The Audacity of Deceit: Day Gardner, National Black Pro-Life Union, Comments on Obama's Bold Faced Lies Concerning Abortion and Health Care Reform

Commentary by Day Gardner

Last night, President Barack Obama claimed that abortion will not be funded through the new health care legislation.

Shouting liar, liar pants on fire, may be politically incorrect, so I'll just say Mr. President you are wrong!

On July 30, the House Energy and Commerce Committee added to H.R. 3200 an amendment written by staff to Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Ca.) and offered by Rep. Lois Capps (D-Ca.), both of whom have consistently pro-abortion career voting records. This "phony compromise" explicitly authorizes the "public plan" to cover all abortions. This would drastically change long-standing federal policy which means that any citizen enrolled in the public plan will be compelled to purchase coverage for abortion on demand.

Let's follow the money... the federal agency will collect the premium money, receive bills from abortionists, and send the abortionists payment checks from a federal Treasury account.

Hmmm... that sounds like abortion funding to me, Mr. President. What say you?

As the Associated Press accurately reported in its August 5, 2009, analysis, "A law called the Hyde amendment applies the [abortion] restrictions to Medicaid... The [Obama-backed] health overhaul would create a stream of federal funding not covered by the restrictions."

It is paramount that language be added to the health care bill that will clearly restrict funding of any and all abortions. Members of both the Democratic and Republican parties have offered sensible amendments to the bill which you, Mr. President, have ignored.

So, President Obama, for the 29th time… abortion is not healthcare! Can you hear me now?

Day Gardner is the founder and President of The National Black Pro-Life Union and Director of Public Relations for NPLAC on Capitol Hill. She is also anchors a radio program for NPLR.net online and WCAR-1040AM, Detroit.

Democrats’ Health Care Bills Do Not Require Citizenship Verification

Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., watches President Barack Obama deliver a speech on health care reform at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2009. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

From Cybercast News Service
By Susan Jones

Rep. Joe Wilson’s shout-out Wednesday night came in response to President Obama’s claim that illegal immigrants would not be covered by the Democrats’ health care plan.

“There are also those who claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants,” Obama said. “This, too, is false — the reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.”

"You lie!" Wilson (R-S.C.) yelled, drawing frowns from the podium.

Was Obama lying?

Republicans, in a post-speech “fact-check,” suggested that yes, Obama is stretching the truth:

“Nothing in any of the Democrat bills would require individuals to verify their citizenship or identity prior to receiving taxpayer-subsidized benefits—making the President’s promise one that the legislation itself does not keep,” the House Republican conference wrote in a “Myth vs. Fact” news release.

But Republican Sen. John McCain told NBC’s “Today” show on Thursday that Obama’s health care reforms do not apply to people who come to the United States illegally.

“They do not, as far as I can see, nor should they,” McCain said.

McCain also disagreed with his former running mate Sarah Palin that the president’s plan would create death panels.

”No, but there is a $500-billion ‘savings’ in Medicare which has seniors concerned, and in other countries, where they’ve cut back on spending on health care and then health care is rationed – then similar things have happened. Americans are concerned about that – they have a right to be concerned about it,” McCain said.

The senator also noted that Obama is counting on $500 billion in Medicare savings -- “without any meaningful medical malpractice reform.”

McCain dismissed Obama’s call for tort reform “demonstration projects” in the states. Those pilot projects would not be part of a health care reform bill. According to McCain, “We all know we need medical malpractice reform.”

Both McCain and the House Republican Conference disagreed with Obama’s contention that “nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have.”

If the government option is adopted by your employer, and you have employer-provided insurance, then you are not going to be able to keep your current coverage, McCain said. “So that’s false also.”

The House Republican Conference pointed to independent experts who have warned that the Democrats’ proposed legislation “would result in millions of Americans losing the coverage they have.” The Congressional Budget Office believes several million would lose their current coverage, while the Urban Institute puts the number at 47 million, and the Lewin Group says the number could total as many as 114 million.

On Wednesday night, Obama promised, “I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits—either now or in the future. Period.”

But Republicans say Obama’s math does not add up.

“There is very little, if anything, in this package that calls for real spending reductions, and a trillion dollars is basically what it’s going to cost. -- and that’s according to the Congressional Budget Office,” Sen. McCain said Thursday morning.

“And finally, since the president has not argued against any of these pork barrel projects as he said he would, spending is way up over last year, and ear-marking and pork-barreling continues – his record so far does not indicate any fiscal discipline.”

House Republicans note that the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has found that H.R. 3200 would increase the budget deficit by $239 billion over ten years—and “would probably generate substantial increases in federal budget deficits” thereafter. The Peter G. Peterson Foundation released a study which found that in its second decade, H.R. 3200 would increase federal deficits by more than $1 trillion.

Obama Approval Numbers Still Dropping, While Petitions Mount Against Health Care Plan

From LifeSiteNews
By Kathleen Gilbert

A series of recent public opinion polls and anti-Obamacare petitions have shown that President Obama and his health care overhaul are continuing to decline in popularity at the end of a turbulent Congressional recess.

The public disapproval rating of Obama's handling of health care has jumped nine points since July to 52 per cent, according to an Associated Press-GfK survey released today. In the same poll, 49 said they disapproved of Obama's overall performance, up from 42 per cent in July.

The most recent Rasmussen Reports Daily Presidential Tracking Poll shows that 31 per cent of the nation's voters strongly approve of Obama's presidential performance, while 39 per cent said they strongly disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -8.

Scott Rasmussen noted in an August Wall Street Journal opinion piece that the polls indicate Obama's efforts to galvanize support for his plan have grim prospects of success: only 25 per cent of American voters strongly favor the health care reform, while 41 per cent strongly oppose it. Among independent voters in August, 60 per cent opposed the bill while 35 per cent were in favor, with 47 per cent strongly opposed and 16 per cent strongly favoring.

Obama is scheduled to speak today to a joint session of Congress, presumably the latest attempt to persuade reluctant bipartisan lawmakers to accept his health reform agenda.

A Zogby Interactive Survey released August 31 noted that the August drop in support ran across several of Obama's core constituencies. Democrats, liberals, African-Americans, and young voters in the survey who approved of Obama's job performance all showed a drop of about 8-9 points since July 24.

Meanwhile, an online petition this summer sponsored by Townhall.com called "Free Our Healthcare Now" has raced across the Internet, and now touts over 1.3 million signatures - which its sponsors say makes it the largest public policy petition ever delivered.

The anti-Obama group Grassfire.org claims that its own online petition against the health care overhaul has reached nearly half a million signatures.

Grassfire is also circulating a critique of the health care overhaul by ABC reporter John Stossel, republished by America's News Today on Youtube last month.

In the report, Stossel encapsulates many of the fears expressed by citizens across the country in townhall meetings by showing the pitfalls of government-run health care systems. Though President Obama has denied that he intends to bring about a single-payer health care system, the ABC report points to a video of then-Senator Obama specifically advocating for a "single-payer health care system."

Another video showing Obama advocating for a single-payer plan in 2003 and 2007, and linked by the Drudge Report, was blasted by the White House early last month as "taking sentences and phrases out of context and cobbling them together to leave a very false impression" of the president's stated position. The White House attempted to prove its position by showing more recent videos of Obama denying a future government takeover. However, the Drudge Report quickly linked to an uncut version of Obama's 2003 remarks that verified the message of the first video. The White House did not respond to the later video.

Listening to a Liar

From OneNewsNow
By Thomas Sowell

The most important thing about what anyone says are not the words themselves but the credibility of the person who says them.

The words of convicted swindler Bernie Madoff were apparently quite convincing to many people who were regarded as knowledgeable and sophisticated. If you go by words, you can be led into anything.

No doubt millions of people will be listening to the words of President Barack Obama Wednesday night when he makes a televised address to a joint session of Congress on his medical care plans. But, if they think that the words he says are what matters, they can be led into something much worse than being swindled out of their money.

One plain fact should outweigh all the words of Barack Obama and all the impressive trappings of the setting in which he says them: He tried to rush Congress into passing a massive government takeover of the nation's medical care before the August recess -- for a program that would not take effect until 2013!

Whatever President Obama is, he is not stupid. If the urgency to pass the medical care legislation was to deal with a problem immediately, then why postpone the date when the legislation goes into effect for years -- more specifically, until the year after the next presidential election?

If this is such an urgently needed program, why wait for years to put it into effect? And if the public is going to benefit from this, why not let them experience those benefits before the next presidential election?

If it is not urgent that the legislation goes into effect immediately, then why don't we have time to go through the normal process of holding congressional hearings on the pros and cons, accompanied by public discussions of its innumerable provisions? What sense does it make to "hurry up and wait" on something that is literally a matter of life and death?

If we do not believe that the president is stupid, then what do we believe? The only reasonable alternative seems to be that he wanted to get this massive government takeover of medical care passed into law before the public understood what was in it. Moreover, he wanted to get re-elected in 2012 before the public experienced what its actual consequences would be.

Unfortunately, this way of doing things is all too typical of the way this administration has acted on a wide range of issues.

Consider the "stimulus" legislation. Here the administration was successful in rushing a massive spending bill through Congress in just two days -- after which it sat on the president's desk for three days, while he was away on vacation. But, like the medical care legislation, the "stimulus" legislation takes effect slowly.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that it will be September 2010 before even three-quarters of the money will be spent. Some economists expect that it will not all be spent by the end of 2010.

What was the rush to pass it, then? It was not to get that money out into the economy as fast as possible. It was to get that money -- and the power that goes with it -- into the hands of the government. Power is what politics is all about.

The worst thing that could happen, from the standpoint of those seeking more government power over the economy, would be for the economy to begin recovering on its own while months were being spent debating the need for a "stimulus" bill. As the president's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, said, you can't let a crisis "go to waste" when "it's an opportunity to do things you could not do before."

There are lots of people in the Obama administration who want to do things that have not been done before -- and to do them before the public realizes what is happening.

The proliferation of White House "czars" in charge of everything from financial issues to media issues is more of the same circumvention of the public and of the Constitution. Czars don't have to be confirmed by the Senate, the way Cabinet members must be, even though czars may wield more power, so you may never know what these people are like, until it is too late.

What Barack Obama says Wednesday night is not nearly as important as what he has been doing -- and how he has been doing it.

More Bishops Criticize Government-Run Health Care; ‘Our Federal Bureaucracy Is A Vast Wasteland’

From Catholic World News

Drawing upon Catholic teaching on subsidiarity, an increasing number of US bishops are criticizing the concept of government-run health care. Bishop Samuel Aquila of Fargo has criticized the view that “the national government is the sole instrument of the common good.” Bishop Thomas Doran of Rockford adds:

As Catholic people, however, we are not allowed to wash our hands of it and to let things shake out as the federal government would have it. Our more than bicentennial experience with our federal government leads many to the conclusion that our government really does only one thing well: waging war. In every other area of life, when someone says, “I am from the government and I am here to help you,” our survival instinct tells us to run and hide. In the early ’90s when the health care scare was last put upon us, the opposition crowed: “If you like the postal service, you will love national health,” and that still seems to be the feeling of many …

The fourth principle is subsidiarity which commands us to seek the most effective approach to solving the problem. Our federal bureaucracy is a vast wasteland strewn with the carcasses of absurd federal programs which proved infinitely worse than the problems they were established to correct. It perhaps is too extreme to say that competent government is an oxymoron, but sometimes it seems that way. The moral principal of subsidiarity implies decreasing the role of government and employers in health care when lower order groups can better serve individuals and families. We need to think of health care as more of a market than a system …

It was observed by the ancients that usually the problem with totalitarian governments is not that they do not love their people; the problem seems to be that they love them too much — they just do not trust them. To establish control, these governments have always tried to control food. Remember why Jacob’s sons went down to Egypt in the Book of Exodus. But since homo sapiens is an omnivore, this proves increasingly difficult.

Modern socialist governments like to control not food but the means to protect and extend life. Some have called the current efforts of our federal government “senioricide” or “infanticide.” That perhaps is too severe, but we as Catholics should take care that health care does not morph into life control.

Source(s): these links will take you to other sites, in a new window.

• Catholic bishops question details of health care overhaul (AP)
• Concerns to take to heart in health care and proposed reforms (Rockford Observer)
• Kansas City bishops question centralized health-care system (CWN, Sep 2)
• Iowa bishop warns against healthcare rationing, ‘federal monopolization’ (CWN, Aug 28)

Health-Care Anger Has Deeper Roots

From The Wall Street Journal
By Janet Adamy and Jonathan Weisman

Recent town-hall uproars weren't just about health care. They were also eruptions of concern that the government is taking on too much at once.

That suggests trouble for the president and his party, and fears of losses in next year's midterm election are likely to shape the Democrats' fall agenda.

At August's town-hall meetings, voters often started with complaints about health care, only to shift to frustrations about all the other things President Barack Obama and the Democrats have done or tried to do since January. The $787 billion economic-stimulus package, the government-led rescue of General Motors Corp. and climate-change legislation all came in for criticism.

"A lot of the anxiety we face here has less to do with health care and everything to do with the overall state of the economy and government," said Rep. Anthony Weiner, a New York Democrat.

"I have seen a level of dissatisfaction and even anger that I haven't experienced in the years that I've been a member of Congress," Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican, told an audience at a health-care meeting in Kansas City on Monday.

Although the election is still far off, political forecasters predict that Democrats could run into trouble in the 2010 midterm vote.

"What we're seeing now, both in terms of numbers and the feel out there, this is how big waves feel early on," said Charlie Cook, editor of the Cook Political Report.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs dismissed any talk of political doom hanging over the president and his party.

"It would be like me predicting who's going to win the World Series, not in a few months but in a year and a few months," he said Monday, adding that he will leave "extremely smart prognosticators" to "their stately craft."

August, typically a sleepy month, dealt Democrats a tough hand this year.

Snafus in the federal "cash for clunkers" program -- which gave people rebates to trade in gas-guzzling cars for more fuel-efficient new vehicles -- highlighted how disorganization can hamper government plans. It was the bloodiest month for U.S. troops so far in the war in Afghanistan. Attorney General Eric Holder poked a potential hornets' nest by appointing a prosecutor to investigate Central Intelligence Agency interrogators. And White House budget forecasters said they now project $9 trillion of additional federal debt over the next decade, adding $2 trillion to an earlier estimate.

Last year's election gave Democrats a mandate for big changes that they feel still applies. They won seats by arguing that Republicans had failed to act to keep the housing market and financial system from crumbling.

Mr. Obama also inherited a large budget deficit and expanded it further with economic-stimulus spending.

Many town-hall attendees cite the deficit as a reason for holding off on health care, even though Mr. Obama and other Democrats say they won't pass a plan that adds to the national debt.

Current proposals would cost about $1 trillion over 10 years, mostly to expand coverage to the nation's uninsured. All proposals aim to be deficit-neutral, offsetting new spending with cuts and some new taxes.

Anger over financial bailouts, including the Troubled Asset Relief Program begun under the administration of former President George W. Bush, has been especially strong. At a meeting in Wheeling, W.Va., Democratic Rep. Alan B. Mollohan said a health-care bill was needed to help "folks in terrible situations." A member of the audience yelled out: "Use TARP funds!"

In South Sioux City, Neb., last week, Van Phillips took the microphone to ask Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson how America can pay for a health overhaul with all the other programs going on.

View Full Image

Getty Images

At town-hall meetings in August, such as this one in Reston, Va., voters often started with complaints about health care, only to shift to broader frustrations about actions by Democrats.

"We've got a pretty good chunk out there already in the stimulus. We just came back with the cash for clunkers," said Mr. Phillips, a retired superintendent of schools. "I guess I'm concerned -- how do we make all of this flow?"

Democrats concede they are fighting the perception that government is overstretched, though they say the economic stresses actually make a health-care overhaul more important because Democratic plans would help people who lose employer-provided health insurance.

Mr. Weiner said the crowded legislative calendar and a bruising battle in June over a climate bill narrowly approved by the House is wearing down Democrats, particularly those in the fiscally conservative Blue Dog coalition.

"We had a lot of House members who cast a tough vote on energy, and thought they could catch their breath, only to have health care bear down on them," he said.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D., Md.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said, "I've warned our colleagues from day one back in January, this is going to be a very challenging cycle. You just have to look historically....We're pleased people are being shaken out of their complacency."

Other analysts think any forecast this early is overblown.

"A year is an eternity, maybe two eternities, in politics," said Nathan L. Gonzales, political editor of the Rothenberg Political Report.

But Mr. Gonzales agreed that skepticism about too much action in Washington can drive voters. Anger about the government led to broad Democratic gains in 2006 and 2008, and now that Democrats are running the government, activism has only increased, he said.

"What we're seeing here is this larger debate about what the role of government is," said William McInturff, a Republican pollster who conducts The Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll. "The health-care debate is at that fault line.

Louise Radnofsky and Neil King Jr. contributed to this article.

Key Democrat Suggests Party Moderates 'Brain Dead'

From Breitbart
By Erica Werner, Associated Press Writer


A key House liberal suggested Thursday that party moderates who've pushed for changes in health care legislation are "brain dead" and out for insurance company campaign donations.

Moderate Blue Dog Democrats "just want to cause trouble," said Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., who heads the health subcommittee on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee.

"They're for the most part, I hate to say, brain dead, but they're just looking to raise money from insurance companies and promote a right-wing agenda that is not really very useful in this whole process," Stark told reporters on a conference call.

A spokeswoman for the Blue Dog caucus did not immediately respond to an e-mail request for comment.

Thursday's call was being hosted by the liberal group Campaign for America's Future to release a report making the case for a strong new public health insurance plan to compete with private insurers as part of any health overhaul legislation.

Read the rest of this entry >>

British Study Reveals 'Cruel and Neglectful' Care of One Million NHS Patients

A major report was released today on the abuse and suffering endured by patients under Great Britain's government-run national health service. It is a shocking glimpse of what Obama would impose on all Americans. The more than 100 comments that follow the linked story below shed even more light on a socialized medical system that The One holds up as a model.

One million NHS patients have been the victims of appalling care in hospitals across Britain, according to a major report released today.

From The Telegraph
By Rebecca Smith, Medical Editor

In the last six years, the Patients Association claims hundreds of thousands have suffered from poor standards of nursing, often with 'neglectful, demeaning, painful and sometimes downright cruel' treatment.

The charity has disclosed a horrifying catalogue of elderly people left in pain, in soiled bed clothes, denied adequate food and drink, and suffering from repeatedly cancelled operations, missed diagnoses and dismissive staff.

The Patients Association said the dossier proves that while the scale of the scandal at Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust - where up to 1,200 people died through failings in urgent care - was a one off, there are repeated examples they have uncovered of the same appalling standards throughout the NHS.

Read the rest of this entry >>

Marxist Thug Declares 'We are God's Partners in Matters of Life and Death'

From LifeSiteNews
By Kathleen Gilbert

A sudden shift towards religiously-charged rhetoric in President Obama's stumping for health care reform continued yesterday in a telephone conference, in which the president said that "we are God's partners in matters of life and death."

Obama told the virtual gathering of Jewish rabbis - as many as 1000, according to the Washington Jewish Week news service - that he was "going to need your help in accomplishing necessary reform."

Washington, D.C. Rabbi Jack Moline posted some of the president's statements in a series of live tweets, which went viral on the Internet before Moline deleted almost all the posts hours later. A handful of other Jewish clerics tweeted the event, which was not publicized by the White House.

In a conference call with largely left-leaning faith leaders yesterday, Obama also used religously-charged terms to dismiss the notion that the government would fund abortion through the new legislation.

"These are all fabrications that have been put out there in order to discourage people from meeting what I consider to be a core ethical and moral obligation - and that is that we look out for one another, that I am my brother's keeper and I am my sister's keeper," he said. He also accused opponents of his healthcare plan of spreading "misinformation" and "bearing false witness."

Pro-life leaders immediately blasted the president for the comment, pointing out that the House version of the bill now explicitly calls for the funding of abortion in the government plan, as well as taxpayer subsidies of plans that cover abortions.

The social justice groups sponsoring the conference claim that 140,000 individuals attended the call. The same groups - PICO National Network, Sojourners, Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, Faith in Public Life, and Faithful America - are now hosting a "40 Days for Health Reform" campaign to tell lawmakers "that quality, affordable healthcare is a moral issue for people of faith."

The site's attitude toward the arguments opposing the health care overhaul is remarkably similar to the White House's own "Reality Check" Internet campaign. Visitors are encouraged to sign a petition that reads: "As a person of faith, I support health care reform, and I'm tired of shouting, disruptions and distortions preventing an honest debate. Over the next 40 days, I commit to doing my part as a person of faith to promote health care reform. I commit to taking actions like writing my representatives, attending events, and telling my friends about our efforts to make the faith community a positive force for health care reform."

40 Days for Life, an international movement encouraging prayer, fasting and advocacy for the end of abortion that has exploded in popularity in recent years, accused the health reform campaign of mimicking its pro-life counterpart, but with the opposite result.

"Who would have ever believed that the President of the United States would copy a page out of the 40 Days for Life playbook as a way to push abortion?" mused 40 Days for Life national director David Bereit in an email to members. In Judaeo-Christian tradition, forty days is a spiritually significant length of time, often dedicated to sustained prayer and purification.

Meanwhile, strong warnings against the legislation in its current form have gone out from faith groups that oppose the killing of the unborn, including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Focus on the Family, the Catholic Medical Association, the Christian Medical and Dental Association, and the Southern Baptist Convention. While many of the groups express eagerness for genuine health care reform, they say that the current bill would amount to a vast expansion of abortion, among other troubling aspects, and therefore should not be accepted.

Christians Reviving America's Values president Don Swarthout questioned the President's apparent moralizing in favor of his own health care reform plans.

"I thought the use of religion in order to convince the people to follow anything political was prohibited by the U.S. Supreme Court's rulings," said Christians Reviving America's Values president Don Swarthout in a statement. "Now the President of the United States is using religion to convince people to follow his political position."

He continued: "As a Pastor I may understand the Bible a little better than the average person. Apparently, the President thinks the Bible says government should help the poor instead of the Bible calling upon Christians to give to the poor.

"The truth is our very salvation may depend upon helping those in need. However, there is no place in the Bible which tells us that the government is supposed to do these things for us."

President Obama's Lame Duck Status Gets an Early Start Thanks to His Radical Pro-Abortion Policies and Health Care Reform

From Christian Newswire
By Dan McCullough

As reported by the Associated Press today President Obama's approval rating is falling like a lead balloon. It seems clear that this can be attributed to his radical pro-abortion policies (which often differ from his words) and his currently failing attempt to cram a socialist health care plan down the throats of millions of Americans -- all who have a very strong and functioning gag reflex. His congressional cronies on the bleeding edge of liberalism throwing temper tantrums at local town hall meetings and referring to good willed Americans with opinions differing from their own as "un-American" and "Nazis" aren't doing a lot for his image or their own either.

Further damage to his image was inflicted on Obama by Obama himself just two days ago when he referred to the ninth commandment in the bible and stated that critics of his plan for health care reform where "bearing false witness". This statement was made on a "faith" conference call that obviously the nation's evangelicals would be paying attention to. It's not to difficult to see that this statement was directed at those evangelicals who are concerned about tax funded abortion, something the President continues to insist won't happen under his plan. But without specifically stating that no public funds are to be used for elective abortions (as has been suggested over and over) what is to keep the funds from being used this way? To quote not the bible but instead a popular modern western "it appears his hypocrisy knows no bounds."

President Obama has enjoyed a celebrity like status from the beginning of his presidential campaign. He gained that status thanks to a more than helpful left leaning media, his charming demeanor, and eloquent words, as long as a functioning tele-promtper was nearby. But slick words and an engaging smile can only get you so far.

The American people expect, need, and demand performance and credible leadership from their commander in chief. Unfortunately, it seems that instead the American people have received a winsome actor with a charming personality (sort of) who is more intent on imposing his own socialist political agenda on the people rather than serving according to the will of the people.

At one time the United States had an actor turned president; Ronald Reagan was an incredible president who brought us together as a nation and accomplished great things. Who knows, perhaps Obama has a great career ahead of him in Hollywood, his skill set would suggest it's a strong possibility.

All of this being said it certainly doesn't seem to early to start thinking -- or rather dreaming, about the 2012 elections and having the opportunity to vote for something other than just "change" -- perhaps next time we will have the opportunity to vote for "change for the better."

The Audacious Lies of Barack Obama on Socialized Medicine

Support for Congressional Health Care Reform Falls to New Low

From Rasmussen Reports

Public support for the health care reform plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats has fallen to a new low as just 42% of U.S. voters now favor the plan. That’s down five points from two weeks ago and down eight points from six weeks ago.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that opposition to the plan has increased to 53%, up nine points since late June.

More significantly, 44% of voters strongly oppose the health care reform effort versus 26% who strongly favor it. Intensity has been stronger among opponents of the plan since the debate began.

Sixty-seven percent (67%) of those under 30 favor the plan while 56% of those over 65 are opposed. Among senior citizens, 46% are strongly opposed.

Predictably, 69% of Democrats favor the plan, while 79% of Republicans oppose it. Yet while 44% of Democratic voters strongly favor the reform effort, 70% of GOP voters are strongly opposed to it.
Most notable, however, is the opposition among voters not affiliated with either party. Sixty-two percent (62%) of unaffiliated voters oppose the health care plan, and 51% are strongly opposed. This marks an uptick in strong opposition among both Republicans and unaffiliateds, while the number of strongly supportive Democrats is unchanged.

Despite the loss of support, 51% of all voters still say it is at least somewhat likely that the health care proposal will become law this year. That figure has hardly budged since the debate began and now includes 18% who say passage is very likely. Thirty-nine percent (39%) say passage of the plan is unlikely, but only 10% say it is not at all likely.

Congress is now in recess until early September, but Democratic congressional leaders have vowed to pass some form of the health care plan when they return to Washington. Town hall meetings many of the congressmen are holding to get public feedback on the plan have turned into protest sessions, and the New York Times reports today that the president and Democratic leaders are revamping the sales strategy for the reform effort because they find themselves on the defensive.

As for the protesters at congressional town hall meetings, 49% believe they are genuinely expressing the views of their neighbors, while 37% think they’ve been put up to it by special interest groups and lobbyists.

The latest polls shows that 26% of voters believe that passage of the Congressional health care plan will lead to a better quality of health care. But most voters (51%) disagree and say the quality will get worse. Seventeen percent (17%) expect it to stay the same.

Voters ages 18 to 29 are closely divided on the question of quality, but those in all older age groups by sizable margins expect quality to worsen.

Seventy-five percent (75%) of Republicans and 59% of unaffiliated voters say passage of the health care plan will cause the quality of health care to go down. Among Democrats, 41% say quality will improve, 25% get worse and 26% stay the same.

Fifty-one percent (51%) of all voters say the cost of health care will go up if the reform proposal passes. Nineteen percent (19%) say costs will go down, and 21% say they will stay the same.

Voters in all age and income groups, again by large margins, believe passage of the reform measure will drive up health care costs.

Republican voters overwhelmingly say costs will go up with the new plan. By a two-to-one margin, unaffiliated voters agree. Democrats are fairly evenly divided as to whether costs will go up or down.
When it comes to health care decisions, 51% of voters fear the federal government more than private insurance companies. But 41% fear the insurance companies more.

Yet only 25% agree with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that health insurance companies are "villains."
While Congress has debated reforms to the U.S. health care system, Americans have begun to show greater confidence in it. Forty-eight percent (48%) of adults now say the health care system is good or excellent, and only 19% say it’s poor.

Fifty-four percent (54%) of voters say tax cuts for the middle class are more important than new spending for health care reform, although the president’s top economic advisers have indicated that tax hikes may be necessary to fund the reform plan. That helps explain why 76% say it is likely that taxes will have to be raised on the middle class to cover the cost of health care reform, and 59% say it’s very likely.

Thirty-two percent (32%) favor a single-payer health care system where the federal government provides coverage for everyone, but 57% are opposed to a single-payer plan.

And Now It's AARP Against Their Members

White House Caught Between Drudge and a Hard Place on Health Care Reform

From LifeSiteNews
By Peter J. Smith

The Drudge Report, perhaps the most popular news nexus on the internet, has found itself in the White House's crosshairs after it published a link to a video in which President Barack Obama is shown, in 2003 and 2007, expressing enthusiastic support for a "single-payer" socialized health-care system. In recent weeks, however, Obama has repeatedly attempted to assuage widespread concern by stating that he does not intend to eliminate private insurance companies, but only wants to provide a "public option" to give insurance to an estimated 47 million persons currently lacking coverage. Obama has also rejected the charge that a public option would act as a "Trojan horse" for a single-payer system, which some Americans fear would lead to rationing of health benefits and excessive wait times.

Yet, on Monday, the Drudge Report linked to a video montage compiled by Naked Emperor News that shows Obama explaining that his plans for health care reform would eventually lead to the elimination of private health insurance companies in favor of a single-payer system.

"I don't think we're going to be able to eliminate employer coverage immediately. There's going to be potentially some transition process, I can envision in a decade out, or fifteen years out, or twenty years out," Obama says in a 2007 interview with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). The video montage then follows with a 2003 speech given by Obama at an AFL-CIO conference on "Civil, Human, and Women's Rights" in which he says, "I am a proponent of single-payer universal health care plans."

The White House yesterday launched an internet counter-attack, accusing Drudge and bloggers of being agents of "disinformation" with "deceiving headlines" about Obama's health-care reform plan. The White House repeated the President's recent statements that no Americans would lose their current coverage.

"You know, the people who always try to scare people, whenever you try to bring them health insurance reform, are at it again," said Linda Douglass, the communications director for the White House Health Reform Office. "They are taking sentences and phrases out of context and cobbling them together to leave a very false impression."

Drudge, however, then responded by providing the uncut context of Obama's 2003 address to the AFL-CIO labor union posted on Breitbart.tv. In that address Obama states clearly, "I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care program. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its Gross National Product on health care, cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. ...

"A single payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that's what I'd like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House."

According to recent polls, Americans have become increasingly wary of the powerful reach of the proposed health care legislation, which seeks to bring the entire health-care industry under the control of the federal government and its bureaucracy.

Although the White House and Congressional Democrats pushing the health-care reform plan have said that the government plan will be deficit neutral, a recent analysis from Investors Business Daily concluded otherwise. Investors Business showed that in the years between 1968 and 2007, costs to maintain government health plans skyrocketed, with Medicare increasing 85.5 times and Medicaid 105.9 times, dwarfing government estimates for the actual costs of the programs.

For both houses of Congress, the August recess has many Senators and Representatives facing the heat of voters' wrath at packed town hall meetings in their home districts. Some Democrats have described the meetings as "town hells," as constituents demand to know how they can trust the government to manage health-care, when it cannot keep the "cash for clunkers" program afloat for more than a few days without running out of money.

Today Drudge also linked to an Associated Press report that effectively validates the concerns of pro-life advocates that the health care reform will open the door to government funding of abortion.

Health Reform and Cancer

The danger is that ObamaCare will stifle medical innovations that could save patients like me.


From The Wall Street Journal
By Myrna Ulfik

I have been battling non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, an incurable blood cancer, for the past nine years. Last year, I was also diagnosed with uterine cancer.

I didn’t run to Canada for treatment. Medicare took care of my needs right here in New York City. To endure, I just need the freedom to choose my insurance, my doctors, and get the diagnostic scans and care I need. And one more thing: I need hope that a treatment will be developed that can control my diseases the way insulin controls diabetes.

Every cancer patient needs these things, especially hope. But the government’s plan to reform the health-care system in this country threatens all of this—particularly the development of new treatments.

When I was first diagnosed in 2000 I had chemotherapy. It put me in remission, but nearly killed me.

Three years later the lymphoma was back and I faced more chemo. This is so often the pattern of cancer: recurring disease and repeated chemo. In the end patients often die not from the disease, but from the treatments.

I took a different path, seeking a cancer vaccine. One had been developed at Stanford University 12 years earlier that had given 90% of patients very long remissions and cured some entirely. Unlike chemotherapy, there were no severe side effects.

But I couldn’t get the vaccine because the Food and Drug Administration required another trial that would take nine more years. Over-regulation has kept this treatment from patients for 21 years, as some 24,000 lymphoma patients died each year.

My husband and I searched the Internet and found another vaccine being tested at Freiburg University in Germany. That vaccine has helped me avoid chemotherapy for years. My oncologist says he’s never seen another patient do so well with the type of lymphoma I have.

I am still here because my care was managed by doctors—not a government agency. My doctors do what the bureaucracy can’t: They see me as a human being.

Patient-as-person will be a lost concept under the new health-care plan, where treatments will be based not upon individual patient needs, but upon what’s best for everyone. So cancer drugs for seniors might take second place to jungle gyms and farmers’ markets—so-called preventive care—which are covered under both the House and Senate versions of the health bill.

The stimulus package passed earlier this year allocated $1.1 billion for hundreds of “Comparative Effectiveness Research” studies. This project will compare all treatment options for a host of diseases in order to develop a database to guide doctors’ decisions. Research of this sort typically takes years. But the data will likely be hastily drawn conclusions that reflect the view of the government agencies that fund the studies: Cheap therapies are just as good as expensive ones.

In order to finance health-care reform, Democrats in Congress have proposed cutting $500 billion from Medicare over the next 10 years. Yet in his press conference last Wednesday, President Barack Obama denied that Medicare benefits would be cut. He has surrounded himself with advisers who believe otherwise.

Tom Daschle, Mr. Obama’s original pick to head Health and Human Services, argues in his book “Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis,” that we should accept “hopeless diagnoses” and “forgo experimental treatments.” Mr. Daschle blames the “use and overuse of new technologies and treatments” for runaway health-care costs. He suggests a Federal Health Board modeled after the British “NICE” board to make decisions on health-care rationing.

But the British system is infamous for denying state-of-the-art drugs to cancer patients. Thus cancer-survival rates in Britain are far below those in America, just as they are in Canada.

Canadian cancer patients told to wait months for treatment and diagnostic scans frequently go south and pay out-of-pocket for care in the United States. A number of Quebeckers even sued their government for violating their “right to life and security” under the Quebec Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Canada’s Supreme Court has acknowledged the pervasive rationing that occurs. In the 2005 case Chaoulli v. Quebec (Attorney General) , the majority opinion stated: “The evidence in this case shows that delays in the public health care system are widespread, and that, in some serious cases, patients die as a result of waiting lists for public health care.”

Despite such evidence, the Obama plan is likely to target various treatments—including radiology scans—in order to cut costs. I survived this long because my radiologist examines each of my scans with me in detail.

One of those scans also saved my life by picking up unsuspected uterine cancer. The congressional majority seems blissfully unaware that all cancer patients need those scans to monitor their diseases.

Also uneasy with the cost of medical progress is Dr. David Blumenthal, Mr. Obama’s new head of Health Information Technology. It is not reassuring that he stresses that two-thirds of the annual increases in health spending result from medical innovation, as he has written in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Cancer patients need nothing more than such innovation. Yes, developing more effective, less toxic treatments is expensive. The prices of new cancer therapies reflect the billion-dollar cost of developing each new drug. But such treatments can be life-saving, as they have been for me.

Despite its warts, our system works. Carelessly tinkering with it will have a world-wide penalty—the stifling of new drug development. What company would spend a billion dollars to develop a drug that will not be reimbursed by the new health plan? This would be a direct, devastating blow to the most vulnerable Americans.

In spite of the president’s assurances, there is every sign that this plan will be financed by deep cuts to Medicare, which, like the public option, will limit payments for specialists, radiology scans, and cutting-edge cancer drugs. These are prime targets because they are more expensive than other services. But are we really expected to forgo new medical technology and return to the cancer care of the 1970s?

When members of Congress are asked if they will opt for the public plan, they say no. That’s for the rest of us.

The number of Americans who have cancer exceeds 10 million. It’s time for cancer patients and their families to remind those on Capitol Hill that health-care reform is a matter of life and death for us.

Ms. Ulfik is a writer in New York.

5 Freedoms You'd Lose in Health Care Reform

If you read the fine print in the Congressional plans, you'll find that a lot of cherished aspects of the current system would disappear.

From Fortune
By Shawn Tully

In promoting his health-care agenda, President Obama has repeatedly reassured Americans that they can keep their existing health plans -- and that the benefits and access they prize will be enhanced through reform.

A close reading of the two main bills, one backed by Democrats in the House and the other issued by Sen. Edward Kennedy's Health committee, contradict the President's assurances. To be sure, it isn't easy to comb through their 2,000 pages of tortured legal language. But page by page, the bills reveal a web of restrictions, fines, and mandates that would radically change your health-care coverage.

If you prize choosing your own cardiologist or urologist under your company's Preferred Provider Organization plan (PPO), if your employer rewards your non-smoking, healthy lifestyle with reduced premiums, if you love the bargain Health Savings Account (HSA) that insures you just for the essentials, or if you simply take comfort in the freedom to spend your own money for a policy that covers the newest drugs and diagnostic tests -- you may be shocked to learn that you could lose all of those good things under the rules proposed in the two bills that herald a health-care revolution.

In short, the Obama platform would mandate extremely full, expensive, and highly subsidized coverage -- including a lot of benefits people would never pay for with their own money -- but deliver it through a highly restrictive, HMO-style plan that will determine what care and tests you can and can't have. It's a revolution, all right, but in the wrong direction.

Let's explore the five freedoms that Americans would lose under Obamacare:

Read the rest of this entry >>

Does Ted Kennedy Deserve His Extended Cancer Care?

From American Thinker
By James Lewis

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.

Read the rest of this entry >>

PAC Exposes Obamacare Medical Rationing

The Our Country Deserves Better PAC has produced the following TV ad and is raising funds to expose the Obamacare medical rationing plan.

Why Government Can't Run a Business

Politicians need headlines. Executives need profits.

From The Wall Street Journal
By John Steele Gordon

The Obama administration is bent on becoming a major player in -- if not taking over entirely -- America's health-care, automobile and banking industries. Before that happens, it might be a good idea to look at the government's track record in running economic enterprises. It is terrible.

In 1913, for instance, thinking it was being overcharged by the steel companies for armor plate for warships, the federal government decided to build its own plant. It estimated that a plant with a 10,000-ton annual capacity could produce armor plate for only 70% of what the steel companies charged.

When the plant was finally finished, however -- three years after World War I had ended -- it was millions over budget and able to produce armor plate only at twice what the steel companies charged. It produced one batch and then shut down, never to reopen.

Read the rest of this entry >>

The Democrat's Dream: Canadian-Style Socialized Medicine

Here's a simple five-minute video that any patient can understand, even though in this case, it is brain surgery:

Watch, and pass it on to anyone you know who's thinking about voting to put liberal Democrats in control of both Congress and the White House, with the resulting power to finally enact their Canadian-style socialized medicine system.

The younger you are, the more years you and your family might be forced to live at greater risk to your life and health.