On proper constituent relations

Just a quick post before I run off to work.

Democrats are bleating that the people showing up for the townhall meetings are being rude and making it impossible to have a reasoned discussion about the proposed health care legislation. I'm noticing that even left-liberal callers to talk radio shows are taking up that theme.

Here's my response.

When the Democrat party attempted to pass a massively complicated 1000 page bill before the August recess in such a hurry that no legislator, much less any member of the public, would have had time to even skim the bill - much less study it in detail - they surrendered any right or expectation of a "calm and reasoned debate".

Since the healthcare "reform" bill will not go into effect until 2013, if enacted into law, what's the fraking hurry?

The ONLY reason for the almighty rush was to try and ram the bill down the nation's throat before anyone had a chance to find out what was in it.

Obama, Pelosi and Reid and their various henchmen failed to pull an end-run around the people and now the terrible anger of the people has been aroused against them (sort of the way it was against the Japanese after Pearl Harbor) and NOW the politicians want everyone to slow down and be reasonable.

Well I say not just NO, but HELL NO!

The only hope the public has of killing this abomination is to convince lawmakers that the survival of their individual careers rest upon the failure of this piece of legislation.

To that end the louder the primal scream of hate and rage we can direct at them the better.

We need to do anything and everything short of shooting them down like the damn dogs they are.

We need to send them back to Washington literally shitting themselves in blind terror of what we'll do to them if they attempt to shove this legislative turd down our collective throat.

I'm not saying that we need to do any actual violence but we want them to wake up screaming from the most realistic nightmares they've ever had about being torn limb from limb by angry mobs of their constituents if they defy the public's will in this matter.

That seem to be the only thing that will sway them from this path of national ruin they seem determined to take us down.

Yeah, it's getting old

But we've done the others. . .

The masks come off

From Fox News:

The refusal by ABC and NBC to run a national ad critical of President Obama's health care reform plan is raising questions from the group behind the spot -- particularly in light of ABC's health care special aired in prime time last June and hosted at the White House.

The 33-second ad by the League of American Voters, which features a neurosurgeon who warns that a government-run health care system will lead to the rationing of procedures and medicine, began airing two weeks ago on local affiliates of ABC, NBC, FOX and CBS. On a national level, however, ABC and NBC have refused to run the spot in its present form.

"It's a powerful ad," said Bob Adams, executive director of the League of American Voters, a national nonprofit group with 15,000 members who advocate individual liberty and government accountability. "It tells the truth and it really highlights one of the biggest vulnerabilities and problems with this proposed legislation, which is it rations health care and disproportionately will decimate the quality of health care for seniors."

Adams said the advertisement is running on local network affiliates in states like Louisiana, Arkansas, Maine and Pennsylvania. But although CBS has approved the ad for national distribution and talks are ongoing with FOX, NBC has questioned some of the ad's facts while ABC has labeled it "partisan."

"The ABC Television Network has a long-standing policy that we do not sell time for advertising that presents a partisan position on a controversial public issue," spokeswoman Susan Sewell said in a written statement. "Just to be clear, this is a policy for the entire network, not just ABC News."

ABC, the network that aired a prime-time commercial for Obama to shill for his socialized medicine scheme and didn't even allow an opposing voice. They're hardly even pretending to be anything but an arm of the White House Press Office any more.

NBC, meanwhile, said it has not turned down the ad and will reconsider it with some revisions.

Wasn't NBC the network whose news anchor spent a day hanging out with Obama in the White House and then bowed to him as he left? The MSM is to Obama as Goebbles was to Hitler except that Goebbles got a uniform and a paycheck and all the mainstream media gets is the tingle that runs up their collective leg.

"We have not rejected the ad," spokeswoman Liz Fischer told FOXNews.com. "We have communicated with the media agency about some factual claims that require additional substantiation. As always, we are happy to reconsider the ad once these issues are addressed."

Adams objects to ABC's assertion that his group's position is partisan.

"It's a position that we would argue a vast majority of Americans stand behind," he said. "Obviously, it's a message that ABC and the Obama administration haven't received yet."

There we have it. ABC and NBC are demanding the right to censor political speech in a paid advertisement.

Here is the ad that ABC and NBC don't want you to see:

Miss Ann is talking

That means that YOU are listening!

LIBERAL LIES ABOUT NATIONAL HEALTH CARE: SECOND IN A SERIES (COLLECT ALL 10!)
by Ann Coulter
August 26, 2009

With the Democrats getting slaughtered -- or should I say, "receiving mandatory end-of-life counseling" -- in the debate over national health care, the Obama administration has decided to change the subject by indicting CIA interrogators for talking tough to three of the world's leading Muslim terrorists.

Had I been asked, I would have advised them against reinforcing the idea that Democrats are hysterical bed-wetters who can't be trusted with national defense while also reminding people of the one thing everyone still admires about President George W. Bush.

But I guess the Democrats really want to change the subject. Thus, here is Part 2 in our series of liberal lies about national health care.

(6) There will be no rationing under national health care.

Anyone who says that is a liar. And all Democrats are saying it. (Hey, look -- I have two-thirds of a syllogism!)

Apparently, promising to cut costs by having a panel of Washington bureaucrats (for short, "The Death Panel") deny medical treatment wasn't a popular idea with most Americans. So liberals started claiming that they are going to cover an additional 47 million uninsured Americans and cut costs ... without ever denying a single medical treatment!

Also on the agenda is a delicious all-you-can-eat chocolate cake that will actually help you lose weight! But first, let's go over the specs for my perpetual motion machine -- and it uses no energy, so it's totally green!

For you newcomers to planet Earth, everything that does not exist in infinite supply is rationed. In a free society, people are allowed to make their own rationing choices.

Some people get new computers every year; some every five years. Some White House employees get new computers and then vandalize them on the way out the door when their candidate loses. (These are the same people who will be making decisions about your health care.)

Similarly, one person might say, "I want to live it up and spend freely now! No one lives forever." (That person is a Democrat.) And another might say, "I don't go to restaurants, I don't go to the theater, and I don't buy expensive designer clothes because I've decided to pour all my money into my health."

Under national health care, you'll have no choice about how to ration your own health care. If your neighbor isn't entitled to a hip replacement, then neither are you. At least that's how the plan was explained to me by our next surgeon general, Dr. Conrad Murray.

(7) National health care will reduce costs.

This claim comes from the same government that gave us the $500 hammer, the $1,200 toilet seat and postage stamps that increase in price every three weeks.

The last time liberals decided an industry was so important that the government needed to step in and contain costs was when they set their sights on the oil industry. Liberals in both the U.S. and Canada -- presidents Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter and Canadian P.M. Pierre Trudeau -- imposed price controls on oil.

As night leads to day, price controls led to reduced oil production, which led to oil shortages, skyrocketing prices for gasoline, rationing schemes and long angry lines at gas stations.

You may recall this era as "the Carter years."

Then, the white knight Ronald Reagan became president and immediately deregulated oil prices. The magic of the free market -- aka the "profit motive" -- produced surges in oil exploration and development, causing prices to plummet. Prices collapsed and remained low for the next 20 years, helping to fuel the greatest economic expansion in our nation's history.

You may recall this era as "the Reagan years."

Freedom not only allows you to make your own rationing choices, but also produces vastly more products and services at cheap prices, so less rationing is necessary.

(8) National health care won't cover abortions.

There are three certainties in life: (a) death, (b) taxes, and (C) no health care bill supported by Nita Lowey and Rosa DeLauro and signed by Barack Obama could possibly fail to cover abortions.

I don't think that requires elaboration, but here it is:

Despite being a thousand pages long, the health care bills passing through Congress are strikingly nonspecific. (Also, in a thousand pages, Democrats weren't able to squeeze in one paragraph on tort reform. Perhaps they were trying to save paper.)

These are Trojan Horse bills. Of course, they don't include the words "abortion," "death panels" or "three-year waits for hip-replacement surgery."

That proves nothing -- the bills set up unaccountable, unelected federal commissions to fill in the horrible details. Notably, the Democrats rejected an amendment to the bill that would specifically deny coverage for abortions.

After the bill is passed, the Federal Health Commission will find that abortion is covered, pro-lifers will sue, and a court will say it's within the regulatory authority of the health commission to require coverage for abortions.

Then we'll watch a parade of senators and congressmen indignantly announcing, "Well, I'm pro-life, and if I had had any idea this bill would cover abortions, I never would have voted for it!"

No wonder Democrats want to remind us that they can't be trusted with foreign policy. They want us to forget that they can't be trusted with domestic policy.

Miss Ann keeps her promise to continue telling the truth about socialized medicine which will wind up paying for abortions and cover illegal aliens (I don't care if a provision of the legislation excludes illegals, the Supreme Court has already ruled that illegals can't be denied "citizenship benefits" so any system that covers citizens will have to cover illegals as well) and will most definitely include Death Panels.

I'm sure that next week we'll hear all about how the evil old bastard Ted Kennedy (who is now dead and burning in hell) was involved with socialized medicine.

I can hardly wait.

One down. . .

As you all know by now Ted Kennedy has kept his appointment with Satan's toaster oven where he will spend the rest of forever paying the full price for his many acts of pure evil. From abandoning a young woman to die to torturing her parents by showing up at her funeral wearing a neck brace (the only time he was ever seen wearing it) to unleashing the full power of the national Democrat party, the Massachusetts elite establishment and the Roman Catholic Church against those same parents in order to intimidate them into dropping any effort to gain justice for their daughter.

But Teddy isn't roasting in the pit of hell only for what he did at Chappaquiddick where he only harmed one young woman and her family. He is now and eternally being flayed and buggered by the demonic hoards for what he used the power-for-life that his magic name gave him to do, and attempt to do, to an entire nation.

For example there was the incident in 1983 when Kennedy contacted Soviet General Secretary Yuri Andropov and suggested ways in which he could work with the KGB to counter what he called "Reagan's propaganda" and help defeat Reagan's bid for reelection.

Add to this Kennedy's support for a nuclear freeze, which would have frozen America's strategic arsenal while allowing the Soviets to continue to build without any limits and we can see that if old Teddy had gotten his way the Berlin Wall would still be standing and the USSR would still be holding Eastern Europe in subjugation and pointing a large nuclear arsenal at our cities.

We see that even 20 years later Kennedy failed to learn from his mistakes by the way he fed the "Bush lied us into war" and "war for Haliburton" conspiracy theories of the kook fringe of the antiwar movement.

On the domestic side Kennedy's legacy is no better. His advocacy of ever an higher minimum wage which limits the number of entry level jobs and harms very young workers and minorities most of all is a good example of how Kennedy was willing to build an image of himself as "champion of the little guy" while ruthlessly grinding the "little guy" under his boot heel.

This tendency is nowhere better seen than in his push for universal government run health care (socialized medicine). The fact is that under the system that Kennedy would have had us live under (but would never have willingly subjected himself) no "little guy" would have access to anywhere near the level of care that Kennedy himself received at the end of his life.

Some will question why I choose the occasion of Kennedy's death to utter such unpleasant truths about him. The answer is that unlike Senator Kennedy I am not a hypocrite and I will not pretend that the United States is anything but better off for his absence.

Shamelessly stolen

From Shooting the Messenger

The People's Cube

Red Planet

Elusive Muck Monster identified?

WEST PALM BEACH, FL -- There's something lurking just under the surface of the Lake Worth Lagoon.

Greg Reynolds of LagoonKeepers.org recalls, "Channel marker ten is the first time we saw the unknown creature." "I hollered out...and said what is that? We followed it, started taking video."

This mysterious creature was caught on tape by the LagoonKeepers.

Don Serrano was with Reynolds. "I didn't know what it was….I was like HEY LOOK! And we moved over and saw it. It was different, very different."

"Little wakes and just kind of moving like this…real long ones too, just like that."

Reynolds remembers, "We sped up on it to catch up to it and we got up on it, it dove down." "Every time we get 10 feet from it, it would just disappear."

What could it be?

"Who knows? I have no idea, but it was something that’s for sure, without a doubt," said Serrano.

Thanks to the LagoonKeepers, until it's identified, it has a name:

Reynolds calls it, "The elusive muck monster!"

You know it does seem that since the little tin messiah's numbers have been tanking that we haven't seen nearly as much of her.

Miss Ann is talking

That means that YOU are listening!

LIBERAL LIES ABOUT NATIONAL HEALTH CARE: FIRST IN A SERIES
by Ann Coulter
August 19, 2009

(1) National health care will punish the insurance companies.

You want to punish insurance companies? Make them compete.

As Adam Smith observed, whenever two businessmen meet, "the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices." That's why we need a third, fourth and 45th competing insurance company that will undercut them by offering better service at a lower price.

Tiny little France and Germany have more competition among health insurers than the U.S. does right now. Amazingly, both of these socialist countries have less state regulation of health insurance than we do, and you can buy health insurance across regional lines -- unlike in the U.S., where a federal law allows states to ban interstate commerce in health insurance.

U.S. health insurance companies are often imperious, unresponsive consumer hellholes because they're a partial monopoly, protected from competition by government regulation. In some states, one big insurer will control 80 percent of the market. (Guess which party these big insurance companies favor? Big companies love big government.)

Liberals think they can improve the problem of a partial monopoly by turning it into a total monopoly. That's what single-payer health care is: "Single payer" means "single provider."

It's the famous liberal two-step: First screw something up, then claim that it's screwed up because there's not enough government oversight (it's the free market run wild!), and then step in and really screw it up in the name of "reform."

You could fix 90 percent of the problems with health insurance by ending the federal law allowing states to ban health insurance sales across state lines. But when John McCain called for ending the ban during the 2008 presidential campaign, he was attacked by Joe Biden -- another illustration of the ironclad Ann Coulter rule that the worst Republicans are still better than allegedly "conservative" Democrats.

(2) National health care will "increase competition and keep insurance companies honest" -- as President Barack Obama has said.

Government-provided health care isn't a competitor; it's a monopoly product paid for by the taxpayer. Consumers may be able to "choose" whether they take the service -- at least at first -- but every single one of us will be forced to buy it, under penalty of prison for tax evasion. It's like a new cable plan with a "yes" box, but no "no" box.

Obama himself compared national health care to the post office -- immediately conjuring images of a highly efficient and consumer-friendly work force -- which, like so many consumer-friendly shops, is closed by 2 p.m. on Saturdays, all Sundays and every conceivable holiday.

But what most people don't know -- including the president, apparently -- with certain narrow exceptions, competing with the post office is prohibited by law.

Expect the same with national health care. Liberals won't stop until they have total control. How else will they get you to pay for their sex-change operations?

(3) Insurance companies are denying legitimate claims because they are "villains."

Obama denounced the insurance companies in last Sunday's New York Times, saying: "A man lost his health coverage in the middle of chemotherapy because the insurance company discovered that he had gallstones, which he hadn't known about when he applied for his policy. Because his treatment was delayed, he died."

Well, yeah. That and the cancer.

Assuming this is true -- which would distinguish it from every other story told by Democrats pushing national health care -- in a free market, such an insurance company couldn't stay in business. Other insurance companies would scream from the rooftops about their competitor's shoddy business practices, and customers would leave in droves.

If only customers had a choice! But we don't because of government regulation of health insurance.

Speaking of which, maybe if Mr. Gallstone's insurance company weren't required by law to cover early childhood development programs and sex-change operations, it wouldn't be forced to cut corners in the few areas not regulated by the government, such as cancer treatments for patients with gallstones.

(4) National health care will give Americans "basic consumer protections that will finally hold insurance companies accountable" -- as Barack Obama claimed in his op/ed in the Times.

You want to protect consumers? Do it the same way we protect consumers of dry cleaning, hamburgers and electricians: Give them the power to tell their insurance companies, "I'm taking my business elsewhere."

(5) Government intervention is the only way to provide coverage for pre-existing conditions.

The only reason most "pre-existing" conditions aren't already covered is because of government regulations that shrink the insurance market to a microscopic size, which leads to fewer options in health insurance and a lot more uninsured people than would exist in a free market.

The free market has produced a dizzying array of insurance products in areas other than health. (Ironically, array-associated dizziness is not covered by most health plans.) Even insurance companies have "reinsurance" policies to cover catastrophic events occurring on the properties they insure, such as nuclear accidents, earthquakes and Michael Moore dropping in for a visit and breaking the couch.

If we had a free market in health insurance, it would be inexpensive and easy to buy insurance for "pre-existing" conditions before they exist, for example, insurance on unborn -- unconceived -- children and health insurance even when you don't have a job. The vast majority of "pre-existing" conditions that currently exist in a cramped, limited, heavily regulated insurance market would be "covered" conditions under a free market in health insurance.

I've hit my word limit on liberal lies about national health care without breaking a sweat. See this space next week for more lies in our continuing series.

We can hardly wait for the next installment!

The USA is a conservative nation

(CNSNews.com) - Self-identified conservatives outnumber self-identified liberals in all 50 states of the union, according to the Gallup Poll.

At the same time, more Americans nationwide are saying this year that they are conservative than have made that claim in any of the last four years.

In 2009, 40% percent of respondents in Gallup surveys that have interviewed more than 160,000 Americans have said that they are either “conservative” (31%) or “very conservative” (9%). That is the highest percentage in any year since 2004.

Only 21% have told Gallup they are liberal, including 16% who say they are “liberal” and 5% who say they are “very liberal.”

Thirty-five percent of Americans say they are moderate.

During Republican President George W. Bush’s second term, the number of self-identified conservatives as measured by Gallup dropped, riding at a low of 37% as recently as last year.

According to new data released by Gallup on Friday, conservatives outnumber liberals in all 50 states--including President Obama’s home state of Illinois--even though Democrats have a significant advantage over Republicans in party identification in 30 states.

“In fact, while all 50 states are, to some degree, more conservative than liberal (with the conservative advantage ranging from 1 to 34 points), Gallup's 2009 party ID results indicate that Democrats have significant party ID advantages in 30 states and Republicans in only 4,” said an analysis of the survey results published by Gallup.

“Despite the Democratic Party's political strength-- seen in its majority representation in Congress and in state houses across the country--more Americans consider themselves conservative than liberal,” said Gallup’s analysis.

“While Gallup polling has found this to be true at the national level over many years, and spanning recent Republican as well as Democratic presidential administrations, the present analysis confirms that the pattern also largely holds at the state level,” said Gallup. “Conservatives outnumber liberals by statistically significant margins in 47 of the 50 states, with the two groups statistically tied in Hawaii, Vermont, and Massachusetts.”

It would seem that rather than follow the advice of people like Colin Powell and move the Republican party to the left in order to win elections that we should be seeking ways to appeal to those self-identified conservatives who are not members of the GOP.

I said in a previous post that the greatest threat to the survival of America as a free and prosperous nation is the attitude by many voters that the Democrat party is the party of the "common man". Even people who consider themselves conservative often think of the Republican party as representing only Wall Street and Fortune 500 CEO's - and, to be fair, being more pro-military.

The truth is that Wall Street brokers and bankers are far more likely to be Democrats than Republicans. The same is true for executives in very large corporations.

Fortune 500 corporations tend to like the left-wing regulatory state because all those Byzantine regulations and onerous taxes tend to strictly limit competition because only a large and well established company is likely to be able to afford the large number of lawyers and accountants needed to keep ahead of the government paperwork.

They also tend to like affirmative action because a large company with a large number of employees can better afford to create a large "corporate diversity" division and staff it with all the deadwood they are forced to carry in order to meet their diversity quotas. Small start-up companies don't have that luxury.

Rather than altering the GOP's position of issues to make ourselves more like the Democrats we simply need to aggressively frame the Democrats as being what they truly are. Socialists with a desire to drastically limit Americans' liberty and prosperity.

Look at the dramatic fall in Barack Obama's poll numbers after only a few weeks of conservative media shining the spotlight on his attempt to nationalize the health care industry.

More of this kind of truth-telling needs to take place and more elected Republicans need to grow a spine and take the lead in this effort.

If you want an example of how this is done just look at Sarah Palin.

ATTENTION!

All loyal subjects of the regime!

The email address in which you are instructed to report thoughtcriminals is no longer flag@whitehouse.gov. You are now instructed to report all thoughtcrime at the website http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck.

Your cooperation in this matter is compulsory.

Now Comrades!
Onward to the New Utopia!

Duty now for the future!

Obama supporters show that while they might be saddened by the loss of single payer health care in the American Reich they are not daunted in their faith in The One's vision of a collectivist future!

National Socialist Health Care

B. Hussein Obama sings the anthem of America's new National Socialist Health Service:






Hat Tips to Laura Upton for the YouTube video and The People's Cube for the poster.

The toothless lion roars

British leftists are being stung by all the attention that is being paid to their crappy and dysfunctional health care system and are trying to hit back.

From The Independent we have an article called The Brutal Truth About America's Healthcare:

They came in their thousands, queuing through the night to secure one of the coveted wristbands offering entry into a strange parallel universe where medical care is a free and basic right and not an expensive luxury. Some of these Americans had walked miles simply to have their blood pressure checked, some had slept in their cars in the hope of getting an eye-test or a mammogram, others had brought their children for immunisations that could end up saving their life.

In the week that Britain's National Health Service was held aloft by Republicans as an "evil and Orwellian" example of everything that is wrong with free healthcare, these extraordinary scenes in Inglewood, California yesterday provided a sobering reminder of exactly why President Barack Obama is trying to reform the US system.

The LA Forum, the arena that once hosted sell-out Madonna concerts, has been transformed – for eight days only – into a vast field hospital. In America, the offer of free healthcare is so rare, that news of the magical medical kingdom spread rapidly and long lines of prospective patients snaked around the venue for the chance of getting everyday treatments that many British people take for granted.

Thousands of people stood in long lines in order to be herded like cattle into a large impersonal medical facility in which they would have no choice about which doctor they saw and could take or leave whatever treatment they would offer because there would be no chance to obtain a second opinion or seek alternate treatment.

And none of it free, just paid for by their fellow taxpaying countrymen.

Sounds like a bunch of American citizens got to pretend they were British subjects for a few days.

Because, you see, this is what it is like not just for the poor in the United Kingdom but for every British subject. Unless they are members of Parliament or the royal family.

Or can afford to go to a place like America or India which still have free market medicine - which thousands do every year.

In the first two days, more than 1,500 men, women and children received free treatments worth $503,000 (£304,000). Thirty dentists pulled 471 teeth; 320 people were given standard issue spectacles; 80 had mammograms; dozens more had acupuncture, or saw kidney specialists. By the time the makeshift medical centre leaves town on Tuesday, staff expect to have dispensed $2m worth of treatments to 10,000 patients.

Notice that the dentists pulled 471 teeth but there is no mention of how many cavities they filled. If they pulled that many teeth then they would have filled thousands of cavities but it would undermine the purpose of The Independent's hatchet job to mention that.

This is because in the UK dentists no longer routinely fill cavities. They just pull the teeth because that is faster and cheaper. Reminding middle class Englishmen that even the dirt poor seeking care in giant cattle call charity events in the US receive better care than the NHS is capable of giving British subjects who earn enough to drive BMW's might not be good for British self esteem.

Along the hall, Liz Cruise was one of scores of people waiting for a free eye exam. She works for a major supermarket chain but can't afford the $200 a month that would be deducted from her salary for insurance. "It's a simple choice: pay my rent, or pay my healthcare. What am I supposed to do?" she asked. "I'm one of the working poor: people who do work but can't afford healthcare and are ineligible for any free healthcare or assistance. I can't remember the last time I saw a doctor."

We should point out here that the reason health insurance costs so much is that the California legislature has loaded down the insurance industry in that state with mandates that they provide coverage for a large number of services that only a few people would ever want to use. This is not unique to California, in various states across the Union acupuncture, marriage counseling, aroma therapy, non reconstructive breast implants and, for all we know, past-life regression therapy are all things that one's health insurance must pay for.

This is what drives up the price so much that the working poor can't afford to pay. That and the hidden cost of physician's malpractice insurance due to the predatory behavior of trial lawyers looking for a paycheck and the defensive testing that doctors are required to preform to give themselves a defense in the frivolous malpractice suits they will inevitably have to face.

Let us also take note of the fact that this lady says that she must choose between rent and insurance premiums. We can point out here that every month's rent this woman pays also includes the property tax her landlord must pay. If that tax were lower then her rent would not be so high. We can also note that if there were not so many left-wing regulations on land use and building codes that there would be more new construction and more inexpensive housing available in California.

Although the Americans spend more on medicine than any nation on earth, there are an estimated 50 million with no health insurance at all. Many of those who have jobs can't afford coverage, and even those with standard policies often find it doesn't cover commonplace procedures. California's unemployed – who rely on Medicaid – had their dental care axed last month.

The 50 million uninsured number has been debunked so many times that I won't bore you by doing it here. I'll just point out that the real number is closer to 12 million. You can see my comments above for ways to cut both the costs of medical treatments and health insurance.

We should also notice that the state that just cut dental coverage from Medicaid is California, a state that has been a playground for every harebrained liberal scheme for decades. They have run their state's economy into the ground and are now so broke that they are issuing IOU's to state workers.

Julie Shay was one of the many, waiting to slide into a dentist's chair where teeth were being drilled in full view of passers-by. For years, she has been crossing over the Mexican border to get her teeth done on the cheap in Tijuana. But recently, the US started requiring citizens returning home from Mexico to produce a passport (previously all you needed was a driver's license), and so that route is now closed. Today she has two abscesses and is in so much pain she can barely sleep. "I don't have a passport, and I can't afford one. So my husband and I slept in the car to make sure we got seen by a dentist. It sounds pathetic, but I really am that desperate."

If she can afford the car to sleep in she can also afford a tooth brush and a tube of toothpaste. I feel for this woman because I know how much an abscessed tooth hurts but problems at this level almost always indicate a lack of preventive care.

I also don't believe that she can't afford a passport. This is taken from the blog RushMyPassport.com:

If you’re over age 16, submit your application person, and order a passport card, you’ll pay a $20.00 application fee and a $25.00 execution fee, for a total cost of $45.00. However, passport cards are are only valid for land and sea travel to Mexico, Canada or the Caribbean.

You car verify that with the State Department here.

I think that she could scrape up $45.00 if she needed to. And I also wonder how much shopping around she has done in this country for a dentist. My dentist routinely makes financial arrangements with uninsured people who cannot afford to pay full price. I find it impossible to believe that there are no dentists in Southern California who will not do the same.

Julie Shay goes on to comment:

"You'd think, with the money in this country, that we'd be able to look after people's health properly," she said. "But the truth is that the rich, and the insurance firms, just don't realise what we are going through, or simply don't care. Look around this room and tell me that America's healthcare don't need fixing."

I don't want to be too hard on this woman but with all due respect I think that "fixing" her idea of personal responsibility would go a lot further to improving her life than all the handouts in the world.

President Obama's healthcare plans had been a central plank of his first-term programme, but his reform package has taken a battering at the hands of Republican opponents in recent weeks. As the Democrats have failed to coalesce around a single, straightforward proposal, their rivals have seized on public hesitancy over "socialised medicine" and now the chance of far-reaching reform is in doubt.

Most damaging of all has been the tide of vociferous right-wing opponents whipping up scepticism at town hall meetings that were supposed to soothe doubts. In Pennsylvania this week, Senator Arlen Specter was greeted by a crowd of 1,000 at a venue designed to accommodate only 250, and of the 30 selected speakers at the event, almost all were hostile.

The majority of the American people are opposing this attempt by our Marxist president to take over a significant part of the American economy because we have educated ourselves on what it wold mean. We have heard the warning sounded by one of your own parliamentarians, Daniel Hannan:

The packed bleachers in the LA Forum tell a different story. The mobile clinic has been organised by the remarkable Remote Area Medical. The charity usually focuses on the rural poor, although they worked in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Now they are moving into more urban venues, this week's event in Los Angeles is believed to be the largest free healthcare operation in the country.

Doctors, dentists and therapists volunteer their time, and resources to the organisation. To many US medical professionals, it offers a rare opportunity to plug into the public service ethos on which their trade was supposedly founded. "People come here who haven't seen a doctor for years. And we're able to say 'Hey, you have this, you have this, you have this'," said Dr Vincent Anthony, a kidney specialist volunteering five days of his team's time. "It's hard work, but incredibly rewarding. Healthcare needs reform, obviously. There are so many people falling through the cracks, who don't get care. That's why so many are here."

It is a good thing that Dr. Anthony and the other physicians are doing here but I feel compelled to ask why is the opportunity to treat patients at little or no cost so "rare"? In America doctors are not employees of the government. They are free to treat patients for free or at reduced cost any time they want. In fact most do offer their services pro bono to needy patients as a matter of routine.

Ironically, given this week's transatlantic spat over the NHS, Remote Area Medical was founded by an Englishman: Stan Brock. The 72-year-old former public schoolboy, Taekwondo black belt, and one-time presenter of Wild Kingdom, one of America's most popular animal TV shows, left the celebrity gravy train in 1985 to, as he puts it, "make people better".

Today, Brock has no money, no income, and no bank account. He spends 365 days a year at the charity events, sleeping on a small rolled-up mat on the floor and living on a diet made up entirely of porridge and fresh fruit. In some quarters, he has been described, without too much exaggeration, as a living saint.

Though anxious not to interfere in the potent healthcare debate, Mr Brock said yesterday that he, and many other professionals, believes the NHS should provide a benchmark for the future of US healthcare.

"Back in 1944, the UK government knew there was a serious problem with lack of healthcare for 49.7 million British citizens, of which I was one, so they said 'Hey Mr Nye Bevan, you're the Minister for Health... go fix it'. And so came the NHS. Well, fast forward now 66 years, and we've got about the same number of people, about 49 million people, here in the US, who don't have access to healthcare."

Without a doubt Mr. Brock is a nice man who does good work but someone who chooses to live like a mendicant monk is not really the role model that America needs. You see Mr. Brock would have all Americans, and indeed all people everywhere, get their medical care in the kind of environment that he has created here at this charity clinic.

To people like him and other proponents of socialized medicine there is something shameful about the fact that the vast majority of Americans don't stand in long lines in dirty uncomfortable taxpayer financed clinics. The fact that most Americans are treated in comfortable doctor's offices where they retain their dignity while receiving their health care is wrong because everyone can't have the same level of care.

Americans have traditionally rejected that kind of reasoning. From the look of the polls it seems that Americans still reject that kind of thinking. I just hope that our elected leaders are still willing to listen to the voice of the people.

Nothing new under the sun

The great Ronald Reagan speaks out against socialized medicine back in 1961.

We can't say we haven't been warned.

Yeah, she's real stupid

Gov. Palin defends her contention that the little tin messiah's Marxist health care "reform" will lead to death panels.

Yesterday President Obama responded to my statement that Democratic health care proposals would lead to rationed care; that the sick, the elderly, and the disabled would suffer the most under such rationing; and that under such a system these “unproductive” members of society could face the prospect of government bureaucrats determining whether they deserve health care.

The President made light of these concerns. He said:

“Let me just be specific about some things that I’ve been hearing lately that we just need to dispose of here. The rumor that’s been circulating a lot lately is this idea that somehow the House of Representatives voted for death panels that will basically pull the plug on grandma because we’ve decided that we don’t, it’s too expensive to let her live anymore....It turns out that I guess this arose out of a provision in one of the House bills that allowed Medicare to reimburse people for consultations about end-of-life care, setting up living wills, the availability of hospice, etc. So the intention of the members of Congress was to give people more information so that they could handle issues of end-of-life care when they’re ready on their own terms. It wasn’t forcing anybody to do anything.” [1]

The provision that President Obama refers to is Section 1233 of HR 3200, entitled “Advance Care Planning Consultation.” [2] With all due respect, it’s misleading for the President to describe this section as an entirely voluntary provision that simply increases the information offered to Medicare recipients. The issue is the context in which that information is provided and the coercive effect these consultations will have in that context.

Section 1233 authorizes advanced care planning consultations for senior citizens on Medicare every five years, and more often “if there is a significant change in the health condition of the individual ... or upon admission to a skilled nursing facility, a long-term care facility... or a hospice program." [3] During those consultations, practitioners must explain “the continuum of end-of-life services and supports available, including palliative care and hospice,” and the government benefits available to pay for such services. [4]

Now put this in context. These consultations are authorized whenever a Medicare recipient’s health changes significantly or when they enter a nursing home, and they are part of a bill whose stated purpose is “to reduce the growth in health care spending.” [5] Is it any wonder that senior citizens might view such consultations as attempts to convince them to help reduce health care costs by accepting minimal end-of-life care? As Charles Lane notes in the Washington Post, Section 1233 “addresses compassionate goals in disconcerting proximity to fiscal ones.... If it’s all about obviating suffering, emotional or physical, what’s it doing in a measure to “bend the curve” on health-care costs?” [6]

As Lane also points out:

Though not mandatory, as some on the right have claimed, the consultations envisioned in Section 1233 aren’t quite “purely voluntary,” as Rep. Sander M. Levin (D-Mich.) asserts. To me, “purely voluntary” means “not unless the patient requests one.” Section 1233, however, lets doctors initiate the chat and gives them an incentive -- money -- to do so. Indeed, that’s an incentive to insist.

Patients may refuse without penalty, but many will bow to white-coated authority. Once they’re in the meeting, the bill does permit “formulation” of a plug-pulling order right then and there. So when Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) denies that Section 1233 would “place senior citizens in situations where they feel pressured to sign end-of-life directives that they would not otherwise sign,” I don’t think he’s being realistic. [7]

Even columnist Eugene Robinson, a self-described “true believer” who “will almost certainly support” “whatever reform package finally emerges”, agrees that “If the government says it has to control health-care costs and then offers to pay doctors to give advice about hospice care, citizens are not delusional to conclude that the goal is to reduce end-of-life spending.” [8]

So are these usually friendly pundits wrong? Is this all just a “rumor” to be “disposed of”, as President Obama says? Not according to Democratic New York State Senator Ruben Diaz, Chairman of the New York State Senate Aging Committee, who writes:

Section 1233 of House Resolution 3200 puts our senior citizens on a slippery slope and may diminish respect for the inherent dignity of each of their lives.... It is egregious to consider that any senior citizen ... should be placed in a situation where he or she would feel pressured to save the government money by dying a little sooner than he or she otherwise would, be required to be counseled about the supposed benefits of killing oneself, or be encouraged to sign any end of life directives that they would not otherwise sign. [9]

Of course, it’s not just this one provision that presents a problem. My original comments concerned statements made by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a health policy advisor to President Obama and the brother of the President’s chief of staff. Dr. Emanuel has written that some medical services should not be guaranteed to those “who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens....An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.” [10] Dr. Emanuel has also advocated basing medical decisions on a system which “produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated.” [11]

President Obama can try to gloss over the effects of government authorized end-of-life consultations, but the views of one of his top health care advisors are clear enough. It’s all just more evidence that the Democratic legislative proposals will lead to health care rationing, and more evidence that the top-down plans of government bureaucrats will never result in real health care reform.


[1] See http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/08/president-obama-addresses-sarah-palin-death-panels-wild-representations.html.
[2] See http://edlabor.house.gov/documents/111/pdf/publications/AAHCA-BillText-071409.pdf
[3] See HR 3200 sec. 1233 (hhh)(1); Sec. 1233 (hhh)(3)(B)(1), above.
[4] See HR 3200 sec. 1233 (hhh)(1)(E), above.
[5] See http://edlabor.house.gov/documents/111/pdf/publications/AAHCA-BillText-071409.pdf
[6] See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/07/AR2009080703043.html].
[7] Id.
[8] See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/10/AR2009081002455.html].
[9] See http://www.nysenate.gov/press-release/letter-congressman-henry-waxman-re-section-1233-hr-3200.
[10] See http://www.ncpa.org/pdfs/Where_Civic_Republicanism_and_Deliberative_Democracy_Meet.pdf[11] See http://www.scribd.com/doc/18280675/Principles-for-Allocation-of-Scarce-Medical-Interventions.

Miss Ann is talking

That means that YOU are listening!

KATHLEEN PARKER: THE BARRY LYNN OF THE SOUTH
by Ann Coulter
August 12, 2009

Just as the left pioneered "AstroTurf" protesters -- homeless people lured to demonstrations with the offer of a free T-shirt and a box lunch -- liberals have also specialized in producing fake "insiders" denouncing their alleged group.

There were the "winter soldiers" -- fake Vietnam veterans claiming to have personally disemboweled babies in Vietnam. It took 30 years and the publication of the book "Stolen Valor" to establish that the bulk of them were utter frauds who had never seen combat -- some had never seen Vietnam. (Shockingly, to this day, the Wikipedia entry on the winter soldiers treats their phony war records as legitimate.)

Then there's Barry Lynn, alleged "Christian minister," whose stock in trade is to denounce any mention of religion anyplace, anytime. Look, I'm a Christian minister, but even I have to admit that the sight of a kindergartner praying is terrifying to most folks. (The first person to post Barry Lynn's bar mitzvah photos or birth announcement (mazel tov!) wins a free copy of my latest book, "Guilty: Liberal 'Victims' and Their Assault on America.")

The latest fake insider/whistleblower is Kathleen Parker, the Barry Lynn of the South. Fresh off her mainstream media tour as a Sarah Palin-hating "conservative," Parker is now a self-proclaimed Southerner blaming opposition to Obama's policies on the region's reputed racism.

Uncannily, this claim struck a chord with Northern liberals!

Throughout the presidential campaign last year, liberals were champing at the bit to accuse Americans of racism for not supporting Barack Obama. That was a tough argument on account of the obvious facts that: (1) for every vote he lost because he's black, Obama picked up another 20 votes for being black; (2) Obama won the election in (3) a country that's 87 percent non-black.

So the accusations of racism had to be put on hold until ... the first note of dissent from his agenda was sounded.

Inasmuch as Obama was just elected and his policies have turned out to be the most left-wing the country has ever seen, it wasn't going to be easy to claim the electorate suddenly decided they didn't like the mammoth spending bills or socialist health care bills because they just noticed Obama is black.

But Kathleen Parker has leapt into the fray to explain that the opposition to Obama's agenda is pure Southern racism. And she's from the South, so it must be true!

As she put it on Chris Matthews' "Hardball": "One word, Chris -- one word. 'Confederacy.' I mean, you know, the South is very -- I live there, OK? I want to make that clear, too, because I'm not bashing Southerners."

No, she was certainly not bashing Southerners. This she made clear in her Washington Post column calling for the Republican Party to "drive a stake through the heart of old Dixie."

How one gets from "we don't want socialized medicine" to "we hate black people" was a tough equation. As my algebra teacher used to say: "Please show your work."

Parker's explanation: "Sarah Palin may not have realized what she was doing, but Southerners weaned on Harper Lee heard the dog whistle." And on "Hardball," she said: "You don't position a white woman and a black male and pretend like there's nothing happening there. There's a deep history. That's why I mentioned Harper Lee in there."

So as I understand it, by nominating a black man for president, the Democrats had checkmated Republicans, who should have done the decent thing by not nominating a white woman for vice president, which would be seen as a deliberate ploy to lure gallant Klansmen into defending the white woman's honor by voting against Obama!

Called upon to draw a straight line between Sarah Palin and racism, I guess this is as good a try as any.

Any crackpot can put forward lunatic theories. What gives Parker's slanderous claim punch is her repeated assertion that she's a Southerner, so she's giving us the inside dope. To make sure no one misses the point, Parker issues repeated professions -- "that's what we do in the South," "I am down there," and "I live there, OK?"

Despite the implication that this Daughter of the Confederacy was virtually homecoming queen at Ole Miss, Parker was born and raised in . . . Winter Haven, Fla. She married a South Carolinian and now splits her time between South Carolina and Washington, D.C.

I'm no Civil War buff, but I'm fairly certain there were no brave Confederate stands at Winter Haven against a superior Northern force -- unless those Northern forces were successful dentists from Larchmont. I would lay money that there aren't a lot of antebellum mansions on magnolia-lined boulevards dotted with statutes of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson in Winter Haven, Fla.

Except for the coasts, Florida never had much of a culture below the northern tier on account of the fact that the area beneath the panhandle consisted primarily of malarial swamps. Northerners got that deep into Florida at the turn of the last century -- i.e., about same time as northern Floridians did.

If Parker is a Southerner because she grew up in Winter Haven, then I should be the next spokesman for Gorton's of Gloucester because I grew up in Fairfield County, Conn. I'll pose in rain gear at the wheel of my ship, dispensing flinty, down-home Yankee wisdom -- "Ya cand get theh from heah" -- just like most natives of New Canaan, Conn.

Oh, and one more thing. I was once employed by MSNBC. Speaking as an MSNBC insider, I regret to inform you: We MSNBC-ers hate the military, loathe cops, despise the South and absolutely detest Christians. No really, take it from me -- I'm an old MSNBC hand.

I have spent almost all of my life in the real South, Asheville, Marion and Rutherfordton, and I can tell you that Florida (south of the panhandle) is not the real South.

Fact is we call Floridians "Florida Yankees".

That's what Ms. Parker is, a Florida Yankee.

Paglia's man-crush on Obama continues

For hundreds of years before the revolution which overthrew the czar in favor of a democratically elected government (it was this democratic government that the communists overthrew a short while later) the Russian people had a curious attitude toward their government.

They knew that it was corrupt, inefficient and brutally repressive however it was never the fault of the Czar. It was always the Czar's advisers who were to blame. The people would always say that if only the Czar knew what was going on he would put a stop to it and that when the Czar found out how he was being misled by those closest to him there would be a new day in Russia.

I was reminded of that when reading Camille Paglia's latest column in Salon. I won't fisk thew entire thing, that would be far too tedious, but here are some highlights:

Buyer's remorse? Not me. At the North American summit in Guadalajara this week, President Obama resumed the role he is best at -- representing the U.S. with dignity and authority abroad. This is why I, for one, voted for Obama and continue to support him. The damage done to U.S. prestige by the feckless, buffoonish George W. Bush will take years to repair. Obama has barely begun the crucial mission that he was elected to do.

Its hard to know how to respond to this. As far as I know the most significant things to come out of this summit were Obama's promise to shove amnesty down an unwilling American electorate's throat right after he got finished ramming Marxist socialized medicine down the same place. That and the fact that when asked about Canada's terminally broken socialized health care system Obama praised how well it works for Canada while ignoring the long waiting periods and the fact that the American side of the border is lined with doctor's offices, hospitals and clinics built to serve the large number of Canadian citizens who come south of the border for their health care (where are they going to go when the American system becomes as fraked up as Canada's?). If Obama is so dense that he can't step back and realize that there is something seriously meaningful about the fact that the traffic of those seeking quality medical services along the US/Canadian border is all one way with Canadians coming to the US and no Americans going to Canada then how can anyone trust him to reform America's health care system (or our economy or foreign relations or anything else)?

Having said that, I must confess my dismay bordering on horror at the amateurism of the White House apparatus for domestic policy. When will heads start to roll?

See, it's not the Czar. It's the Czar's advisors. When the Czar finds out what is going on there will be a new day dawning for Rus. . . I mean America!

Case in point: the administration's grotesque mishandling of healthcare reform, one of the most vital issues facing the nation. Ever since Hillary Clinton's megalomaniacal annihilation of our last best chance at reform in 1993 (all of which was suppressed by the mainstream media when she was running for president), Democrats have been longing for that happy day when this issue would once again be front and center.

But who would have thought that the sober, deliberative Barack Obama would have nothing to propose but vague and slippery promises -- or that he would so easily cede the leadership clout of the executive branch to a chaotic, rapacious, solipsistic Congress? House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whom I used to admire for her smooth aplomb under pressure, has clearly gone off the deep end with her bizarre rants about legitimate town-hall protests by American citizens. She is doing grievous damage to the party and should immediately step down.

There is plenty of blame to go around. Obama's aggressive endorsement of a healthcare plan that does not even exist yet, except in five competing, fluctuating drafts, makes Washington seem like Cloud Cuckoo Land. The president is promoting the most colossal, brazen bait-and-switch operation since the Bush administration snookered the country into invading Iraq with apocalyptic visions of mushroom clouds over American cities.

You can keep your doctor; you can keep your insurance, if you're happy with it, Obama keeps assuring us in soothing, lullaby tones. Oh, really? And what if my doctor is not the one appointed by the new government medical boards for ruling on my access to tests and specialists? And what if my insurance company goes belly up because of undercutting by its government-bankrolled competitor? Face it: Virtually all nationalized health systems, neither nourished nor updated by profit-driven private investment, eventually lead to rationing.

I just don't get it. Why the insane rush to pass a bill, any bill, in three weeks? And why such an abject failure by the Obama administration to present the issues to the public in a rational, detailed, informational way? The U.S. is gigantic; many of our states are bigger than whole European nations. The bureaucracy required to institute and manage a nationalized health system here would be Byzantine beyond belief and would vampirically absorb whatever savings Obama thinks could be made. And the transition period would be a nightmare of red tape and mammoth screw-ups, which we can ill afford with a faltering economy.

"Why the insane rush to pass a bill, any bill. . . ?" Ms. Paglia I know you don't want to hear this but Barack Obama is a Marxist who harbors a deep hatred for the United States of America. He intends to remake America in the same way that Castro remade Cuba except that he hopes to use the legislature and the courts rather than a violent revolution. He believes that the poor are only poor because what is rightfully theirs has been stolen from them by the greedy few at the top and his mission is to redistribute the wealth of the evil rich to the virtuous poor.

Obama's desire to socialize medicine in the US, along with his already accomplished takeover of the largest American auto manufacturer and several large lending institutions is not about providing Americans with better goods and services. It is about bringing as much of the American economy under the control of the federal government as possible.

Why else is Obama refusing to allow those banks which took bailout money but are once again profitable to pay the money back? Having gotten the federal government's claws (that is his claws) into those banks he will not now, nor will he ever, willingly give up control.

That is the heart and soul of Barack Obama. He is a totalitarian Marxist who wishes the central government to control every meaningful aspect of the life of every citizen. To Obama it doesn't matter that there would be long lines for medical services - lines so long that people would die while waiting for treatment. It doesn't matter that research and development of new drugs and medical technology would slow to a glacial pace or stop altogether [Try this - from the time of the communist revolution in Russia to the day the Berlin Wall fell how many major breakthroughs of medical science came out of the USSR? I can think of one - laser eye surgery. Now how many came out of the United States? Game. Set. Match].

It doesn't even matter to Obama that there really would be "death panels" set up to decide who got life saving treatment based upon their value to The State.

In fact from Obama's perspective all of those things are the reason to do socialized medicine. Giving the government the power to dispense or withhold life-saving treatment invests it with enormous power. The kind of power that is almost impossible to ever take away. Think of FDR saying "let's see them try to repeal that" after Social Security was enacted into law.

As with the massive boondoggle of the stimulus package, which Obama foolishly let Congress turn into a pork rut, too much has been attempted all at once; focused, targeted initiatives would, instead, have won wide public support. How is it possible that Democrats, through their own clumsiness and arrogance, have sabotaged healthcare reform yet again? Blaming obstructionist Republicans is nonsensical because Democrats control all three branches of government. It isn't conservative rumors or lies that are stopping healthcare legislation; it's the justifiable alarm of an electorate that has been cut out of the loop and is watching its representatives construct a tangled labyrinth for others but not for themselves. No, the airheads of Congress will keep their own plush healthcare plan -- it's the rest of us guinea pigs who will be thrown to the wolves.

At this point we have to wonder why Paglia is still a Democrat.

What does either party stand for these days? Republican politicians, with their endless scandals, are hardly exemplars of traditional moral values.

Endless? Seriously, endless? I'm not going to bother listing the more famous Republican scandals and then listing an even longer list of Democrat scandals. The point is this. Republicans realize that the human race is fallen and that we will all fail to perfectly live up to our highest ideals. That's what it means to be sinners in need of salvation.

The difference between Republicans and Democrats is that Democrats reelected Bill Clinton in spite of knowing what a degenerate he was while Republicans hold their leaders accountable (or do you still think that Governor Sanford has a shot at the GOP nomination in 2012).

The point of having morals and values is not that you always live up to them (if you can do that then they are set too low). It is that they give you a goal to aim at and a reason to try to be better than you currently are.

Nor have they generated new ideas for healthcare, except for medical savings accounts, which would be pathetically inadequate in a major crisis for anyone earning at or below a median income.

At this point I wonder if she is deliberately misstating the conservative position or if she really doesn't know.

In case this is genuine ignorance rather than an attempt to create a straw man I'll explain. Health savings accounts are only one part of a genuine free market solution to our current problems. The other parts are tort reform and insurance deregulation.

Tort reform could lower health care costs by more than 25% as doctors would do far less "defensive testing" and would pay far lower malpractice insurance premiums.

Insurance deregulation would allow insurance companies to do what they are now forbidden by law from doing. Write policies which cover only catastrophic events like major illness and accident. Policies like this can be very inexpensive, especially for the young which make up a large percentage of the uninsured.

These three items along with some very narrowly targeted programs aimed at those with pre-existing conditions and the very poorest of the poor would take care of the vast majority of the problems that have been identified with our current system.

I should point out that those programs for the currently uninsurable should depend heavily upon giving the private sector incentives to offer free or discounted treatment. For example drug companies who provide free or reduced cost medicine could get tax breaks and extensions on the amount of time that their drugs receive patent protection. Hospitals and clinics could get significant tax breaks for offering free care to those in legitimate need and doctors could get the same tax breaks along with relief from student loan obligations.

You see these problems can be solved without giving the federal government control of a huge sector of the American economy and the literal power of life and death over the citizenry.

And what do Democrats stand for, if they are so ready to defame concerned citizens as the "mob" -- a word betraying a Marie Antoinette delusion of superiority to ordinary mortals. I thought my party was populist, attentive to the needs and wishes of those outside the power structure. And as a product of the 1960s, I thought the Democratic party was passionately committed to freedom of thought and speech.

Where have you been, Ms. Paglia? It has been a long damn time since the Democrat party has stood for any of those things. What the Democrat party has been about, at least since the Great Society, has been amassing as much power in Washington as humanly possible.

This attitude that Paglia shows here, that the Democrat party is still the party of the "common man" is the single greatest threat to the survival of this nation as a free and prosperous land.

Whatever the Democrat party may have been in the past what it is today is the party of socialism and an all powerful central government run by an elite which considers themselves to be separate from and superior to the average American.

But somehow liberals have drifted into a strange servility toward big government, which they revere as a godlike foster father-mother who can dispense all bounty and magically heal all ills. The ethical collapse of the left was nowhere more evident than in the near total silence of liberal media and Web sites at the Obama administration's outrageous solicitation to private citizens to report unacceptable "casual conversations" to the White House. If Republicans had done this, there would have been an angry explosion by Democrats from coast to coast. I was stunned at the failure of liberals to see the blatant totalitarianism in this incident, which the president should have immediately denounced. His failure to do so implicates him in it.

Ms. Paglia you teach at a major university and you are a student of popular culture. If you want to know why liberals think what they think about big government OPEN YOUR DAMN EYES AND LOOK AROUND YOU AND WHILE YOU'RE AT IT LOOK IN THE DAMN MIRROR!

Look at what you have written in this essay that I'm quoting from and contemplate the fact that you can still remain a brain-dead O-bot zombie!

And as for the snitch site where we can inform on our neighbors who are critical of the little tin messiah and his policies we once again hear that it isn't the Czar who is to blame but his evil advisers. Except that Obama knows about this and approves of it.

He approves of the snitch-site because the idea of seeding the land with a network of informers like the KGB or Gestapo did in the USSR or Nazi Germany is an idea which flows naturally out of Obama's evil totalitarian heart.

I used to have some respect for Camile Paglia's intelligence but after the way she has turned herself into an intellectual whore for Obama I can't feel anything for her but contempt.


This blog post can be reported to Obama's new Okhrana by emailing flag@whitehouse.gov

Joke

Mike Church is offering a t-shirt with the Obama as Joker artwork.


You can buy one here.

Sarah speaks truth to power

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin called President Barack Obama's health plan "downright evil" Friday in her first online comments since leaving office, saying in a Facebook posting that he would create a "death panel" that would deny care to the neediest Americans.

"The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care," the former Republican vice presidential candidate wrote.

"Such a system is downright evil," Palin wrote on her page, which has nearly 700,000 supporters. She encouraged her supporters to be engaged in the debate.

The claim that the Democratic health care bills would encourage euthanasia has been circulating on the Internet for weeks and has been echoed by some Republican leaders. Democrats from Obama on down have dismissed it as a distortion. The nonpartisan group FactCheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania says the claim is false.

The allegation appears to be based on a provision of the House bill that would require Medicare to pay for end-of-life counseling sessions, on a voluntary basis, for beneficiaries who want the service. Medicare already covers hospice care. And legislation passed by Congress in 1990 requires that patients be asked if they have a living will.

Obama addressed the controversy during a July 28 AARP-sponsored town hall.

"Nobody is going to be forcing you to make a set of decisions on end-of-life care based on some bureaucratic law in Washington," he said.

Bull. Shit.

Remember when the woman told Obama about her mother who needed a pacemaker but the doctor didn't want to do the surgery because she was so old? She took her mom to another doctor who admired the old lady's spirit and did the operation which gave the woman additional years of life to enjoy.

Remember how Obama said that the system wouldn't be able to base decisions on someone's "spirit" but would have to make hard choices like maybe someone would be better off "taking pain pills" rather than getting needed surgery?

"Soft" euthanasia by denying treatment in favor of just "making someone comfortable" is just as much euthanasia as giving someone a lethal injection. We already know that Obama favors this for infants who survive botched abortions (he opposed the Born Alive Infant's Protection Act as long as it was politically possible for him to do so). Do we really believe that someone that soulless and evil would have any problem with doing the same to the elderly or disabled?

Why else did Obama appoint a Mengele style beast like Ezekiel Emanuel to two key positions: health-policy adviser at the Office of Management and Budget and a member of Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research?

Let's pause here and review some of Dr. Emanuel's positions on health care for the elderly and disabled, courtesy of the New York Post:

Savings, he writes, will require changing how doctors think about their patients: Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously, "as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of the cost or effects on others" (Journal of the American Medical Association, June 18, 2008).

Yes, that's what patients want their doctors to do. But Emanuel wants doctors to look beyond the needs of their patients and consider social justice, such as whether the money could be better spent on somebody else.

Many doctors are horrified by this notion; they'll tell you that a doctor's job is to achieve social justice one patient at a time.

Emanuel, however, believes that "communitarianism" should guide decisions on who gets care. He says medical care should be reserved for the non-disabled, not given to those "who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens . . . An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia" (Hastings Center Report, Nov.-Dec. '96).

Translation: Don't give much care to a grandmother with Parkinson's or a child with cerebral palsy.

He explicitly defends discrimination against older patients: "Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination; every person lives through different life stages rather than being a single age. Even if 25-year-olds receive priority over 65-year-olds, everyone who is 65 years now was previously 25 years" (Lancet, Jan. 31).

[. . .]

Since Medicare was founded in 1965, seniors' lives have been transformed by new medical treatments such as angioplasty, bypass surgery and hip and knee replacements. These innovations allow the elderly to lead active lives. But Emanuel criticizes Americans for being too "enamored with technology" and is determined to reduce access to it.

Remember Obama CHOSE this man for important positions spearheading his health care"reforms" because the the two men share a common vision for how the health care industry should work.

Need I remind you that the first organized mass executions by the Nazi regime in Germany were not of Jews or Gypsies or even communists but were of the disabled? People who could not "contribute to society" and were therefore regarded by Hitler as "useless eaters" were killed by lethal injections administered by doctors (like our very own Dr. Emanuel) in hospitals.

It would seem that Mr. Obama shares more with Hitler than just a desire to see as many dead Jews as possible (if Obama doesn't want to see piles of dead Jews then why is he both failing to do anything about Iran's nuclear weapons program and doing all in his power to prevent Israel from doing anything about it themselves?).

I wonder if Obama will surpass even Hitler for cold-bloodiness and decree that the victims of his medical murder factories will given the opportunity to serve The State by being turned into organic fertilizer rather than allowing them to go to waste by burial or cremation? And let's not forget to extract the gold from their teeth either!

I believe that people who think the way that Obama and Emanuel do about issues like this do not simply remove themselves from polite and civilized society. I believe that creatures like this do not even deserve to be considered to share a common humanity with the rest of us.

I am profoundly glad that Mrs. Palin is willing to stand up and tell the truth about this but at the same time it is profoundly sad.

In Ronald Reagan's day he created controversy by having the courage to tell the truth about the Soviet Union in identifying it as the "focus of evil in the world".

Twenty years later George W Bush would create another controversy by accurately identifying North Korea, Iran and Saddam Hussein's Iraq as the "Axis of Evil".

Today while Russia is resurgent, attempting to recapture what it considers the "glory days" of the Soviet Union and North Korea has already obtained nuclear weapons and Iran is nearing completion of its own nuclear program the axis or focus of evil which is posing the most imminent threat to the American people is not centered on Moscow, Tehran or Pyongyang but instead is located in the Oval Office of the White House.

Sad.

P.S. if anyone wants to report this post or anything else on this blog to the Obama regime's new Okhrana the email address is flag@whitehouse.gov

I never could get some crazy mullah to issue a fatwa calling for my death but maybe I can get Obama or Pelosi to denounce me during a press conference.

Tonight's Music

Sharon Shannon - Galway Girl

Reaching the boiling point

From Tampa Bay Online:

What was intended to be a town hall discussion on President Barack Obama's health care reform proposal dissolved into a shouting match with shoving and scuffles in Ybor City tonight.

The event brought home to Tampa the recent phenomenon of angry opponents of Obama's proposal disrupting town hall meetings by Democratic members of Congress during the August recess.

This meeting was organized by Democratic state Rep. Betty Reed but was to include comments on the proposal by U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor, a strong supporter.

Castor tried to speak for nearly 15 minutes but the crowd drowned her out, chanting, "You work for us,'' "Tyranny, tyranny,'' and "Read the bill." She ultimately left the meeting early, further angering some attendees.

Why should one sit in silence and listen to someone spout what you know to be lies? Why should an elected official, someone who is not a master of the people but a servant - like the people who mop the floor and clean the toilets - expect to be treated with respect when they stand up to knowingly and maliciously lie to the people they are supposed to work for?

These Democrats who are going out to try and convince their constituents to support their party's socialized health care scheme are attempting to convince the citizens of this nation to accept much lower quality health care which will cost them much more money in the long run and which will enslave them and their children in chains of dependence to a federal government which will have become much more powerful and much less responsible to and responsive of the people. And those politicians know that this is what they are doing.

If they truly believe that the new Marxist health care system they are attempting to build for the citizens of this nation is better than what we have now then why have they exempted themselves and their families from that new system?

You do know that they have built into the legislation an exemption for themselves, don't you? They will not have to go the the same filthy overcrowded clinics and wait in line for hours and hours and hours to see a doctor like the rest of us will. They will not have to spend years on waiting lists for surgery, sometimes living in agony and sometimes dying for lack of treatment, like people in Europe and Canada do. They will not be told that the drugs they need are too expensive. They will not be told that they are too old to make treating them "cost effective". They will not be told that they are too fat or have smoked too much or drank too much to deserve treatment.

But the rest of us will.

Friends, the fact that they have exempted themselves from the system they are trying to impose upon the rest of us proves beyond any shadow of a doubt that they know EXACTLY what they are trying to do to the rest of us!

The fact that they do know exactly what they are trying to ram down our throats and will stand up and lie to our faces about it forever removes any obligation to treat these scumbags with any shred of respect or even civility. They deserve nothing from us but absolute and perfect contempt! They have made themselves the enemies of the American people and they deserve to be treated like it.

And I am profoundly glad to see huge numbers of my fellow citizens coming to agree with me.

The problems began when a crowd of around 500, many of them recruited to attend by interest groups both for and against the proposal, sought to enter the meeting room. The room, in the offices of the Hillsborough County Children's Board on East Palm Avenue, has a capacity of only about 250.

Several hundred people, mostly opponents, wound up outside or packing a hallway leading into the meeting room. Some scuffled with members of the sponsoring groups who manned the doorway.

One man who said he was injured and intended to file a police complaint, Randy Arthur of Oldsmar, was outside the meeting room with his wife, Kathy Arthur, when organizers tried to close the doors.

She said he was slammed against a wall. He later talked to police officers, his knit shirt ripped and a few scratches visible on his chest.

Among the crowd outside, opponents and a smaller number of proponents got into occasional shouting matches.

After trying to speak, Castor left at about 6:40 p.m., taking jeers as she left.

"They're hiding from their constituents. She works for us and needs to listen,'' said Karen Jaroch, a Tampa homemaker and organizer for the 9-12 Project, set up by TV commentator Glenn Beck, which had recruited its members to attend.

These people, who in their own minds hold a place closer to medieval aristocracy than public employees, are simply unused to being held to account for their actions. It angers and frightens them and their first impulse is to do what some 12th century baron would do and have the ungrateful serfs flogged.

Castor spokeswoman Ellen Gedalius said Castor left because her part of the event was finished.

"We said all along our role was to come and give an update on the bill in Congress,'' Gedalius said, noting that Reed, not Castor, organized and sponsored the meeting. "That's what Betty Reed asked us to do … and that's what we did.''

But Reed said afterward that she encouraged Castor to leave because, "She couldn't get a word through."

Gedalius noted that Castor will have a town hall meeting by telephone on Aug. 13 and that her office has been receiving hundreds of comments on the health care issue.

The meeting was organized by Reed plus the Service Employees International Union, other unions and Organizing for America, a liberal group that grew out of the Obama presidential campaign.

SEIU is a union which violates the law by using member dues for political activities and Organizing for America is an Obama Marxist front organization. Two ultra-left organizations attempt to pack the meeting (one breaking federal law to do so) and yet it is the opponents of the legislation who are accused of "astroturfing".

Some opponents accused the organizers of trying to stack the crowd by allowing early admission to those on their side. Reed denied that, saying those admitted early were organizers setting up the room.

In any case, opponents appeared to outnumber proponents both inside and outside.

Of course they did, all you have to do is check the polls to see that those who are protesting this socialist boondoggle are representing the majority of the people.

After doors to the meeting room closed, some of those outside crowded around the windows of the meeting room, where they held up signs and chanted.

In the last week or so, similar disruptive protests have erupted at town hall meetings in several states.

Democrats, including White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, have said the disruptions were organized attacks aimed at Democrats by conservative, anti-health care reform interest groups. Several protestors at Thursday's meeting in Tampa angrily rejected that contention.

Castor's staff said Reed planned the meeting and invited Castor before the controversy became so heated.

Reed said she set up the meeting because, "I represent a number of people who ask questions about what's going on with health care, so I thought it would be good to put on a meeting and have the congresswoman come in and give an update."

Reed said she was shocked by the number of people who turned out and some of their reactions.

"When you get to the point of possible violence, you've gone over the edge," she said.

When politicians reach the point where they have driven law abiding and patriotic citizens to the point of possible violence THEY have gone over the edge!

In a news conference prior to the town hall, Castor had said, "I do expect some rabble-rousing."

She said the protesters who have been appearing at town hall forums on health care "would have been protesting Medicare … they would never have accepted Social Security."

Medicare and Social Security - two massively expensive federal government programs which the federal government has mismanaged and are now all but bankrupt. They represent tens of trillions of dollars worth of liabilities which the government has no means to pay for. Americans have paid into a system which was supposed to create accounts to fund retirement income and health care in their old age but congress has looted the trust funds in order to pay for vote buying pork projects and now that the Baby Boom generation is nearing retirement age the entire system is threatening to collapse.

This should be all the American people need to consider when contemplating whether the government should be entrusted to take over the nation's health care industry. We are talking about one seventh of the American economy. Do we really want to turn it over to a bureaucracy which will have all the compassion of the IRS, all the customer service skills of the DMV and the fiscal responsibility of, well the federal government (the only entity in the world ever to pay $600.00 for a plastic toilet seat)?

Tampa police spokeswoman Andrea Davis said the department was told a couple hundred people would show up and sent a squad of 10-15 officers, two marked cars, two supervisors and some undercover officers.

As the crowd grew, more were brought in – mainly for traffic control, she said, but they also broke up some scuffles.

She said no arrests were made.

All in all very instructive in helping us understand the amount of anger this attempt to royally screw over the American people in generating.

It also gives us a foretaste of what the left will do to support Comrade Obama in his efforts to turn the US into the new Cuba.

Expect criminal organizations like ACORN and the New Black Panther Party (as well as some labor unions) to start bringing in thugs to intimidate and even attack protesters at these meetings (think Hitler's SA attacking rival political party's meetings). Of course the mainstream media will spin this as peaceful pro-health care reformers defending themselves against attacks by right-wing neo-Nazis.

Remember this is all to the good. The public has Obama's measure now and the time when he was trusted is rapidly vanishing in the rear view mirror. The more he works for this the less people are going to like it and the less they are going to like anything else Obama advocates in the future.

Obama is locking himself into being a one-term president and Nancy Pelosi is handing congress back to the GOP in 2010. Hell, even Harry Reid looks to be defeated in his bid for reelection next year.

I made the point last year that sometimes it takes a Jimmy Carter to make the nation ready for a Ronald Reagan. Well the GOP has three Reagans waiting in the wings. Palin, Perry and Jindal are all capable of doing the jog and indications are that any of them would be willing to step up.