Archive for July, 2009
Posted on July 24, 2009. Filed under: Healthcare, Obama, Politics, Socialism/Communism |
UNBELIEVABLE!!!! This is so scary! Two of President Obama’s top health advisors are very open about their views on rationing care. They make no bones about the fact that some people are not worth the money to keep them alive! Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel says that it is a waste of money to invest healthcare in the elderly and that Drs take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously. 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’” Dr. David Blumenthal recommends slowing medical innovation to control health spending. WHAT??? This is like a nightmare! I can’t believe this is being said in America!
DEADLY DOCTORS
Obama ADVISERS WANT TO RATION CARE
July 24, 2009
THE health bills coming out of Congress would put the de cisions about your care in the hands of presidential appointees. They’d decide what plans cover, how much leeway your doctor will have and what seniors get under Medicare.
Yet at least two of President Obama’s top health advisers should never be trusted with that power.
Start with Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. He has already been appointed to two key positions: health-policy adviser at the Office of Management and Budget and a member of Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research.
Emanuel bluntly admits that the cuts will not be pain-free. “Vague promises of savings from cutting waste, enhancing prevention and wellness, installing electronic medical records and improving quality are merely ‘lipstick’ cost control, more for show and public relations than for true change,” he wrote last year (Health Affairs Feb. 27, 2008).
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).
The bills being rushed through Congress will be paid for largely by a $500 billion-plus cut in Medicare over 10 years. Knowing how unpopular the cuts will be, the president’s budget director, Peter Orszag, urged Congress this week to delegate its own authority over Medicare to a new, presidentially-appointed bureaucracy that wouldn’t be accountable to the public.
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.
Dr. David Blumenthal, another key Obama adviser, agrees. He recommends slowing medical innovation to control health spending.
Blumenthal has long advocated government health-spending controls, though he concedes they’re “associated with longer waits” and “reduced availability of new and expensive treatments and devices” (New England Journal of Medicine, March 8, 2001). But he calls it “debatable” whether the timely care Americans get is worth the cost. (Ask a cancer patient, and you’ll get a different answer. Delay lowers your chances of survival.)
Obama appointed Blumenthal as national coordinator of health-information technology, a job that involves making sure doctors obey electronically deivered guidelines about what care the government deems appropriate and cost effective.
In the April 9 New England Journal of Medicine, Blumenthal predicted that many doctors would resist “embedded clinical decision support” — a euphemism for computers telling doctors what to do.
Americans need to know what the president’s health advisers have in mind for them. Emanuel sees even basic amenities as luxuries and says Americans expect too much: “Hospital rooms in the United States offer more privacy . . . physicians’ offices are typically more conveniently located and have parking nearby and more attractive waiting rooms” (JAMA, June 18, 2008).
No one has leveled with the public about these dangerous views. Nor have most people heard about the arm-twisting, Chicago-style tactics being used to force support. In a Nov. 16, 2008, Health Care Watch column, Emanuel explained how business should be done: “Every favor to a constituency should be linked to support for the health-care reform agenda. If the automakers want a bailout, then they and their suppliers have to agree to support and lobby for the administration’s health-reform effort.”
Do we want a “reform” that empowers people like this to decide for us?
Betsy McCaughey is founder of the Committee to Reduce Infec tion Deaths and a former New York lieutenant governor.
LINK: http://www.nypost.com/seven/07242009/postopinion/opedcolumnists/deadly_doctors_180941.htm?page=0
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Posted on July 24, 2009. Filed under: Healthcare, Socialism/Communism |
It’s amazing that this speech was made in 1961 because it is so relevant today!! Click on the link at the bottom and you’ll hear Reagan giving the entire speech. What I’ve got below is just an excerpt. Please people, let’s listen to Reagan and NOT allow socialized medicine to come to the US!!!
Ronald Reagan speaks out against socialized medicine
Ronald Reagan’s moving speech against socialized medicine… it feels as though it were written this week instead of way back in 1961:
As if we’re not already overextended enough financially, the issue of National Health Care is now on the table once more vote. Here’s some perspective you might find interesting.
Now back in 1927 an American socialist, Norman Thomas, six times candidate for president on the Socialist Party ticket, said the American people would never vote for socialism. But he said under the name of liberalism the American people will adopt every fragment of the socialist program.
One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It’s very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project. Most people are a little reluctant to oppose anything that suggests medical care for people who possibly can’t afford it.
Now, the American people, if you put it to them about socialized medicine and gave them a chance to choose, would unhesitatingly vote against it. We had an example of this. Under the Truman administration it was proposed that we have a compulsory health insurance program for all people in the United States, and, of course, the American people unhesitatingly rejected this.
Let’s take a look at social security itself. Again, very few of us disagree with the original premise that there should be some form of savings that would keep destitution from following unemployment by reason of death, disability or old age. And to this end, social security was adopted, but it was never intended to supplant private savings, private insurance, pension programs of unions and industries.
Now in our country under our free enterprise system we have seen medicine reach the greatest heights that it has in any country in the world. Today, the relationship between patient and doctor in this country is something to be envied any place. The privacy, the care that is given to a person, the right to chose a doctor, the right to go from one doctor to the other.
But let’s also look from the other side, at the freedom the doctor loses. A doctor would be reluctant to say this. Well, like you, I am only a patient, so I can say it in his behalf. The doctor begins to lose freedoms; it’s like telling a lie, and one leads to another. First you decide that the doctor can have so many patients. They are equally divided among the various doctors by the government. But then the doctors aren’t equally divided geographically, so a doctor decides he wants to practice in one town and the government has to say to him you can’t live in that town, they already have enough doctors. You have to go some place else. And from here it is only a short step to dictating where he will go.
This is a freedom that I wonder whether any of us have the right to take from any human being. All of us can see what happens once you establish the precedent that the government can determine a man’s working place and his working methods, determine his employment. From here it is a short step to all the rest of socialism, to determining his pay and pretty soon your children won’t decide when they’re in school where they will go or what they will do for a living. They will wait for the government to tell them where they will go to work and what they will do.
What can we do about this? Well, you and I can do a great deal. We can write to our congressmen and our senators. We can say right now that we want no further encroachment on these individual liberties and freedoms. And at the moment, the key issue is, we do not want socialized medicine.
Former Representative Halleck of Indiana has said, “When the American people want something from Congress, regardless of its political complexion, if they make their wants known, Congress does what the people want.”
So write, and if your representative writes back to you and tells you that he or she too is for free enterprise, that we have these great services and so forth, that must be performed by government, don’t let them get away with it. Show that you have not been convinced. Write a letter right back and tell them that you believe in government economy and fiscal responsibility; that you know governments don’t tax to get the money the need; governments will always find a need for the money they get and that you demand the continuation of our free enterprise system. You and I can do this. The only way we can do it is by writing to our congressmen even we believe that he is on our side to begin with. Write to strengthen his hand. Give him the ability to stand before his colleagues in Congress and say “I have heard from my constituents and this is what they want.”
Write those letters now; call your friends and them to write them. If you don’t, this program I promise you, will pass just as surely as the sun will come up tomorrow, and behind it will come other federal programs that will invade every area of freedom as we have known it in this country. Until, one day, as Normal Thomas said we will awake to find that we have socialism. And if you don’t do this and if I don’t do it, one of these days we are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children, what it once was like in America when men were free.
LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRdLpem-AAs
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Posted on July 24, 2009. Filed under: General, Muslim Invasion, Obama, Obama Corruption, Terrorism |
More questions that Obama won’t answer – more stuff to cover up! So much for transparency!
Did radical Muslims help send Obama to Harvard?
White House refuses to release president’s law school records
Posted: July 21, 2009
By Jerome R. Corsi
© 2009 WorldNetDaily
President Obama’s unwillingness to allow the American public to see his records at Harvard Law School prevents resolution of a continuing controversy over whether radical Islamic influences promoted his admission and financed his legal education there.
In an appearance on the New York-produced “Inside City Hall” television show, octogenarian Harlem lawyer Percy Sutton – whose clients included Malcolm X – explained that Islamic radical Khalid Abdullah Tariq al-Mansour, “one of the world’s wealthiest men,” asked him to write a letter of recommendation to Harvard Law School for then relatively unknown Barack Obama.
In the video, Sutton says he was introduced to Obama by al-Mansour, a Saudi citizen, who “was then raising money” for Obama.
Sutton described al-Mansour as being from Texas, saying al-Mansour was the “principal adviser to one of the world’s richest men,” most likely Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal.
Video of the Sutton interview is posted at YouTube.com
Sutton says al-Mansour told him about Obama, saying in a letter, “There’s a young man that has applied to Harvard. I know that you have a few friends left there because you used to go up there to speak. Would you please write a letter in support of him?” On air, Sutton confirmed he did write the letter, telling his friends at Harvard, “I thought there was going to be a genius that was going to be available and I certainly hoped they would treat him kindly.”
During the 2008 presidential campaign, Ben Smith of Politico reported the Obama campaign’s flat denial of Sutton’s story.
Smith was not able to get in touch with Sutton, whose advanced age had raised questions whether his memory of writing a letter of recommendation for Obama was confused.
Smith did reach al-Mansour, who confirmed Sutton was “a dear friend, his health is not good” and said he’s sure Sutton wrote a letter for someone else, “and he got it confused.”
Yesterday, WND e-mailed a request to Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor, asking that the White House release Obama’s law school records to resolve the issue.
During the 2008 presidential campaign, Vietor was a frequent spokesman for the Obama campaign’s “Fight the Smears” website, which has been removed from the Internet.
WND received no response from Vietor or from the White House press office, which was copied on the e-mail.
Investigative journalist Jack Cashill has reported in WND that al-Mansour serves on the board of, among others, Saudi African Bank and was responsible for the Africa investment activities of Kingdom Holdings, Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal’s investment company.
Cashill also noted that al-Mansour is a frequent lecturer at Harvard.
In August 2008, Amanda Carpenter documented several of al-Mansour’s screeds against Christians and Jews on YouTube.com
Before he abandoned his “slave name,” al-Mansour was known as Don Warden, an African-American radical who founded the Afro-American Association in the Bay Area and was instrumental in creating the Black Panthers.
The University of California Berkeley Library’s Social Activism Sound Recording Project identifies Warden as being the “mentor” of Black Panther co-founder Huey Newton.
The back cover of al-Mansour’s 1982 book “The Destruction of Western Civilization as Seen Through Islam, Christianity and Judaism” specifies al-Mansour received a degree from Howard University, where he majored in philosophy and logic, and a law degree from the University of California at Berkeley.
In a picture caption in the book, al-Mansour supports a key thesis of Black Liberation Theology, that the historical Jesus Christ was not Caucasian.
“When one looks at the descendents of the original Hebrews, it is impossible to believe that Jesus, Mary, Moses, Abraham, Solomon were white, with blue eyes and blond hair,” he writes.
James H. Cone, one of the chief proponents of Black Liberation Theology, wrote in his essay “Black Theology as Liberation Theology” that, “In the place of white Jesus, we insist that ‘Jesus Christ is black, baby!'”
For 20 years, Obama was a member of Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, which openly professed Black Liberation Theology.
WND e-mailed Politico’s Smith requesting comment on this article but received no response by publication deadline.
LINK: http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=104684
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Posted on July 24, 2009. Filed under: Conservatives, Liberal Idiots, Politics, Reverse Discrimination |
I find this amazing! When Bush was in office, everywhere I went there were stores selling anti-Bush stuff – bumper stickers, buttons, posters, mugs, etc – and no one said a word. In fact, the dems thought it was just great!!! I didn’t agree with the sentiment, but never once did I ask that these stores be shut down. I did wonder why they didn’t sell stuff with the opposite viewpoint and even asked them about it, but in the end, they are a private business and they get to decide what they want to sell. Let buyers decide if they want to shop there and then the place will shut down or it won’t, but just because someone doesn’t agree with the sentiment does NOT mean a business owner should be shut down. We should contact the folks at the Concord Mills Mall and let them know what we think of their decision to kick this business out of the mall!! Again I say, the libs think that free speech is ONLY for their side!
Conservative kiosk not allowed at mall
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
CONCORD, N.C.
“Impeach Obama.”
“Al Qaeda’s favorite days: 9/11/01 and 11/04/08.”
“Work Harder. Obama needs the money.”
The bumper stickers and posters sold at “Free Market Warrior” at Concord Mills are meant to be “biting,” the kiosk’s owner Loren Spivack said.
At least one passerby found them racist and bigoted, and took time to tell the mall in a letter and a letter to the editor of the Charlotte Observer.
Whatever your opinion, the fact is this: At the end of July, Free Market Warrior will not be allowed at Concord Mills Mall. The kiosk chain’s owner shared e-mail correspondence with NewsChannel 36 that explains that the mall management has decided that the items sold are not “neutral” enough. The lease will be allowed to expire July 31, 2009 without an option to renew.
Spivack, who first leased the space this spring, says the decision came as a shock to him. He says mall management seemed pleased with the kiosk just a few weeks ago.
“Nobody in that mall is selling anything from a conservative perspective. Plenty of people are selling things with a liberal perspective, with a pro-Obama perspective,” he said. “Given that we are in America and not North Korea, we probably should have some stuff on the other side.”
Spivack says he is careful not to sell things that personally attack a politician and wants a fair exchange of ideas. “The material that I sell is about politics and ideas,” he told Newschannel 36. “It’s all legitimate criticism.”
Concord Mills, owned by Simon Property Group, would not comment for this story, cited a policy against talking about tenant and landlord situations.
Spivack says the company first contacted him about his lease after a letter to the editor appeared in the Charlotte Observer. The author, recent UNC-Charlotte graduate Jennifer Ibanez, wrote:
“Free Market Warrior, a kiosk located adjacent to Bass Pro Shops, specializes in memorabilia embellished with pro-confederacy statements as well as those opposing both the government and President Obama. In addition, these products support ideas such as racisms, sexism, and even slavery. While freedom of speech is a Constitutional right it’s difficult not to believe that something just isn’t quite right here.
“I find it appalling that Concord Mills, North Carolina’s #1 visitor attraction, would condone such a message to be portrayed by their vendors and can’t imagine how the outside visitors’ perceptions of North Carolinians have been skewed by such an establishment.
“It’s hard to stay open-minded when such uncivilized and outdated ideas are endorsed on a daily basis. It’s 2009; please, let’s at least try to put this type of bigotry to an end.”
Ibanez told NewsChannel 36 she was so offended, she wrote the mall as well. She says a friend of hers also wrote in. Both threatened not to return to Concord Mills.
The owner of the mall group, Mel Simon, has been a generous contributor to Democratic causes and politicians, including Barack Obama. Spivack thinks the decision about his lease is political.
“If they have decided to make their malls conservative/libertarian free zones, where those opinions can’t be expressed, I do think it’s their right to do that, but it’s our rights to publicize the fact that they are doing that,” he said.
If the issue is about causing offense, he told us, the mall should police other stores. Spivack sent NewsChannel 36 pictures of several T-shirts and banners from novelty stores at the mall that were so crude we’ve chosen not to share them.
“What I think the mall should have done if they thought that we were expressing one set of ideas and not another, is that they should have gotten another store to come in and sell their ideas,” he said. “I would’ve been all in favor of that. I would have helped them move in.”
NewsChannel 36 has been swamped with e-mails and comments on this story. A spokesperson for the mall did not return a call Thursday about the e-mails, which were hand-carried to the office by reporter Rad Berky. A receptionist unlocked a door and took the e-mails but we don’t know if anyone read them.
LINK: http://www.wcnc.com/news/topstories/stories/wcnc-072109-mrn-freemarketwarrior.63b5bce2.html
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Posted on July 24, 2009. Filed under: Environmental Whackos, Global Warming Hoax |
How much more info do people need to make them question ‘global warming’?
Government monopsony distorts climate science, says SPPI
The climate industry is costing taxpayers $79 billion and counting
Washington, DC 7/22/2009
The Science and Public Policy Institute announces the publication of Climate Money, a study by Joanne Nova revealing that the federal Government has a near-monopsony on climate science funding. This distorts the science towards self-serving alarmism. Key findings:
Ø The US Government has spent more than $79 billion of taxpayers’ money since 1989 on policies related to climate change, including science and technology research, administration, propaganda campaigns, foreign aid, and tax breaks. Most of this spending was unnecessary.
Ø Despite the billions wasted, audits of the science are left to unpaid volunteers. A dedicated but largely uncoordinated grassroots movement of scientists has sprung up around the globe to test the integrity of “global warming” theory and to compete with a lavishly-funded, highly-organized climate monopsony. Major errors have been exposed again and again.
Ø Carbon trading worldwide reached $126 billion in 2008. Banks, which profit most, are calling for more. Experts are predicting the carbon market will reach $2 – $10 trillion in the near future. Hot air will soon be the largest single commodity traded on global exchanges.
Ø Meanwhile, in a distracting sideshow, Exxon-Mobil Corp is repeatedly attacked for paying just $23 million to skeptics—less than a thousandth of what the US government spends on alarmists, and less than one five-thousandth of the value of carbon trading in 2008 alone.
Ø The large expenditure designed to prove the non-existent connection between carbon and climate has created a powerful alliance of self-serving vested interests.
Ø By pouring so much money into pushing a single, scientifically-baseless agenda, the Government has created not an unbiased investigation but a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Ø Sound science cannot easily survive the vice-like grip of politics and finance.
Says Nova, “For the first time, the numbers from government documents have been compiled in one place. It’s time to start talking of “Monopolistic Science”. It’s time to expose the lie that those who claim “to save the planet” are the underdogs. And it’s time to get serious about auditing science, especially when it comes to pronouncements that are used to justify giant government programs and massive movements of money.”
Robert Ferguson, SPPI’s president, says: “This study counts the cost of years of wasted Federal spending on the ‘global warming’ non-problem. Government bodies, big businesses and environmental NGOs have behaved like big tobacco: recruiting, controlling and rewarding their own “group-think” scientists who bend climate modeling to justify the State’s near-maniacal quest for power, control, wealth and forced population reduction.
“Joanne Nova, who wrote our study, speaks for thousands of scientists in questioning whether a clique of taxpayer-funded climate modelers are getting the data right, or just getting the “right” data. Are politicians paying out billions of our dollars for evidence-driven policy-making, or policy-driven evidence-making? The truth is more crucial than ever, because American lives, property and constitutional liberties are at risk.”
LINK: http://www.transworldnews.com/NewsStory.aspx?id=104031&cat=12
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Posted on July 23, 2009. Filed under: Healthcare, Liberal Idiots, Obama, Politics, Socialism/Communism |
More info on what’s in the Healthcare bill – It would be mandatory for senior citizens to have ‘end of life’ counseling every 5 years!!! Yes, they would get counseling on whether or not it’s the best thing to keep getting care or if they just want to go ahead and end their life. The bill also offers a recommendation for the method of death. Can you believe it??? The gov’t would be actively involved in who should live or die!!!! Is that the kind of country you want to live in???
Obamacare for old folks: Just ‘cut your life short’
Health plan provision demands ‘end-of-life’ counseling
Posted: July 22, 2009
By Bob Unruh
© 2009 WorldNetDaily
The version of President Obama’s universal health care plan pending in the U.S. House would require “end-of-life” counseling for senior citizens, and the former lieutenant governor for the state of New York is warning people to “protect their parents” from the measure.
At issue is section 1233 of the legislative proposal that deals with a government requirement for an “Advance Care Planning Consultation.”
Betsy McCaughey, the former New York state officer, told former president candidate Fred Thompson during an interview on his radio program the “consultation” is no more or less than an attempt to convince seniors to die. “One of the most shocking things is page 425, where the Congress would make it mandatory absolutely that every five years people in Medicare have a required counseling session,” she said. “They will tell [them] how to end their life sooner.”
The proposal specifically calls for the consultation to recommend “palliative care and hospice” for seniors in their mandatory counseling sessions. Palliative care and hospice generally focus only on pain relief until death.
The measure requires “an explanation by the practitioner of the continuum of end-of-life services and supports available, including palliative care and hospice, and benefits for such services and supports that are available under this title.”
It also recommends a method for death: “the use of artificially administered nutrition and hydration.”
Then there’s a third reference that sets out reporting requirements for doctors to monitor how such end-of-life orders are followed.
Under “QUALITY REPORTING INITIATIVE,” the bill says, “For purposes of reporting data on quality measures for covered professional services furnished during 2011 and any subsequent year, to the extent that measures are available, the Secretary shall include quality measures on end of life care and advanced care planning that have been adopted or endorsed by a consensus-based organization, if appropriate. Such measures shall measure both the creation of and adherence to orders for life-sustaining treatment.”
McCaughey said she was stunned.
“As a patient advocate I am so shocked at the vicious assault on elderly people and the boomer generation,” she told Thompson. “I hope people listening will protect their parents from what is intended under this bill.”
She cited the federal provision that such counseling sessions must be administered every five years. If there’s a significant change in the person’s health or status during that time, such as an ordinary move to a nursing home because of declining physical abilities, the counseling must be administered again.
The message, she said, is “to do what’s in society’s best interests, and cut your life short.”
“Can you imagine the response of the American people (when they find out)?” Thompson asked..
McCaughey is a health policy expert who founded HospitalInfection.org to stop hospital-acquired infections as well as DefendYourHealthCare.us concerning the proposed nationalization of health care.
The law also allows preferences that treatment levels set up by patients “may range from an indication for full treatment to an indication to limit some or all … interventions.”
McCaughey also said the Obama administration is suggesting that medical care be withheld from seniors based on the expected years they have left to live. Such a program already is in effect in the United Kingdom, where patients losing their eyesight to age-related macular degeneration cannot be given an eyesight-saving medication until they lose sight in one eye.
LINK: http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=104719
If the rest of us have to be forced into this gov’t plan, it’s only fair that our politicians be forced into the same thing. But oooooh nooooooo, they want to keep their plan. If Ted Kennedy had to use the gov’t plan and knew his extended cancer care was going to be cut because of rationing I bet he’d change his tune!!!!
Does Ted Kennedy deserve his extended cancer care?
James Lewis
July 22, 2009
AmericanThinker
Excerpt
Senator Ted Kennedy, who is now 76 years old and was diagnosed with brain cancer in May of last year, is telling the world that nationalized medical care is “the cause of his life.” He wants to see it pass as soon as possible, before he departs this vale of tears.
The prospect of Kennedy’s passing is viewed by the liberal press with anticipatory tears and mourning. But they are not asking the proper question by their own lights: That question — which will be asked for you and me when we reach his age and state in life — is this:
Is Senator Kennedy’s life valuable enough to dedicate millions of dollars to extending it another month, another day, another year?
Because Barack Obama and Ted Kennedy agree with each other that they of all people are entitled to make that decision. Your decision to live or die will now be in their hands.
Ted Kennedy is now 76. Average life expectancy in the United States is 78.06. For a man who has already reached 76, life expectancy is somewhat longer than average (since people who die younger lower the national average); for a wealthy white man it may be somewhat longer statistically; but for a man with diagnosed brain cancer it is correspondingly less. As far as the actuarial tables of the Nanny State are concerned, Kennedy is due to leave this life some time soon. The socialist State is not sentimental, at least when it comes to the lives of ordinary people like you and me.
Snip
Before he dies, Senator Kennedy wants to feel sure that you and I and our loved ones can put that personal decision about life or death safely in the hands of a Federal bureaucrat. It is “the cause of his life,” we are told.
Now there are many people in this country who believe that Ted Kennedy has not spent his life very constructively. Mary Jo Kopechne’s family might still want to trade his life for hers, if she could be brought back. Senator Kennedy has exercised more power over our immigration chaos than any other person in the last half century. 9/11 was committed by illegal entrants who slipped through our deliberately full-of-holes borders, using all manner of Kennedy-authored loopholes and enforcement gaps.
Others might point to the socialist habit of importing vast numbers of voters from Pakistan and Somalia into Western Europe, to make for cheap socialist votes in order to defeat and scapegoat native Europeans. Socialism by immigrant vote buying is happening in every single socialist country in Europe. It is what keeps socialist parties there in power. Kennedy has opened our borders for precisely that kind of takeover by masses of illegal immigrants.
So there might be a rational debate over the social utility of Senator Kennedy’s life. We could all have a great national debate about it. Maybe we should do exactly that, to face the consequences of what the Left sees as so humane, so obviously benevolent, and so enlightened.
Consider what happens in the Netherlands to elderly people. The Netherlands legalized “assisted suicide” in 2002, no doubt in part for compassionate reasons. But also to save money. There is only one money kitty for medical care in the socialist Netherlands. When you get old, the question is asked, either explicitly or by implication:
Do you deserve to live another year compared to young refugees from Somalia, who can use the same euros to have many years of life?
LINK: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/07/does_ted_kennedy_deserve_his_e.html
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Posted on July 23, 2009. Filed under: Healthcare, Obama, Politics, Socialism/Communism |
This Bozo president of ours is so lame-brained that he’s trying to shove something down our throats that even HE hasn’t read!! He couldn’t care less about what’s in the bill, but he keeps ‘assuring’ us of what we’ll get with it. How can he do that when he DOESN’T KNOW what’s in it. There are only 2 options here – he’s either IGNORANT or he’s a LIAR – and neither one is good! Obama has got to be the most inexperienced, deceitful, arrogant, bossy president we’ve ever had. He doesn’t listen to the American people and if he doesn’t get his way through the proper channels, he will force it through in some underhanded way, which is what worries me about the heathcare bill. It looks like people are waking up a little bit to the stupidity of this plan, but that may not stop Obama. He’ll just threaten, blackmail, use some unethical loophole, and do whatever else he needs to do to get his way, whether Americans want it or not. I’m sick of it!
Obama says talking time over, but has no clue what’s in ObamaCare; Update: Obama admits bill needs more work
July 21, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
“The time for talking is through,” sayeth the man who apparently doesn’t realize that Congress exists to debate legislation and not to muzzle itself and rubber-stamp executive initiatives. Of course, Barack Obama might be able to make that argument a little better if this particular executive took any sort of responsibility for the executive initiative in question. Real Clear Politics has this quote from the President who wants Congress to pass the health-care reform bill by the end of the month without debate, but who apparently has no clue as to what it says or how it works.
During the call, a blogger from Maine said he kept running into an Investors Business Daily article that claimed Section 102 of the House health legislation would outlaw private insurance. He asked: “Is this true? Will people be able to keep their insurance and will insurers be able to write new policies even though H.R. 3200 is passed?” President Obama replied: “You know, I have to say that I am not familiar with the provision you are talking about.”
Er, what? Obama has insisted repeatedly that the bill would not force people out of their private health insurance plans, which have over 80% of Americans satisfied at the moment. Now we find out that Obama hasn’t read the section of the bill that pertains to the issue? It shows that Obama has been talking out of his hat the entire time, and has become so disengaged from the process that he’s not bothering to keep up with the legislative changes.
Bill Kristol wonders when Congress will get fed up with uninformed diktats from the Oval Office:
The Democratic bills in the House and Senate are a thousand pages long. They’re still changing as committees try to mark them up, or as they mark up other versions of health insurance legislation. There’s huge uncertainty about how lots of provisions in the bills and under consideration would work–OMB Director Orzsag and HHS Secretary Sibelius couldn’t answer straightforward questions on Fox News Sunday and Meet the Press. Nothing goes into effect in any case until 2013–except the tax provisions, which would begin in 2011. Yet President Obama wants everyone to stop debating and deliberating, and act now–because he and he alone has decided “now is the time to go ahead and act.”
Congress should assert itself, stand up for the deliberative and democratic process, and defy this presumptuous presidential dictate.
I’d put the chances of that at about 60-40 against, or perhaps 62-38 if we count the two Senators from Maine, at least until the midterms. Hopefully, the American people will provide a Congress that shows a little more spine at that point.
Update: Reuters reports that Obama now admits that the bill needs more work:
President Barack Obama said on Tuesday the healthcare overhaul plan working its way through the U.S. Congress needs more work amid signs his top policy initiative, already rejected by Republicans, was running into deeper trouble with his own Democrats.
Obama was to meet with a group of Democratic lawmakers to discuss how to pay for the nearly $1 trillion reforms after a key congressional panel canceled Tuesday’s votes on its version of the legislation while talks continued with a group of fiscally conservative Democrats.
Asked whether he would sign any of the bills now being considered in Congress, Obama told NBC’s “Today” show: “Right now, they’re not where they need to be.”
But Obama said he was confident the final legislation would drive down spiraling healthcare costs over time.
Since “the time for talk is through,” Congress will use body language, hand puppets, and a fleet full of French mimes to get that work accomplished, I presume.
LINK: http://hotair.com/archives/2009/07/21/obama-says-talking-time-over-but-has-no-clue-whats-in-obamacare/comment-page-1/#comments
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Posted on July 17, 2009. Filed under: Muslim Invasion, Politics, Terrorism |
Shut this conference down!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Just the title of the conference should be enough to stop it – “The Fall of Capitalism and the Rise of Islam”. Someone in charge please GROW A SPINE and put a stop to this! We should let the Hilton know what we think of their letting this group have the conference there. Click on the links below to see the video for the conference, the conference website, etc. They are trying to destroy us and flaunting it right in front of our faces!!! WHY are we allowing it????
Link to Conference Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krRWJmXI9HY
Link to Conference Website: http://www.khilafahconference2009.com/
Link to group’s leaflet: http://www.hizb-ut-tahrir.org/index.php/EN/wshow/699
Islamic Supremacist Group Holds First U.S. Conference
Friday, July 17, 2009
Diane Macedo
A group committed to establishing an international Islamic empire and reportedly linked to Al Qaeda is stepping up its Western recruitment efforts by holding its first official conference in the U.S.
Hizb ut-Tahrir is a global Sunni network with reported ties to confessed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Al Qaeda in Iraq’s onetime leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. It has operated discreetly in the U.S. for decades.
Now, it is coming out of the shadows and openly hosting a July 19 conference entitled, “The Fall of Capitalism and the Rise of Islam,” at a posh Hilton hotel in a suburb of Chicago.
Hizb ut-Tahrir insists that it does not engage in terrorism, and it is not recognized by the State Department as a known terror group.
But some terrorism experts say it may be even more dangerous than many groups that are on the terror list.
“Hizb ut-Tahrir is one of the oldest, largest indoctrinating organizations for the ideology known as jihadism,” Walid Phares, director of the Future of Terrorism Project at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told FOXNews.com.
Phares said that Hizb ut-Tahrir, rather than training members to carry out terrorist acts like Al Qaeda, focuses instead on indoctrinating youths between ages of 9 and 18 to absorb the ideology that calls for the formation of an empire — or “khilafah” — that will rule according to Islamic law and condones any means to achieve it, including militant jihad.
Hizb ut-Tahrir often says that its indoctrination “prepares the infantry” that groups like Al Qaeda take into battle, Phares said.
“It’s like a middle school that prepares them to be recruited by the high school, which is Al Qaeda,” he said. “One would compare them to Hitler youth. … It’s an extremely dangerous organization.”
Phares said Hizb ut-Tahrir has strongholds in Western countries, including Britain, France and Spain, and clearly is looking to strengthen its base in the U.S.
“The aim of this conference is to recruit within the Muslim community in America,” he said. “The Middle East governments go after them, but in the U.S. they are protected, so having a base here is going to help their cells around the world.”
Representatives of Hizb ut-Tahrir declined to comment when contacted by FOXNews.com.
Oren Segal, director of Islamic Affairs for the Anti-Defamation League, said the conference is cause for concern.
“While they’re not, for the most part, engaging in violent activities, and they publicly say that they’re against violence, there have been examples around the world where people who have spun off of this group have engaged in violent activity,” Segal told FOXNews.com. “That’s why they’re banned in several Arab and Central Asian countries, as well as Germany and Russia.”
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is one of the group’s most famous alumni, New Statesman journalist Shiv Malik reported, citing intelligence sources. In addition to plotting the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, he also is implicated in the World Trade Center bombing of 1993, the Bali nightclub bombings and the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
Malik’s report, the public policy institute the Nixon Center and the counter-extremism think tank the Quilliam Foundation agree that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq until he was killed in June 2006, was also once a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir.
They say other former members include Asif Muhammad Hanif, a British man who blew himself up outside a bar in Tel Aviv, killing four people (including himself) and wounding more than 50; and Omar Bakri Mohammed, a radical cleric currently banned from Britain who praised the 9/11 attacks, raised funds for Hezbollah and Hamas and called for attacks on the Dublin airport because U.S. troops transfered there on their way to Iraq.
Segal said Hizb ut-Tahrir is becoming more active online in the U.S. — particularly on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace — and now it may be able to add a significant number of Americans to its ranks.
But one place the group will likely not be recruiting is a local Islamic school that backed out of hosting the conference.
The non-profit Aqsa school in Bridgeview said Hizb ut-Tahrir had deceptively portrayed the conference as a bazaar-type event where traditional food and clothing would be sold.
“They misrepresented themselves and the event. We don’t want to be in the middle of something like that,” the school’s business manager Rana Jaber, told CBS News.
The conference’s new venue doesn’t seem to mind.
Hilton Oak Lawn General Manager Rick Harmon said Hizb ut-Tahrir used its own name and was open about the nature of the event, which includes lectures entitled “Capitalism is Doomed to Fail,” “The Global Rise of Islam,” and the “Role of Muslims in America,” when it reserved the room for the conference.
“We’re United States citizens and an American business — if it’s legal, we’re able to host it, as long as it’s nothing that disrupts our other guests’ privacy and security,” Harmon told FOXNews.com.
According to the Khilafah Conference 2009 Web site, the group aims to do neither.
“Hizb-ut-Tahrir is convinced that change must start in the minds of people, and therefore does not accept for people, or societies, to be forced to change by means of violence and terror,” it reads.
The site, which includes a promotional YouTube video, says the group “does not work in the West to change the system of government, but works to project a positive image of Islam to Western society.”
But former member Ishtiaq Hussain said Hizb ut-Tahrir is repackaging itself as a moderate organization as a tactic, while in reality it is “extremist.”
“They don’t recognize countries like Israel, for example; they don’t believe Israel should exist,” Hussain, now a trainer for the Quilliam Foundation, told FOXNews.com. “Some of their leaders have denied the Holocaust, and they believe homosexuals should be thrown off the highest building. … It’s actually a very dangerous group.”
Hizb ut-Tahrir itself has also published writings that seem to contradict its tenet of non-violence.
In his book, “How the Khilafah Was Destroyed,” Sheikh Abdul Qadeem Zalloom, the former global leader of Hizb ut-Tahrir, says anyone who rules by a non-Islamic system should “either retract or be killed … even if this led to several years of fighting and even if it led to the killing of millions of Muslims and to the martyrdom of millions of believers.”
Hizb ut-Tahrir’s official ruling on the permissibility of hijacking planes says, “If the plane belongs to a country at war with Muslims, like Israel, it is allowed to hijack it, for there is no sanctity for Israel nor for the Jews in it.”
And one of the organization’s more recent leaflets, published in March, calls for the declaration of “a state of war against America.”
But, despite these threats and calls to action, Hizb ut-Tahrir remains off the State Department’s terror watch list, and it is free to host the Khilafah Conference and any other event like it.
“In other parts of the world where they’re really very active, they’ve drawn tens of thousands of people to some of their events,” Segal said.
“It’ll be interesting to see to what degree they’ll be welcomed here.”
LINK: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,533525,00.html
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Posted on July 16, 2009. Filed under: Healthcare, Liberal Idiots, Obama, Obama Corruption, Socialism/Communism |
Obama is a liar, a thief, and a socialist dictator!! He keeps spouting these lies that people can opt to have their own personal medical coverage if they want and that gov’t-run care will just be another choice for folks. First of all, we’re not as stupid as he thinks we are and we knew that private companies that need to make money would never be able to compete with a gov’t option that doesn’t need to make money, therefore the private companies would fold and we would all lose our private coverage, forcing us to use the public option. But now we find out that even in the bill itself (on page 16) it says that once the public option becomes available NO NEW MEDICAL POLICIES CAN BE WRITTEN!!! So if you want to switch to another private company, too bad. If you lose your job and your insurance you have no option after that but to use the gov’t-run healthcare because that’s the law!! Yeah, can you believe that?? He is probably the biggest liar we’ve ever had in office, which is saying something considering Bill Clinton was president. And our media won’t give us these facts because they are not true, honest journalists. We have GOT TO STOP THIS SOCIALIST HEALTHCARE!!!!!!
It’s Not An Option: Gov’t-Run Healthcare:A Prescription for Failure
By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, July 15, 2009 4:20 PM PT
Congress: It didn’t take long to run into an “uh-oh” moment when reading the House’s “health care for all Americans” bill. Right there on Page 16 is a provision making individual private medical insurance illegal.
When we first saw the paragraph Tuesday, just after the 1,018-page document was released, we thought we surely must be misreading it. So we sought help from the House Ways and Means Committee.
It turns out we were right: The provision would indeed outlaw individual private coverage. Under the Orwellian header of “Protecting The Choice To Keep Current Coverage,” the “Limitation On New Enrollment” section of the bill clearly states:
“Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day” of the year the legislation becomes law.
So we can all keep our coverage, just as promised — with, of course, exceptions: Those who currently have private individual coverage won’t be able to change it. Nor will those who leave a company to work for themselves be free to buy individual plans from private carriers.
From the beginning, opponents of the public option plan have warned that if the government gets into the business of offering subsidized health insurance coverage, the private insurance market will wither. Drawn by a public option that will be 30% to 40% cheaper than their current premiums because taxpayers will be funding it, employers will gladly scrap their private plans and go with Washington’s coverage.
The nonpartisan Lewin Group estimated in April that 120 million or more Americans could lose their group coverage at work and end up in such a program. That would leave private carriers with 50 million or fewer customers. This could cause the market to, as Lewin Vice President John Sheils put it, “fizzle out altogether.”
What wasn’t known until now is that the bill itself will kill the market for private individual coverage by not letting any new policies be written after the public option becomes law.
The legislation is also likely to finish off health savings accounts, a goal that Democrats have had for years. They want to crush that alternative because nothing gives individuals more control over their medical care, and the government less, than HSAs.
With HSAs out of the way, a key obstacle to the left’s expansion of the welfare state will be removed.
The public option won’t be an option for many, but rather a mandate for buying government care. A free people should be outraged at this advance of soft tyranny.
Washington does not have the constitutional or moral authority to outlaw private markets in which parties voluntarily participate. It shouldn’t be killing business opportunities, or limiting choices, or legislating major changes in Americans’ lives.
It took just 16 pages of reading to find this naked attempt by the political powers to increase their reach. It’s scary to think how many more breaches of liberty we’ll come across in the final 1,002.
LINK: http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=332548165656854
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Posted on July 16, 2009. Filed under: Obama, Politics, Socialism/Communism |
Someone sent this to me and I’m sure it’s making it’s way around the internet, but it gets the point across very well so I’m posting it.
Dinner at the White House
Once upon a time, I was invited to the White House for a private dinner with the President. I am a respected businessman, with a factory that produces memory chips for computers and portable electronics. There was some talk that my industry was being scrutinized by the administration, but I paid it no mind. I live in a free country. There’s nothing that the government can do to me if I’ve broken no laws. My wealth was earned honestly, and an invitation to dinner with an American President is an honor.
I checked my coat, was greeted by the Chief of Staff, and joined the President in a yellow dining room. We sat across from each other at a table draped in white linen. The Great Seal was embossed on the china. Uniformed staff served our dinner.
The meal was served, and I was startled when my waiter suddenly reached out, plucked a dinner roll off my plate, and began nibbling it as he walked back to the kitchen.
“Sorry about that,” said the President. “Andrew is very hungry.”
“I don’t appreciate…” I began, but as I looked into the calm brown eyes across from me, I felt immediately guilty and petty. It was just a dinner roll. “Of course,” I concluded, and reached for my glass. Before I could, however, another waiter reached forward, took the glass away and swallowed the wine in a single gulp.
“And his brother Eric is very thirsty.” said the President.
I didn’t say anything. The President is testing my compassion, I thought. I will play along. I don’t want to seem unkind.
My plate was whisked away before I had tasted a bite.
“Eric’s children are also quite hungry.”
With a lurch, I crashed to the floor. My chair had been pulled out from under me. I stood, brushing myself off angrily, and watched as it was carried from the room.
“And their grandmother can’t stand for long.”
I excused myself, smiling outwardly, but inside feeling like a fool.
Obviously I had been invited to the White House to be sport for some game. I reached for my coat, to find that it had been taken. I turned back to the President.
Their grandfather doesn’t like the cold.”
I wanted to shout- that was my coat! But again, I looked at the placid smiling face of my host and decided I was being a poor sport. I spread my hands helplessly and chuckled. Then I felt my hip pocket and realized my wallet was gone. I excused myself and walked to a phone on an elegant side table. I learned shortly that my credit cards had been maxed out, my bank accounts emptied, my retirement and equity portfolios had vanished, and my wife had been thrown out of our home. Apparently, the waiters and their families were moving in. The President hadn’t moved or spoken as I learned all this, but finally I lowered the phone into its cradle and turned to face him.
“Andrew’s whole family has made bad financial decisions. They haven’t planned for retirement, and they need a house. They recently defaulted on a sub-prime mortgage. I told them they could have your home. They need it more than you do.”
My hands were shaking. I felt faint. I stumbled back to the table and knelt on the floor. The President cheerfully cut his meat, ate his steak and drank his wine. I lowered my eyes and stared at the small gray circles on the tablecloth that were water drops.
“By the way,” He added, “I have just signed an Executive Order nationalizing your factories. I’m firing you as head of your business. I’ll be operating the firm now for the benefit of all mankind. There’s a whole bunch of Eric’s and Andrews out there and they can’t come to you for jobs groveling like beggars.”
I looked up. The President dropped his spoon into the empty ramekin which had been his creme brulee. He drained the last drops of his wine. As the table was cleared, he lit a cigarette and leaned back in his chair. He stared at me. I clung to the edge of the table as if it were a ledge and I were a man hanging over an abyss. I thought of the years behind me, of the life I had lived. The life I had earned with a lifetime of work, risk and struggle. Why was I punished? How had I allowed it to be taken? What game had I played and lost? I looked across the table and noticed with some surprise that there was no game board between us.
What had I done wrong?
As if answering the unspoken thought, the President suddenly cocked his head, locked his empty eyes to mine, and bared a million teeth, chuckling wryly as he folded his hands.
“You should have stopped me at the dinner roll,” he said.
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