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.

Conservatives Offer No Hope

The following reflection is from Chuck Baldwin, the 2004 Vice Presidential Candidate of the Constitution Party. His is a sober, but I believe, accurate assessment of the conservative movement in the United States today.

"Since When Does It Matter What The Brand Name Is On The Tyrant’s Sword?"

Over the past several months, I have been privileged to attend (and sometimes endure) several significant gatherings of a variety of conservatives. Some of the meetings were large; others were small. The meetings sometimes featured mostly grassroots activists and sometimes very high-profile and notable conservative icons. In some of these meetings, I was allowed a platform to speak; in others, I was merely a spectator. In most of the meetings, there was a large percentage of Christian conservatives present. The meetings occurred in locations all over the country.

After witnessing the philosophizing, postulating, and pontificating of the various conservative speakers (or those to whom I spoke in private conversation), I am left with the very profound and distinct impression that the so-called conservative movement is dead. It is not dying: it is dead. Totally and thoroughly dead.

Oh, the spokesmen (and women) of the various conservative organizations will strongly argue that the conservative movement is as alive and vibrant as ever. They are either delusional or in denial. The truth is, there is no conservative movement in America today.

Most conservatives--even Christian conservatives--have embraced philosophies and ideals that are antithetical to genuine conservatism. In fact, my experience with these people leads me to the conclusion that today’s conservatives do not even know what true conservatism is--or was.

For example, I could not tell you how many times I have listened as speaker after speaker praised and promoted the candidacy of the "conservative" John McCain. These are the same people, mind you, that in 2000 properly identified McCain as the conservative phony that he was--and still is. Many of the same conservative organizations that rejected and repudiated McCain’s 2000 candidacy now boldly extol its virtues. But it is not John McCain that has changed: it is today’s conservatives.

The reason for this reversal of "convictions" is that this time John McCain is the presumptive Republican Presidential nominee. And if today’s conservatives believe in anything, they believe in the Republican Party. They might turn their backs on their best friends; they might forsake their pastor and church; they might even divorce their wife or husband; but, one thing they will not do is forsake the Republican Party. This rabid devotion to the GOP has made mincemeat out of a once-great movement.

Of course, there are modern-day prophets. Men such as Alan Keyes, Judge Roy Moore, and Ron Paul, for example. For the most part, however, America’s conservatives--including Christian conservatives--have dismissed these "voices in the wilderness" with either utter contempt or wholesale indifference. These prophets are about as welcome as an outbreak of influenza.

Even as a pastor, I am not immune to the odious attitudes and actions of Christian brethren. I have seen people I thought were my closest friends--people I have helped in untold ways--turn and walk away, without so much as a goodbye. I have watched as my own dear wife and children have been subjected to insults, tongue-lashings, and even obscene gestures by these "loving" Christian brothers and sisters. I have witnessed my preacher brethren refuse to even "reason together" over the omnipresent threats to our liberty and independence.

The beginning of the end came when Christian conservatives began idolizing President George W. Bush. They have done this to the point that they have come to accept just about any and all abuses against the Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration principles, and even our very way of life. Furthermore, they have become robotic foot soldiers for universal and everlasting war. At the same time, however, they see no harm in the decimation of individual liberties, as long as it is a Republican who is stealing them. But these same Christians will cry and wail--to the point of almost cutting themselves--against the thought of a Democrat doing the same thing. But, pray tell me, since when does it matter what the brand name is on the tyrant’s sword? Are not our liberties just as dead?

But look at how our modern prophets have been treated. Alan Keyes has been forcibly removed from debate platforms, only to be released in remote, crime infested neighborhoods at night by Republican Party operatives. Roy Moore was lampooned and utterly destroyed by Republican Party operatives (including those within George W. Bush’s White House) in his attempt to become Alabama’s governor. And, in his recent Presidential campaign, Ron Paul has been subjected to the most insidious attacks by Republican Party operatives that I have ever witnessed.

Regardless of how the Republican Party has compromised, capitulated, and castrated genuine conservative principles, conservatives--including Christian conservatives--continue to refer to the GOP as "God’s Own Party," and other such nonsense. In fact, the current lapdog performance of modern conservatives to the candidacy of John McCain demonstrates just how far down the road of destruction they will go in order to grovel before the Republican Party.

National Right to Life even had the gall to say that it is "grateful" for John McCain’s "strong pro-life" record. What balderdash! McCain has repeatedly voted to spend Title X tax dollars to underwrite the nation’s largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood. He publicly supports killing unborn babies conceived via rape or incest. And he continues to lie to the American people about killing babies "to save the life of the mother," which almost any OB/GYN doctor will tell you almost NEVER occurs. According to the OB/GYN physicians that I have spoken to, the only pregnancies that pose a legitimate health risk to the mother are those where the unborn baby has already perished.

How can National Right to Life--an organization that once vociferously opposed Senator McCain--now compromise the life issue in such an egregious manner and support the corrupt candidacy of John McCain? I’ll tell you how: NRL is bought and paid for by Republican donors. And that is the problem with the vast majority of our "conservative" organizations today. As the old saying goes, "He who pays the piper calls the tune."

In fact, I will say it straight out: there is no hope for America within today’s conservative--even Christian conservative--movement. None. Zero. Zilch.

The closest movement to reclaiming America’s freedom and independence was the recent Presidential campaign of Congressman Ron Paul. With Congressman Paul effectively neutered and neutralized (by a hostile media and mercenary Republican hierarchy), the only hope is in America’s churches and a burgeoning independent movement.

I only wish I could expect today’s pastors and churches to stand in the gap for our nation. They have the power to thwart the forces of globalism, corporatism, elitism, and liberalism that are destroying America. So far, however, this has been nothing but wishful fantasy. Most of our beloved Christian leaders are as beholden to the same Republican donors as are the previously mentioned conservative organizations. And just as impotent.

That leaves The Constitution Party as the only political party with the courage and convictions to set the ship of state aright. With someone such as Judge Roy Moore at the helm, true Christians and constitutionalists would at least have an opportunity to vote for someone in November without being forced to hold their noses and surrender their principles.

After attending numerous meetings of conservative activists, I am more convinced than ever that, ultimately, the survival of liberty in America does not depend upon political parties, special interest groups, or corporations. In these United States of America, God has put the destiny of the country squarely in the hands of "We the people." It will not be conservatives or liberals, Republicans or Democrats, Christians or unbelievers that restore America. It will be individuals from all walks of life, all backgrounds, and all political persuasions who love liberty enough to fight to maintain it. Ultimately, of course, all nations--just like all individuals--must give an account to our Creator for how we protected the freedoms and liberties that He gave us. Right now, we are not doing a very good job.

Parliament Investigates England's Catholic Schools

As reported previously here, Catholic bishops in England have been ordered to appear before the House of Commons Select Committee on Children, Schools and Families for what some Labour MPs deem an excessive Catholic influence in Catholic schools. Specifically, they are concerned about a ban by Patrick O’Donoghue, the Bishop of Lancaster, on what he calls “values free” sex education and his request that a crucifix be displayed in every classroom.

The chairman of the House Select Committee, Mr. Barry Sheerman, is quoted as saying: "It seems to me that faith education works all right as long as people are not that serious about their faith.”

The Daily Mail updates this outrageous story here.

CASTRO IS OUT, CHRIST IS IN

From New America Media

By Louis E.V. Nevaer

HAVANA – Catholic churches are full to capacity during mass, and the neighborhood Communist offices are empty.

One decade after Pope John Paul II traveled to Cuba – and negotiated an accommodation with Fidel Castro – the Vatican now speaks with the moral authority that few anticipated. That the Cuban people continue to move away from the Communist ideology has concerned Fidel Castro’s inner circle for more than five years, and it was instructive that Raul Castro, who has replaced his older brother Fidel as head of state, held his first meeting with a foreign dignitary with Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican’s secretary of state.

“He knows that the people have always believed in Christ, and never in Marx or Lenin or Fidel,” says a woman stepping out of the Church of the Sacred Heart along Father Felix Varela Avenue. “Raul wishes he had one one-hundredth of the authority of the pope.”

In the meeting between Raul Castro and Cardinal Bertone, it was the state that was deferential: Cuba’s state-run press, which rarely covers anything but official state institutions or Cuba’s Communist Party, printed a message from Cuba’s Catholic bishops. “In these moments our prayer is to God and the Virgin of Charity, our mother, patron of Cuba, for this newly renovated and inaugurated assembly council of state and new president to have the light from God to take decisive transcendental measures that we know should be progressive, but can begin to at once satisfy the anxieties and worries expressed by Cubans,” the bishops wrote.

The resurgence of the Catholic Church in this officially atheist state has reverberated throughout Cuba: Cubans are proud to display images of the Virgin of Charity, Santa Barbara, Saint Lazarus, and the Virgin of Guadalupe in their homes. Young men openly sport tattoos of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary. Masses offered at mid-morning on weekdays are standing-room only. A young man in his early twenties simply shrugs his shoulders when asked why he is at mass, and not at work, on a Monday morning. “Everyone needs hope and inner peace; coming to church gives me that,” he says. “Going to work is an empty gesture. After 49 years of failures, is my going to work going to make Fidel’s revolution succeed? Only a s--t-eater would believe that.”

Fidel Castro never outlawed religion, but he made life impossible for those who practiced their faith: priests were expelled, religious schools were banned, believers of any faith were not permitted to join the Communist party, and Cuba’s constitution extolled the virtues of atheism. Churches were closed throughout the country; Havana’s Sephardic Jews survived by renting their synagogue as a dance hall; Muslims were forced to leave (Cuba’s sole mosque is now a museum); and practitioners of “Santeria,” an Afro-Cuban faith with roots in West Africa were driven underground.

These draconian measures only intensified criticism of Fidel Castro’s regime, but he didn’t care – that is, of course, until the collapse of the Soviet Union, when Cuba desperately needed to court the goodwill and foreign aid of the European community. As former Soviet-sponsored regimes collapsed – from Poland to Slovakia, Hungary to Lithuania – Cuba quietly removed references to atheism from its Constitution, allowed religious orders of nuns to pursue “social assistance” endeavors, and lifted the ban on believers entering the Communist party.

These changes culminated in 1998, when John Paul II visited the island, and held mass in the Plaza de la Revolución, which was broadcast to the entire nation. There was no turning back. More and more churches were opened, priests trickled in, and Jews were allowed to receive sufficient assistance from Mexico’s Jewish community, the largest in Latin America, to reopen their synagogue. (Of the 50 remaining Sephardic Jewish families remaining in Havana, this past Sabbath was attended by fewer than a dozen people, not one younger than 60.) Fidel Castro also delighted in the Vatican’s position that the U.S. embargo was “immoral.”

This is not to say it has been a happy meeting of minds. No practicing believer holds a high position in government; an acute shortage of priests and nuns makes it impossible for millions of Cuban Catholics to practice their faith; Communist officials have resisted opening long-closed churches; teachers ridicule their students who admit attending church.

Despite these obstacles, churches have filled up – while Communist offices have emptied out.

After the revolution, every neighborhood included a Committee for the Defense of the Revolution, known as CDRs, usually comprised of “little old ladies” who snitched on the goings-on to the authorities. This month, however, one third of the CDRs in the Vedado and Habana Centro neighborhoods are empty. One woman in her 70s nonchalantly explains that at her age, “getting right with God is more important than being right with Fidel.” She explains that she simply reported that there was nothing suspicious on her block, and preferred to spend time praying at church.

In this manner, social power has drifted from the state to the church, and this has not been lost on Communist authorities. Catholic churches increasingly provide social services, from offering space for Alcoholic Anonymous meetings to conducting parenting classes for new mothers. Some are even doubling up as health centers, making sure children and the elderly get sufficient calories.

As one woman explains, “In theory healthcare is free,” but “only if you pay bribes.” The reality of medical care in Cuba is that “at the clinic, you show up and they can’t see you for months, unless you pay off the person who makes the appointments. Then the tests the doctor orders won’t be ready, unless you pay a bribe to the technician. And if x-rays are involved, that’s another bribe. Then the pharmacy won’t give you your prescription – unless another bribe is paid, so the ‘free’ medical care ends up costing two or three months’ salary paid out in bribes.”

The Catholic Church has offered frustrated and disillusioned Cubans a way out. “The Church does not impose, but proposes,” Cardinal Bertone told Italian reporters covering his recent meeting with Raul Castro. “We do hope for some openness, because nothing is impossible.”

And curiously enough, the first person Raul Castro invited for a state visit was Pope Benedict.

The Gucci Chameleon is a Non-Starter

The Truth with Speedzzter blog provides an excellent "Executive Summary" on why John McCain should not pick the Latter Day Charlatan for his running mate.

Old habits die hard, particularly in an old man of 71, and John McCain has built a career by attacking conservatives in the Republican Party, but choosing Mitt Romney as a running mate will, as the Speedzzter points out, "overwhelmingly alienate at least 1/3 of the GOP base."

What Will Become of Her Flying Monkeys?

Plenty of time to go after him later.

But, perhaps because the Republicans are so devoid of talent by comparison, ya gotta love a guy (just a little) who so effectively calls out the Clintons. See the following ABC News video:

http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=4422403

From the Right, He Looks Too Blue

From The Washington Post
By L. Brent Bozell

Think real conservatives will vote for John McCain? Don't count on it.

The conservative talk-show community? Don't mind them -- they're irrelevant.

This message from John McCain surrogates and other members of the political class is filling the airwaves and op-ed pages. In the Wall Street Journal, Weekly Standard Executive Editor Fred Barnes recently wrote that McCain needn't worry that conservatives are uncomfortable with his candidacy, because "while they love to grumble and grouse, conservatives tend to be loyal Republicans who wind up voting for their party's candidate."

In the same pages, novelist Mark Helprin, a former adviser to Robert J. Dole's presidential campaign, savaged conservatives such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Mark Levin for daring to speak out against McCain. "Rather than playing recklessly with electoral politics by sabotaging their own party," he wrote, "each of these compulsive talkers might be a tad less self-righteous, look to the long run, discipline himself, suck it up, and be a man."

I know the conservative movement. I've been in the trenches fighting for an alphabet soup of conservative causes for 30 years. I've raised hundreds of millions of dollars for it. And I earnestly hope that McCain isn't listening to the advice he's getting from these folks. Their thinking betrays a fundamental misreading of the conservative pulse in America today.

Conservative leaders, particularly those in talk radio, cannot and will not be silent. They will not betray their principles and their audiences. Tens of millions of activists turn to them for guidance. These activists could be, and need to be, McCain's ground troops, but unless and until conservatives believe him -- and believe in him -- they will not work for his election. McCain may have the Beltway crowd in his corner, but grass-roots conservatives aren't sold.

Yet through his surrogates, McCain is attacking these leaders. This is beyond folly. It is political suicide.

For 20 years, the moderate establishment of the Republican Party has told conservatives to sit down, shut up and do as we're told. History shows that sometimes we bite the bullet. But not always. I absolutely guarantee that this year we cannot be taken for granted. This is a movement fed up with betrayals, and they've come one after the other.

Think back to 1988. Plenty of qualified conservatives -- Pete du Pont, Rep. Jack Kemp and Sen. Paul Laxalt, Pat Robertson (for evangelicals, anyway) -- were prepared to succeed President Ronald Reagan, but the GOP establishment, along with the professional political class, rallied around Vice President George H.W. Bush, an unthinkable proposition for conservatives just eight years earlier. After a listless campaign start, Bush finally energized the conservative base with his "No new taxes!" pledge at the Republican National Convention in New Orleans. We carried him to victory that November.

Within two years, he'd broken his promise and delivered one of the largest tax increases in history. His 1991 nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, which pleased conservatives, had been preemptively neutralized by his selection of the liberal David H. Souter in 1990. After brilliantly executing the 1991 Persian Gulf War, he squandered a 91 percent approval rating. He did nothing to advance the conservative cause. He did not cut taxes. He did not rein in federal spending and regulation. He did nothing for social and cultural issues.

By 1992, we who had dined at the table of Ronald Reagan had been banished to the GOP kitchen. As the National Review editorialized at the time, establishment Republicans "took conservative support for granted, reasoning from the dogma of the two-party system that disaffected conservatives had 'nowhere else to go.' " They were wrong. Some of us turned to Pat Buchanan, who disrupted the primary season. Others turned to independent candidate H. Ross Perot, who led the field until he imploded. Still others simply stayed home, and that November, Bush was soundly defeated by Bill Clinton.

Two years later, the "Contract With America" reversed the GOP's fortunes. With a reignited conservative base, Republicans captured both houses of Congress. But in the face of a liberal counterattack led by the national news media -- Time magazine's cover on Dec. 19, 1994, portrayed a snarling Newt Gingrich as Uncle Scrooge, and the cover of Newsweek's year-end double issue depicted a Dr. Seuss-esque cartoon of the House speaker smiling devilishly beside the headline "How the Gingrich Stole Christmas" -- Republican resistance crumbled. The Contract was abandoned, and overnight the Gingrich revolution was finished. We watched Republican "leaders" flee into the tall grass, whence they've never emerged.

In 1996, a new crop of conservative leaders presented themselves as presidential candidates, but again the party establishment would have none of Buchanan, Steve Forbes, Phil Gramm or Dan Quayle. Instead, they pooled their resources behind Dole, who offered nothing to energize the conservative base while the professional class confidently clucked that conservatives had "nowhere else to go." Again we stayed home. There was no enthusiasm for volunteer action. Again the moderate candidate was routed.

How disgruntled was the conservative base? Two years later, the GOP lost five seats in the House, the first time since 1822 that a party not in control of the White House had failed to gain seats in the midterm election of a president's second term.

But after eight years of Clinton's corruption, and facing the prospect of at least four more years with Al Gore at the helm, conservatives threw our support behind George W. Bush in 2000. He initially delivered by leading the charge in cutting taxes, and his political stature further increased when the nation rallied behind its commander in chief after Sept. 11, 2001. He won reelection in 2004 because conservatives stayed with him, delivering millions of volunteers committed to the defeat of Sen. John F. Kerry.

But any hopes that Bush would deliver on a conservative agenda in his second term evaporated almost immediately. We watched with growing fury as he and the GOP leadership promoted one liberal initiative after another. Finally, we openly rebelled, turning on the GOP over the Supreme Court nomination of Harriet Miers, amnesty for illegal immigrants and the Republicans' shameless abandonment of fiscal discipline. What was once a powerful alliance between the Republican Party and grass-roots conservatives had become a political bridge to nowhere. With the GOP facing the loss of Congress in 2006, we shrugged in indifference. The movement that had "nowhere else to go" had gone.

And it has not returned.

How important are conservatives to the GOP? This year's Republican primary debate was dominated by one question: Which candidate was most qualified to carry the flag of Ronald Reagan?

Ironically, the man who survived this intramural scrum is the one who arguably least qualifies as a Reagan conservative. He claims to be a champion of freedom but gave us McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform -- which, by limiting free speech during elections, is perhaps the greatest infringement ever on the First Amendment. He claims to be a champion of U.S. sovereignty but offered us the McCain-Kennedy immigration reform bill that would give millions of illegal immigrants the chance to become citizens; that's amnesty, no matter how much he denies it. He claims to be a champion of the unborn but has waffled in the past, supporting federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research. This year, he won the endorsement of Republicans for Choice. He claims to be a fiscal conservative who will make the Bush tax cuts permanent, but he also voted against them. These are serious issues.

What should McCain do? Saying he's not Hillary Rodham Clinton or Barack Obama will not be enough -- not this time. Repudiating positions that are anathema to conservatism won't be enough, either. The liberal base of the Democratic Party is on fire; he must bring an equal passion to the table with his conservative base. It is time for McCain to be Reagan.

This is what conservatives call on him to do:

McCain must present a strategy to defeat the threat of radical Islam. He needs to call on the United States to rebuild its military infrastructure, so devastated by the Clinton administration. He should secure our borders by a date certain. In every great struggle, the citizenry -- everyone, not just the country's military -- has been challenged to participate. McCain could make this the clarion call for volunteerism, for national service.

If McCain believes in freedom, he should promise to take the yoke off the American taxpayer. He has embraced making the Bush tax cuts permanent. Good. Now he should pledge to end the estate tax and lower the corporate tax rate to 25 percent. In fact, he should call for an overhaul of the tax system. The flat tax or the fair tax -- either is preferable to the monstrosity that is the Internal Revenue Service.

The federal government is out of control. Conservatives don't want to hear talk about "reining in the growth of government." Those are empty words. McCain needs to call for the elimination of entire sectors of the federal leviathan. He should pledge to turn back to the states that which is their responsibility and which comes under their authority. We want to see how he will deregulate the private sector and how he will once again unleash the economic might of the United States. He should champion private retirement accounts and health savings accounts.

McCain should place the left on notice -- now -- that if elected, he will not tolerate congressional obstructionism of his nominations to the federal judiciary.

Our culture is decaying from within, and most Republicans have been shamefully AWOL on this issue. McCain could begin a national conversation about parents, not the state, taking responsibility for their children and their communities. He should call on the entertainment industry to stop polluting America's youth with its videos and its music and on the Internet. We wait to hear him call for the United States to honor the sanctity of life, the sanctity of marriage and family, and to return God to the public square.

If McCain offers this kind of vision, Washington elitists will scoff. But he should remember that they also scoffed and dismissed Ronald Reagan, all the way to his election. And his reelection.