over $305 million of our tax dollars funded their deception and fraud.  After paying for all business expenses, including construction permits and employee wages, they earned more than 60 million dollars in profit…quite a haul for a business that claims to be non-profit.

American taxpayers are being fleeced.  We are being asked to pay the bill for a business that earns a profit from breaking the law right under the noses of the FBI…law-breaking caught on tape, but allowed…and paid for with our tax dollars.

Getting mad is not enough.  Action is what counts.  If you want to put an end to this publicly funded fraud, you need to let Congress know.  They are the ones who continue to pour our money into Planned Parenthood’s massive public fraud.

Call today:  (202) 224-3121.  The Capital Operator can direct you to your Senator and Representative.  On the web, you can locate your representatives and contact them directly.

Your message:  Stop sending our tax dollars to Planned Parenthood.  Stop now.  Stop right this minute.

King of Lies

September 17, 2007

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

In one of the greatest public relations scams of modern times, America is being duped by the King of Lies.

From the inception of grassroots programs in the 1990s bringing abstinence education to teens, Planned Parenthood has fought to extinguish the abstinence message.  In the first years, they were very direct with us.  They hated abstinence education.  Why?  Because sex was a natural right…even for teenagers.  If teens wanted to have sex, they were merely exercising their natural born right to enjoy having sex.

But with escalating birth rates and a new generation of sexually transmitted diseases, parents and public officials were hard-pressed to accept this line of reasoning.  Planned Parenthood and its friends needed to find a new tactic. Putting on their creative hats, they added water and stirred, creating…“medical accuracy.”

Knowing that you only need to repeat a lie often enough for people to accept it, Planned Parenthood has led an unrelenting campaign to convince people that abstinence educators base their programs on bad medicine.  It is a catch-phrase that has caught on, even as this idea is promoted by the one organization in America that has survived by avoiding medically accurate information at all costs.

On their website, Planned Parenthood offers the basics of fertilization of the human egg.  Oddly, passing over medically accurate and captivating modern films of real sperm and eggs creating a living and cell-dividing zygote, they opt for a crude cartoon starring a penis named Peter (Yes!) wrapped up in a tan trench coat.

Peter stars on The G Spot with a nameless Vixen complete with cleavage, the voice of Mae West and a fur-lined dress in the shape of the vagina and vulva.  In their crass comedy routine, where “the genitals tell it like it is,” fertilization of the egg by the sperm ends with Peter inviting Mae West back to his place…because all this talk “really got him going.”

If Planned Parenthood wanted to entertain a six-year-old with cute sperm playing cards poolside as a pearl ovum floats by on a lily pad, they have succeeded.  If they wanted to use the one website in the world that could really promote medically accurate information on how life is created, this cartoon is a dismal failure.

Once Planned Parenthood explains “How Pregnancy Happens,” their next offering is a page titled “Pregnant, Now What?”  In a long-winded, ho-hum, resigned acknowledgment that you must be pregnant, nowhere is there the hint of the joy of conception for a couple who “planned parenthood.”

Nowhere is such a happy couple invited to see a real zygote implanted in the womb developing into a human life.  Instead, shifting attention to all the problems of being pregnant…the missed period, the difficult decision, raising the child by myself…the list of “choices” offered by Planned Parenthood is enough to create clinical depression in an amoeba.

Depressed?  No worry.  The cure for your depression is offered in the next sentence… “You can choose to end the pregnancy.”

But first…

…just to make sure you never encounter any medically accurate information about the “cells attached to the uterus,” Planned Parenthood makes sure to alert you to “so-called ‘crisis pregnancy centers’ that are “anti-abortion”. These “fake clinics”, they warn,       advertise free pregnancy testing to “lure women into their anti-choice agenda.”

What Planned Parenthood would rather you not know is that crisis pregnancy centers rely on medically accurate ultrasounds to give women medically accurate information for considering “the choice” being sold to them on a website that prefers cartoons to truth.

On the Planned Parenthood website, looking for just one 4-D ultrasound, I type in fetus on their search engine.  The first offering?  An article listed by Planned Parenthood, “The Bible Is Silent on Abortion,” is written by Rabbi Dennis S. Ross.  Just below, an article, “The President Signs the Dangerous Unborn Victims of Violence Act,” clearly denounces any attempt to create “legal personhood for the fetus.”

And just to make sure you never consider the “personhood” of the fetus they offer to abort, the next article listed by their search engine offers Planned Parenthood’s medically accurate version of fetal development reduced to six lines:

We know that the embryo or fetus cannot feel pain before 20 weeks of pregnancy. Nearly all — 99 percent — of abortions are done before 20 weeks. It is even possible that a fetus is unable to perceive pain at any time during pregnancy. If, however, the ability to feel pain does develop before birth and consciousness, it is likely to happen only after the 28th week of pregnancy, when abortion is performed only for rare, unusual medical situations.

Partial-birth abortion?  It’s never mentioned by Planned Parenthood in medically accurate terms that would lead a person to understand what is happening to the fetus…or baby.  The actual gruesome “procedure” is carefully cloaked by Planned Parenthood behind this banal statement, “The fetus and other products of conception are removed from the uterus with medical instruments and suction curettage. This procedure takes about 10-20 minutes.”  Not one word about stabbing the baby and sucking out the brain from the cranium.

Ultrasound?  A search of Planned Parenthood’s information base gives you the assurance that an “ultrasound can also be used to help locate an Intrauterine Device (IUD) inside a woman’s uterus.”  Pictures offered of a  baby in the womb?  None.  Pictures of an IUD…just follow the Planned Parenthood hyperlink.

Try as one may, using the search engine on Planned Parenthood’s website, there is not one picture of a “bunch of cells” developing in the uterus…the cells at the heart of the choice they will abort for $500 cash, a choice that impacts 1.6 million women and babies every year.

Planned Parenthood leading the charge of a campaign to offer medically accurate information is enough to make a person laugh.  No wonder they fight every legislative effort to enforce Informed Consent.  If only it weren’t so tragic.

Can anything good come from having the King of Lies set the standards for truth? No.  Not one good thing.

Lower than the Dust

April 17, 2006

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

She often spent her days laying on the floor.  And because it was a home for the mentally disturbed, they let her.

Life at ground level looks different, a world of ankles of infinite varieties, delicate and sexy, sturdy and stout.  White shoes, all the same by institutional standards, are all different when one spends enough time watching them pass at eye level, down on the floor.

Size five and a half passes, clean white laces tied into perky even bows, and without even looking up to her face, I can know it’s my favorite nurse.  Size twelve, white turned tan, flecked with black and brown streaks, and I know it’s the custodian who cannot help but splash brown water against his shoes as he mops and cleans each day.

Life retains its magic and complexity, even when viewed from the floor.  Table legs, metal and wood, with caps at the base to protect the shine of institutional wax.  All legs have caps, but not all are the same.  Table legs setting on metal caps or housed in plastic shoes.  Chair legs with felt pads that slide when you push out from the table.  Some caps roll, wheels, rubber and quiet, one inch wheels that rotate as the cart is turned or five inch wheels fixed by a bracket to always go straight.

None of this matters, unless you live on the floor at ground level.  But not many of us try it.   Living there day after day for years simply because you want to live there is enough to classify you as mentally disturbed.  You are put away, assigned a room, given a diagnosis and proscribed a treatment.

This is the world where Morrie Schwartz once found himself, one of a staff of professionals assigned to help people like the woman living on the floor.  Because this was an institution where people were expected to be mentally disturbed, their daily routine had expanded to include walking around the woman down below.

But because this was also an institution dedicated to helping, the professionals persisted in trying to reach her.  People with black leather shoes continued to coax the woman off the floor, and when this failed, they pulled chairs close enough to her to talk.  Using the professional insights of college PhDs, they did their best to reach this woman down under.  But whatever the progress, it never was enough to bring her up from the floor into a chair next to them.

Morrie Schwartz, in this world for a short time, studied the situation with interest.  It appeared that every PhD solution had been tried.  But Morrie had a wisdom not handed out with diplomas.

One day, breaking the barrier between the world up above and the world down below, Morrie approached the woman laying on the floor.  He bent, he lowered, and finally he laid himself down on the floor, meeting the woman there in her own world.

It is a touching moment in Tuesdays with Morrie…Morrie laying on the floor of the asylum in order to speak with a crazy person.  Sacrificing his professional stature, laying on the floor and accepting her world, it is enough to help us understand the heart of a human being who has found it difficult to deal with the world up there.  Laying on the floor is the only way to tell a human heart I understand how you feel.  It is the only way to create a door into the upper world for the woman to enter.

Humility allows us to look into the eyes of another human being as equals.  It gives away a part of our ego to another, raising us both together to a level we could never have achieved alone.

It is no surprise that as Morrie took time to enter her world, the woman on the floor found reason to enter his.  Over time, gaining stature and confidence from the man who had the confidence to give away his own, she rose from the floor, choosing chairs more often than not, having finally found a reason to make life “up there” matter.

It is no surprise, then, to find humility at the center of eternal wisdom for living a perfect life.

When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.  [Prov 11:2 NIV]

It is the foundation on which the Golden Rule rests, do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  Without humility, this is impossible.

Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom.  [James 3:13 NIV]

As we seek ways to mend hearts and restore love, our solutions will not come from higher institutions.  Nor will advanced research perfect our techniques for creating love.  Love grows from the ground up, only when we are willing to set the seeds for love by setting ourselves lower than dust.

 

I believe that the first test of a truly great man is his humility. I don’t mean by humility, doubt of his power. But really great men have a curious feeling that the greatness is not of them, but through them. And they see something divine in every other man and are endlessly, foolishly, incredibly merciful.  John Ruskin (1819-1900)

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New International Version (NIV), Copyright (c) 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society.  Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

  See Archives for more past editorials.

How’s It Working for You?

April 3, 2006

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

America, how’s it working for you?

Who wants to know?  Dr. Phil.  That’s who.

Over twenty shows a month, twelve months a year, three and a half years…you can purchase transcripts of over 840 Dr. Phil shows where America gets psychoanalyzed, diagnosed, challenged, prodded, pushed, and changed.

Nasty Custody Battles

“I’m a Slave to My Spouse”

Infidelity Aftermath

Family Chaos

Love, Lies and the Law

Cheaters…and more…

MUCH more!  Each night on public television Americans reveal troubled relationships, enduring exposure of laundry lists of personal secrets, faults, and blemishes.  Why?

Because, after the show wraps up, and everyone goes home, we all cherish the hope that we will find what the human heart hungers for.  Enduring, honoring, forgiving love.

There is a tragic irony in all of this.  We have just traveled through a forty-year time warp of promises sold to us by feminists, humanists, psychologists, sociologists, lawyers, and sexologists…all of these “professionals” cultivated and nurtured by the “higher learning” institutions of our country.  If we just listen to them, liberate ourselves from the bondage of biological and cultural traps, and enter into a new age of self-fulfillment…we will be…well…fulfilled.

Then why are so many of us showing up on Dr. Phil?  America, how’s it working for you?

All this social re-engineering?  Replacing husbands and wives, fathers married to mothers, replacing all of these with cohabitors?  Sexualizing every human transaction?  Fulfilling every fantasy, dragging each bizarre behavior onto a new “reality show”?  Are we having fun yet?

Watching Dr. Phil for even one week, it is clear that the cultural reconstructionists of the past four decades have more work ahead of them.  Because in spite of their best efforts to convince us that we can restructure life to exclude marriage and embrace diversity of every imaginable…and unimaginable…combination…Americans are having a hard time of it.  How’s it working for us?

Single parent homes are on the financial edge.  Children go to bed at night without a hug from their father.  And sex offered to the latest “object of my affection” results in babies, abortions, and STDs that cause Mr. Right to vanish in a puff of smoke faster than magician Lance Burton can snap his fingers.

We don’t need to have “higher education” gurus to research us.  We don’t need reassurances that re-engineering the culture will work if we just give it more time.  We don’t need feminists to fix men, sociologists to fix families, or humanists to convince us we are happy in spite of what ails us.

How’s it working for us, America?  We are searching for love.  And we are ending up on Dr. Phil’s psycho-drama.

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 November 7, 2005 – Public Policy Never Mended a Broken Heart

 See Archives for more past editorials.