Recently the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation announced that it was no longer going to be offering funds and grants to Planned Parenthood, the nation’s leading abortion mill operator. This decision has sent Planned Parenthood over the edge of both sanity and civility with a new fundraising letter that dispenses with its past staid talk about women’s healthcare and goes straight for thuggish threats of retaliation, finger pointing, and attacks on other women.

The Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation, a well known breast cancer-fighting charity, decided to withhold further donations to the abortion provider for several reasons, one of which is that Planned Parenthood is under investigation by Congress for violating various state abortion laws.

Last month the Associated Press reported Komen’s new criteria and why it is excluding PP. “Komen spokeswoman Leslie Aun said the cutoff results from the charity’s newly adopted criteria barring grants to organizations that are under investigation by local, state or federal authorities,” the report said. “According to Komen, this applies to Planned Parenthood because it’s the focus of an inquiry launched by Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., seeking to determine whether public money was improperly spent on abortions.”

The foundation gave more than $569,000 to Planned Parenthood in 2010.

As to the charges against Planned Parenthood that are pending in the congressional investigation, you might recall the stellar work of Lila Rose whose videos brought to our attention that Planned Parenthood was violating state laws by ignoring requirements to report child abuse and rape while pushing abortions on minors.

But Planned Parenthood apparently isn’t taking this lying down. They aren’t just lamenting Komen’s decision, they are getting mad.

In a fundraising letter emailed to supporters, the abortion provider proved themselves to be less a “healthcare” organization, and more the ideologically driven advocacy group that detractors say they are. The email is blunt and asks supporters to sign onto the extremist rhetoric and send it on to others. Most interesting, the letter doesn’t just attack opponents in general but specifically attacks women that oppose Planned Parenthood.

Here is the text of that shockingly harsh letter: (CLICK HERE for a screen shot of the letter)

This is for all the anti-choice, anti-women people out there.

Listen up.

You can spend every minute of every day trying to force the rest of us to live by your ideology. You can go after federal funds for health care and pressure private organizations like the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation to stop funding breast cancer screenings for poor women. You can try to make it impossible to get birth control.

But you know what you can’t do? You can’t win. You can’t break us. Planned Parenthood isn’t just a family of organizations. It’s a movement. It’s women and men of all ages who believe that health care — including reproductive health care — is a basic human right. We are millions strong. We are everywhere. We act, we give, and we do whatever it takes to make sure that Planned Parenthood is there for the women, men, and teens who rely on them.

Know this: When you go after Planned Parenthood and the people they serve, you go after ME. I stand with Planned Parenthood. I stand with them against anyone who wants to stop women from receiving the health care they need. I stand with them today, tomorrow, and for as long as I need to.

I don’t now about you but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a fundrasing letter like this supposedly emanating from a “health care” organization. Imagine if a hospital or other medical organization sent such a letter as this to its customers.

Also amazing is the bald attack on women who don’t agree with PP. This also proves that they aren’t an organization interested in women, but one only interested in women that agree with their ideologically extreme position on abortion.

In any case, what we seem to be seeing here is the last bit of a veneer of legitimacy ripped from Planned Parenthood. It is now fully embracing its ideological drive toward infanticide and has cast away any pretext that it is at all interested in mere healthcare. With this letter Planned Parenthood is admitting that it is a “movement,” not a healthcare provider.

A 42-YEAR-OLD woman died days after attending a controversial abortion clinic in Croydon last week. Authorities have confirmed that the woman was taken to the Box Hill Hospital where she died on Sunday, after earlier having “a procedure at a private Croydon clinic”.

A spokeswoman for the Coroners Court of Victoria said yesterday that the “unexpected” death of the woman, from Sunshine, would be investigated.

It is the fourth investigation involving the clinic in six years.

Anaesthetist James Latham Peters allegedly infected more than 50 women with hepatitis C at the same clinic in 2008 and 2009. Peters, who was bailed on a $200,000 surety, will return to court in May for the remainder of the committal hearing.

The surgery’s owner, Dr Mark Schulberg, was in 2009 found guilty of unprofessional conduct for failing to gain legal consent to perform a late-term abortion on an intellectually disabled woman.

And earlier this year it was revealed that a 40-year-old woman was left fighting for her life in the Box Hill Hospital after Dr Schulberg performed a late-term abortion surgery on her.

Health Department officers yesterday visited the abortion clinic, which also gives advice on sterilisation and contraception devices, after being made aware of the death. “There was no indication from the visit that it was operating outside its requirements,” a department spokesman said.

The department also notified the medical practitioners’ watchdog, the Medical Board of Australia, of the death.

Last year police began investigating the surgery, formally known as Croydon Day Surgery and now the Maroondah surgery of Marie Stopes International Australia, after claims patients had been infected with hepatitis C.

Peters, 62, was suspended by the practitioners’ board and was this year charged by police with conduct endangering life, recklessly causing injury and negligently causing serious injury. He is facing 162 charges of infecting women patients he treated for pregnancy terminations at the surgery between 2008 and 2009.

Dr Schulberg, who was on holiday, was not available for comment yesterday. He is still being investigated by the practitioners’ board after 40-year-old mother Pheap Sem was rushed to hospital in August in a critical condition after a late-term abortion.

In 2008 he was found guilty of professional misconduct by the board for failing to gain legal consent for the 25-week abortion of an intellectually disabled woman raped by her father. A year later he was found guilty of inappropriately prescribing painkillers.

Marie Stopes International chief executive Maria Deveson Crabbe said yesterday the organisation was helping in the probe into the Sunshine woman’s death.

“It is with great sadness that we confirm the death of a female patient, who attended our associate registered day procedure centre in Maroondah on Wednesday, December 14, passed away at Box Hill Hospital on Sunday, December 18,” Ms Deveson Crabbe said. “Due to patient confidentiality it is not possible to go into any details about the patient or the service they received.”

A spokeswoman for the Medical Board of Australia confirmed it had received notification about the death.

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

Are you an elderly American? Well get ready to be determined a non-essential medical expenditure if Obamacare has any say in the matter — which it will if its allowed to become fully implemented.

A caller to the nationally syndicated Mark Levin talk radio show last week gave us an appalling sneak peak at the death panels that are about to be unleashed on the country once Obamacare is fully implemented (God forbid).

The caller said that he was a neurosurgeon and told talker Levin that the advance briefing that he got from government representatives informed him that anyone over 70 years of age would be denied lifesaving (and expensive) brain operations because they were too old to bother with.

The caller said that instead of healthcare, older patients with aneurysms or strokes would get “comfort care” — care that would just “comfort” them while they die — instead of care that would cure them of their ills.

Sounds like death panels to me!

So, do you want a government perfunctory deciding if you are worth saving? As the caller said, with the nation aging rapidly and with so many of use living vital lives into our nineties, is this what we want, government officials that will decide you aren’t worth the effort once you hit your seventies?

Doug Ross has the full transcript of the call. Go read it. It’s quite frightening.

I can’t help comparing this guy’s experience with mine recently. I had an apparent bacterial infection with gross symptoms but I went to a top Australian PRIVATE hospital where I was promptly seen by an infectious diseases specialist. I was immediately admitted and put on 6 hourly intravenous infusions of lincomycin — and was well again in 48 hours. And my hospitalization was fully paid for by my private health insurance. Similar treatment would have saved the life of the guy below. The Brits’ love of their “free” NHS is a great folly. You get what you pay for

A man who was sent home from a walk-in clinic with only drops and ibuprofen to treat a chronic ear infection died from blood poisoning to the brain six days later.

Rikki Baker was sweating profusely, shielding his eyes from the daylight, vomiting and struggling to stay on his feet when his worried mother took him to hospital.

But the father-of-two was referred to a neighbouring walk-in centre where a nurse misdiagnosed an external ear infection and sent him home with ear drops and painkillers.

Mr Baker was actually suffering from an infection of the middle ear which spread and he died six days later of scepticaemia in the brain.

An inquest into Mr Baker’s death heard how his wife Alicia rang the on-call service Devon Doctors and NHS Direct several times in the days after he was seen at the centre – but was not advised to return to hospital….

Speaking earlier this year, Alicia, who lives in Exeter with the couple’s two sons George, six, and Eddie, four, said: ‘Rikki’s death has left me heartbroken. We had been together for 14 years and we were totally devoted to each other.

‘He leaves behind two young sons who will grow up without their daddy as a result of this cruel illness, which took him away so tragically.’

More HERE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

A popular, longtime Doctor from central Illinois has been sidelined by employer Springfield-based Memorial Health System because he has not become proficient with the electronic medical records system, named EPIC Systems, that they purchased and implemented. Patients are so incensed that they’ve started a Facebook page as well as a blog to rally to his defense.

This situation brings into focus the problem of top-down medical solutions, calling into question the efficacy of healthcare by committee, not to mention Obmacare itself. Do we really want to sacrifice good doctors in favor of good followers of top-down rules? Do we want good users of computers or excellent doctors?

The doctor, Steven Kottemann, 63, was placed on paid administrative leave in September because they felt he was not properly utilizing the new electronic medical records system that his employer, Family Medical Center, instituted.

Kotteman initially tried to upload verbal recordings of his notes made when meeting with patients, but the system failed to accept the recordings. The only other option was to type in by hand all his patient notes. Kottemann tried to input the notes while actually with his patients but eventually came to feel that typing at a computer while trying to give care to his patients was not conducive to good care.

Dr. Kottemann then began staying late after office hours to type in all the notes but due to a stroke of his own the effort became too much for him.

“It got to the point where I was going in seven days a week to keep up,” Kottemann told the State-Register newspaper.

For its part, the employer says that Kottemann’s lack of proficiency with the computer system was not the only reason they fired him but Memorial Medical Center refused to comment further on this story when I contacted them.

Kottemann’s patients, though, are not as reluctant to comment. His patients have become incensed that their favorite doctor has been fired merely because he doesn’t meet administrator’s expectations for computer savvy.

They started a blog to come to his aid. There blog one patient praised Dr. Kottemann saying, “I don’t need a 15 min Dr, or a computer whiz… I need a doctor that cares about me and my family. I have that in Dr. Kottemann.”

There are other equally laudatory entries.

Kottemann is now afraid to say much about this incident because lawyers are involved, so he demurred fro offering a comment for this story.

But the upshot of this whole thing is that good care seems to be being sacrificed to push electronic medical records systems. This is happening across the country, too. We have hospital administrators driving hard to implement Obama’s medical records solution — such as the one called EPIC Systems being pushed by his medical records czar, Judith Faulkner. In an “epic” act of self-interest, Faulkner is also the CEO of EPIC Systems. And in so doing they are acing out excellent doctors whose only deficit is that they are not proficient with the new records technology.

Are we really willing to stand by as Obama’s representatives bully those good doctors that criticize these electronic medical records systems? Are we willing to sacrifice good doctors for merely competent computer jockeys?

(The Politico) President Barack Obama had his American Jobs Act. Now, Senate Republicans may have their Real American Jobs Act.

After more than two years in which the GOP political strategy to Obama’s policies has revolved around the word “no,” Republicans, who are growing increasingly confident they will win back the Senate in next year’s elections, want to give voters a sense of how they’d attempt to turn around the struggling economy if they were in power.

And regaining the Senate is just as important, if not more important, than regaining the White House. Without control of the Senate, a the GOP will not be able to enact their agenda even if they control the House and White House. Don’t forget about electing Republican Senators.

So they’re planning to roll out a jobs plan that amounts to a conservative’s dream agenda: targeting labor and environmental regulations, enacting a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution, lowering corporate and individual tax rates, encouraging energy production and expanding free trade, according to a draft obtained by POLITICO.

Sounds a lot better than dumping more money into failed “green” energy companies, short term road projects that see people laid off afterwards, and turtle tunnels.

A draft of the plan refers to it as the “Real American Jobs Act,” a not-so subtle riff on Obama’s $447 billion bill that was defeated by a GOP-led filibuster on Tuesday and would have pumped billions into infrastructure and school construction, cut payroll taxes, give tax incentives to companies hiring laid-off workers and provide aid to ailing states.

Gotta love the name. You also have to love that Obama thinks that most people are blue collar workers involved with the construction industry, and would be financed by the “other” America, those rich people who own all the construction companies. That’s the problem when every thought is about class warfare: Obama forgets that some people have jobs other than paving roads and painting bridges.

Under spending reform, Republicans call for the balanced-budget amendment as well as a bipartisan proposal to give the president line-item-veto authority. On tax reform, the senators call for reducing individual and corporate income tax rates to 25 percent.

On regulatory reform, Republicans will propose repealing the health care and financial reform laws and try to limit medical malpractice lawsuits. Any rule that would cost the economy more than $100 million would have to be approved by a joint resolution of Congress. In a shot at the president, no federal agency could issue regulations until the unemployment rate drops to 7.7 percent, the level in January 2009 when Obama took office.

It would target expensive mandates on states, whack an air-pollution rule that the GOP said would affect “farm dust” and overhaul the National Labor Relations Board. Offshore energy production would be ramped up by prodding the Interior Department to take action and coal mining permitting would be sped up.

Excellent ideas. I hope there are some serious ideas about reducing spending in the plan. We’ll see, perhaps today, when it is unveiled.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach. Please sign the drill now petition.

We are faced with a difficult dilemma concerning Vice President Joe Biden’s outrageous comments about China’s one-child policy delivered in China this week.

On one hand we must either believe Joe Biden is a compete idiot, or on the other understand that he is OK with the fact that Chinese officials forced women to late term abortions and in many cases actually murdered already born babies to satisfy the one child per couple rule that the communist oppressors put into place years ago to curb the country’s population size.

Neither prospect is very auspicious for Biden or Obama.

While visiting Chinese students in southwest China, Biden raised the one-child issue

But as I was talking to some of your leaders, you share a similar concern here in China. You have no safety net. Your policy has been one which I fully understand – I’m not second-guessing – of one child per family. The result being that you’re in a position where one wage earner will be taking care of four retired people. Not sustainable.

For decades China’s violent and controversial one-child policy has been the root of the murders of many millions of Chinese babies, many of them actually born alive. For Vice resident Biden to strain to tell his communist audience that he wasn’t “second guessing” this murderous policy is appalling.

This policy is responsible for the outright murder of many babies born alive in China. After authorities found that women gave birth in violation of the policy, these babies were killed in front of distraught parents. But this policy is also responsible for millions of selective-sex abortions where Chinese culturally favor boys instead of girls and aborted babies thought to be female. Chinese authorities also engaged in a whole raft of human rights violations such as forced abortions and forced sterilizations.

So, what is Biden saying here? Are we to assume he is too stupid to know of the murderous history of China’s one-child policy? And if we assume he must know this history, then we are forced to understand that he has no problem at all with these human rights violations.

In fact, this whole thing argues against the whole claim that Democrats are “pro-choice.” Yes, they often choose abortion, like the Chinese are, but the “choice” could also include keeping the baby. You see, there is a choice here. But by agreeing with China’s one-child policy, he’s agreed with taking away the “choice” in the matter because Chinese women have no choice! It is an authoritarian policy thrust upon them regardless of their needs and desires. Biden appears totally OK with that.

Of course, back here at home, his office tried to skitter out from under this major gaffe — a full time job for his office, to say the least. Biden’s office issued this statement:

The Obama Administration strongly opposes all aspects of China’s coercive birth limitation policies, including forced abortion and sterilization. The Vice President believes such practices are repugnant. He also pointed out, in China, that the policy is, as a practical matter, unsustainable. He was arguing against the One Child Policy to a Chinese audience.

Unfortunately for Obama and Biden’s office, this does not square at all with what he actually said. Biden said he wasn’t judging the policy and only thought it was bad for economic reasons.

GOP Presidential candidate Mitt Romney wasted no time condemning Biden’s foolish comments.

China’s one-child policy is gruesome and barbaric. Instead of condoning the policy, Vice President Biden should have condemned it in the strongest possible terms. There can be no defense of a government that engages in compulsory sterilization and forced abortions in the name of population control.

Another GOP hopeful, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, also condemned Biden’s comments.

China’s one child policy has led to the great human tragedy of forced abortions throughout China, and Vice President Biden’s refusal to ’second-guess’ this horrendous policy demonstrates great moral indifference on the part of the Obama Administration. Americans value life, and we deserve leaders who will stand up against such inhumanity, not cast a blind eye.

GOP House Speaker John Boehner chimed in, as well.

I’m deeply troubled by the comments reportedly made by the Vice President yesterday regarding China’s reprehensible one-child policy, which has resulted in forced sterilizations and coerced abortions and should not be condoned by any American official. No government on Earth has the authority to place quotas on the value of innocent human life, or to treat life as an economic commodity that can be regulated and taken away on a whim by the state.

Romney and Boehner had it exactly right. China’s one-child policy is a barbaric, disgusting, condemnable policy that no freedom-loving American should condone in any way whatever.

Texas has a parental notification law for abortions. Underage teens are not supposed to be allowed to have the procedure until her parents are made aware of the crisis. Unfortunately, it has been discovered that many abortion mills in Texas are breaking the law and killing the babies of under aged girls without informing parents.

But there are more violations than just that. A three-month-long investigation by a pro-life group has also found that medical records are routinely and illegally destroyed and hazardous medical waste is commonly disposed of illegally.

LifeNews.com reports that Operation Rescue has announced that it has identified several abortion clinics that have violated regulations imposed by the Federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

Operation Rescue finds these violations to be a “widespread crisis of epidemic proportions.”

“The evidence we uncovered of illegal activity reveals a systemic problem throughout Texas that is not confined to one particular clinic or group of clinics,” he explained. “These violations endanger the heath of women, violate the rights of women to be informed and have their medical records protected, and present health hazards to the general public.”

Operation Rescue charges that these violations of parental notification laws tend to hide child molestation.

“We also found disturbing evidence of attempts to evade parental consent laws and child sex abuse reporting laws. This illegal activity endangers the safety and welfare of children throughout Texas,” Newman said.

The investigation also found that many of these abortion clinics are run down and in disrepair and also found half used drugs and human waste illegally thrown away in dumpsters behind many of the clinics.

LifeNews.com has the transcripts of a call to an abortion provider that reveals several violations of the law that is a must see.

Fox News broke this bulletin about an hour ago. It stems from a video posted by the MacIver Institute Wisconsin alleging that a doctor is signing bogus excuses for teachers protesting in Madison. Because it is illegal for teachers to strike, they called in sick and have been told they will have to produce a valid doctors excuse in order to be excused for their absences.

So isn’t it interesting that a right-wing organization would produce a news report saying such excuses are fabricated? Usually, the way this works is that part of the final negotiation also forgives the days missed for protests, by the way, so this is ginned up nonsense from the start.

The story goes on to provide the typical smears against the MacIver Institute that the Left is known for, then goes after Christian Hartsock

So we’re clear on this, Christian Hartsock, the guy “interviewed” and also the guy who probably produced that first video is the same guy who helped out with the smears of ACORN and New Jersey teachers, and he works for Andrew Breitbart.

Breitbart has bragged about being at the protests in Wisconsin today. Americans for Prosperity is linked to the MacIver Institute. A Breitbart video smear guy is quoted in an article smearing teachers. Figure it out.

Nowhere does Crooks and Liars, the perfect name for a Progressive blog, provide any substantive proof that the story is fake. Furthermore, perhaps they missed this?

No, I didn’t find that one at Fox News, or, as they like to call it, Faux News. That came from the Democratic Underground. In fact, most of the DUers were proud that a doctor would provide notes. And someone at the DU quickly tried to use the C&L story to rebut the photo evidence, but, whoops! ABC News provided a story about doctors saying they would provide notes for the protesters who lied about being sick.

Interestingly, Ann Althouse has this photo

Hey, that sign looks familiar. The person doesn’t, though. It’s almost like they are…..organized and astroturfed.

So, there you go, C&L, pictorial evidence that doctors are offering to write notes for the protesters.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

The attack does not end there, however, there is also an unhappy band who attack fizzy drinks not only because they are sweet but because the particular sweetener in them is particularly naughty: Meet the fructose warriors. The article below is an introduction to the controversy and I will add a few further words at the bottom of it — JR

Dr. Robert Lustig, professor of pediatrics at the University of California at San Francisco, is the star of the video above. While he presents some material that’s scientifically sound, he also makes enough errors to warrant a healthy dose of criticism. There’s a ton of material he goes over, so instead of writing a multi-chapter opus, I’ll discuss the aspects that I feel are the most relevant and interesting.

Fructose is evil, context be damned

So, is fructose really the poison it’s painted to be? The answer is not an absolute yes or no; the evilness of fructose depends completely on dosage and context. A recurrent error in Lustig’s lecture is his omission of specifying the dosage and context of his claims. A point he hammers throughout his talk is that unlike glucose, fructose does not elicit an insulin (& leptin) response, and thus does not blunt appetite. This is why fructose supposedly leads to overeating and obesity.

Hold on a second…Lustig is forgetting that most fructose in both the commercial and natural domain has an equal amount of glucose attached to it. You’d have to go out of your way to obtain fructose without the accompanying glucose. Sucrose is half fructose and half glucose. High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is nearly identical to sucrose in structure and function. Here’s the point I’m getting at: contrary to Lustig’s contentions, both of these compounds have substantial research showing not just their ability to elicit an insulin response, but also their suppressive effect on appetite [3-6].

But wait, there’s more. In studies directly comparing the effect of fructose and glucose preloads on subsequent food intake, one showed no difference [7], while the majority have shown the fructose preload resulting in lesser food intake than the glucose preload [8-10]. A recent review of the literature on fructose’s effect on satiety found no compelling case for the idea that fructose is less satiating than glucose, or that HFCS is less satiating than sucrose [11]. So much for Lustig’s repeated assertion that fructose and fructose-containing sugars increase subsequent food intake. I suppose it’s easier to sensationalize claims based on rodent data.

In the single human study I’m aware of that linked fructose to a greater next-day appetite in a subset of the subjects, 30% of total daily energy intake was in the form of free fructose [12]. This amounts to 135 grams, which is the equivalent of 6-7 nondiet soft drinks. Is it really that groundbreaking to think that polishing off a half-dozen soft drinks per day is not a good idea? Demonizing fructose without mentioning the dose-dependent nature of its effects is intellectually dishonest. Like anything else, fructose consumed in gross chronic excess can lead to problems, while moderate amounts are neutral, and in some cases beneficial [13-15].

I’m obviously not in favor of replacing anyone’s daily fluid intake with soft drinks, but I can already see a number of straw man arguments headed my way. This is because people have a tendency to think in either-or terms that strictly involve extremes. I’ll quote an elegant review by independent researcher John White that echoes my thoughts [16]:

Although examples of pure fructose causing metabolic upset at high concentrations abound, especially when fed as the sole carbohydrate source, there is no evidence that the common fructose-glucose sweeteners do the same. Thus, studies using extreme carbohydrate diets may be useful for probing biochemical pathways, but they have no relevance to the human diet or to current consumption.

Much more here. Follow-up discussion here.

Canada has half the obesity incidence of the USA yet fructose is the main sweetening agent in Canadian fizzy drinks too. And Australia uses sucrose (from sugarcane) almost exclusively in its drinks yet falls roughly half way between Canada and the USA in obesity.

UPDATE: I probably should note that sucrose is a naturally-occurring molecule in its own right. The fact that it can be analysed as a combination of fructose and glucose does not mean that it has to be produced that way nor does it mean that it has the same properties as those simpler molecules. If the lusty one wants to ban sucrose because fructose forms part of its chemical makeup he is in effect trying to ban all the major natural sweeteners — which is nuts — JR

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here