Chairman Butler's statement, "Recently at a 'town hall' campaign rally, sorry,
I meant 'meeting', President Obama made a very startling statement concerning his position on a 'single-payer healthcare
system', i.e. government-run healthcare or also known as socialized medicine."
President Obama at rally: "I have not said that I was a single-payer supporter because frankly we historically
have had a employer-based system in this country."
The president claims to have never said he supports government-run healthcare, yet that
is exactly what he said in 2007.
President Obamain 2007: "My commitment is to make sure that we've got universal health care
for all Americans by the end of my first term as president. I would hope that we can set up a system that allows those
who can go through their employer to access a federal system or a state pool of some sort, but 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 a decade out or 15 years out or 20 years out."
It gets even worse folks, back in 2003 he gave his support emphatically.
President Obamain 2003: "I happen to be a proponent of single-payer, universal health care plan."
It doesn't get any easier than that. If this was George W. Bush it
would be front page headline news. I've been warning people for years about the negative impact of the lies of media elitists
and that they don't have to do anything to promote them, sometimes their lack of coverage on an issue is just as harmful as
their coverage. LPB
Headlines and Opinion You Won't Get In The MSM
Item #1
The Death Book for Veterans
Ex-soldiers don't need to be told they're a burden to society.
By JIM TOWEY WSJ Online
If President Obama wants to better understand why America's discomfort with end-of-life discussions threatens
to derail his health-care reform, he might begin with his own Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). He will quickly discover
how government bureaucrats are greasing the slippery slope that can start with cost containment but quickly become a systematic
denial of care.
Last year, bureaucrats at the VA's National Center for Ethics in Health Care advocated a 52-page end-of-life
planning document, "Your Life, Your Choices." It was first published in 1997 and later promoted as the VA's preferred living
will throughout its vast network of hospitals and nursing homes. After the Bush White House took a look at how this document
was treating complex health and moral issues, the VA suspended its use. Unfortunately, under President Obama, the VA has now
resuscitated "Your Life, Your Choices."
Who is the primary author of this workbook? Dr. Robert Pearlman, chief of ethics evaluation for the center,
a man who in 1996 advocated for physician-assisted suicide in Vacco v. Quill before the U.S. Supreme Court and is known for
his support of health-care rationing.
"Your Life, Your Choices" presents end-of-life choices in a way aimed at steering users toward predetermined
conclusions, much like a political "push poll." For example, a worksheet on page 21 lists various scenarios and asks users
to then decide whether their own life would be "not worth living."
The circumstances listed include ones common among the elderly and disabled: living in a nursing home, being
in a wheelchair and not being able to "shake the blues." There is a section which provocatively asks, "Have you ever heard
anyone say, 'If I'm a vegetable, pull the plug'?" There also are guilt-inducing scenarios such as "I can no longer contribute
to my family's well being," "I am a severe financial burden on my family" and that the vet's situation "causes severe emotional
burden for my family."
When the government can steer vulnerable individuals to conclude for themselves that life is not worth living,
who needs a death panel?
One can only imagine a soldier surviving the war in Iraq and returning without all of his limbs only to encounter
a veteran's health-care system that seems intent on his surrender.
I was not surprised to learn that the VA panel of experts that sought to update "Your Life, Your Choices" between
2007-2008 did not include any representatives of faith groups or disability rights advocates. And as you might guess, only
one organization was listed in the new version as a resource on advance directives: the Hemlock Society (now euphemistically
known as "Compassion and Choices").
This hurry-up-and-die message is clear and unconscionable. Worse, a July 2009 VA directive instructs its primary
care physicians to raise advance care planning with all VA patients and to refer them to "Your Life, Your Choices." Not just
those of advanced age and debilitated condition—all patients. America's 24 million veterans deserve better.
Many years ago I created an advance care planning document called "Five Wishes" that is today the most widely
used living will in America, with 13 million copies in national circulation. Unlike the VA's document, this one does not contain
the standard bias to withdraw or withhold medical care. It meets the legal requirements of at least 43 states, and it runs
exactly 12 pages.
After a decade of observing end-of-life discussions, I can attest to the great fear that many patients have,
particularly those with few family members and financial resources. I lived and worked in an AIDS home in the mid-1980s and
saw first-hand how the dying wanted more than health care—they wanted someone to care.
If President Obama is sincere in stating that he is not trying to cut costs by pressuring the disabled to forgo
critical care, one good way to show that commitment is to walk two blocks from the Oval Office and pull the plug on "Your
Life, Your Choices." He should make sure in the future that VA decisions are guided by values that treat the lives of our
veterans as gifts, not burdens.
Item #2
Political Cartoons by Chip Bok
Rush Quote of the Day
Rush Limbaugh:
"What is the big difference between Reagan and his recession and Obama and his recession? Very simple: Reagan was trying
to end his."
Last Tuesday, as President Obama got off the Helicopter in front of the White House, he was carrying a
baby piglet under each arm. The squared away Marine guard snaps to attention, Salutes, and says: "Nice
pigs, Sir."
The President replies: "These are not pigs. These are authentic Arkansas Razorback Hogs. I got one for
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and I got one for Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi .."
The squared away Marine
again snaps to attention, Salutes, and says: "Excellent trade, sir.
According to reports, President Barack Obama plans to convene his Cabinet for the first time today, where he will order members to identify a
combined $100 million in budget cuts over the next 90 days. Just how laughable is Obama’s latest stunt to try to maintain
his “fiscal responsibility” credentials? This graphic from Heritage’s John Fleming might help:
Harvard University economics professor Greg Mankiw’s comments:
To put those numbers in perspective, imagine that the head of a household with annual spending of $100,000 called everyone
in the family together to deal with a $34,000 budget shortfall. How much would he or she announce that spending had to be
cut? By $3 over the course of the year–approximately the cost of one latte at Starbucks. The other $33,997? We can put
that on the family credit card and worry about it next year.”
A True American Hero
“The first Republican I knew was my father and he is still the Republican I most
admire. He joined our party because the Democrats inJim Crow Alabama of 1952 would not register him to vote. The Republicans
did. My father has never forgotten that day, and neither have I.
“I joined for different reasons. I found a party
that sees me as an individual, not as part of a group. I found a party that puts family first. I found a party that has love
of liberty at its core. And I found a party that believes that peace begins with strength.”
“It’s that expression of the individual
and a willingness to put the educational opportunities before me that led to who I am. Who you are is who you are as an individual.”
"In a little over one hundred days, this Recovery Act has worked as intended," President Obama
recently said during one of his radio addresses.
Liberals have turned the ‘shuck and jive’ into a fine
art form through the years and this administration has made it a line item on their daily itinerary, but this push towards
socialism has gone further than even many Democrats can continue to stomach.
The President was apparently affirming
what many pundits opposing his policies have been trying to get through the liberal media elitist pro-Obama cacophony since
this administration took control of the reins.
Stimulating the economy is not what’s necessarily first and foremost
on the agenda… transforming America into a socialist society is the predominant motivator, which is why he believes
the Recovery Act is working just as he had planned.
Republican House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (Vir.) recently charged
in a Republican radio address response, "Remember the promises? They promised you if you paid for their stimulus, jobs would
be created immediately. In fact, they said that unemployment would stay under eight percent. Yet just months later, they are
telling us to brace for unemployment to climb over ten percent," he said.
Ah, remember when it was so easy for liberals
to assert things that would be simply touted as fact by the liberal media, such as when the President asserted, "This plan
will save or create 3.5 million jobs. More than 90 percent of these jobs will be in the private sector,” he said.
Now
the unemployment rate is over ten percent in at least 15 states and the District of Columbia. No jobs are being saved or created
in those areas of the country, but then for socialism to truly have its effect, the government needs folks who are dependent
on it.
The Recovery Act is working as the President intended, remember?
Then the information starts flowing
about how the process is being directed. The Washington Times recently reported that little of the stimulus money is actually
going to the areas of the country that have been the hardest hit by the recession.
Why?
It could be postulated
that many of those areas are red states. As a Democrat strategist would say, you turn red states blue by forcing those people
to need government intervention, then during the next election campaign either promise money for their financially strapped
area, threaten that the Republican candidate or representative is against that, and/or deny funding to that Republican representative.
The
third thing listed has already started.
As Ben Smith of Politico reported, “ Relentless criticism of the stimulus
package from a House Republican leader, Eric Cantor of Virginia, drew a furious barrage from the Democratic National Committee
and a visit from no smaller figure than the Vice President of the United States. Rank and file Republicans who criticize the
stimulus have also suddenly found themselves under a concerted DNC assault that asks if they’d prefer the federal funding
left their districts out. And criticism from Sen Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) drew letters from no fewer than four Cabinet secretaries
to his state’s governor, asking if she would prefer they withheld stimulus money.”
Talk about reaching
across the aisle and working with your opponents! Apparently, that’s only in play if the opposing side AGREES with the
socialist agenda this administration is fast-tracking for the hard working American families who they’ll start claiming
they are trying to help because ‘it’s for their own good’!
Which is something the President did touch
on during the election, “But what we haven’t yet seen is a rescue package for the middle class. So I’ve
proposed four specific things that I think can help. #1, let’s focus on jobs. #2, let’s help families right away
by providing them a middle-class tax cut. #3, Sen. McCain and I agree that we’ve got to help homeowners. #4, We’ve
got some long-term challenges: We’ve got to fix our energy policy; our health care system; and invest in our education
system.”
#1. So far the administration has only attacked the businesses that create and produce job growth, which
has led to job losses… their answer is government to the rescue.
#2. Have you seen a ‘tax cut’? The
only thing that has happened so far has been an increase in taxation on those who smoke and policies that will lead directly
to tax increases… this is so they can provide that government rescue.
#3. They are proposing to help homeowners…
by allowing the government to become their property keeper, regulator, and landlord.
#4. The administration’s
plan for energy is to turn away from fossil fuels, not utilize nuclear, and regulate business through carbon taxes while promising
’green jobs’ that can’t even begin to materialize for a decade if ever…
But they are moving
towards the government controlling your energy production… Government is moving to take over and control your health
care… and government is going to put more wasted dollars into the government-run education system controlling your families
even more.
The President’s policies are working just as he intended: Socialism is about government control, not
as an economic stimulus.
Columns I've produced that made recent Quill Pen Ten Lists
History Lesson: Why the Republican Party was Formed
Excerpted from the 1998 Encarta Digital Encyclopedia
In addition to adopting a new and harsh fugitive slave law, the Compromise of 1850 brought California into the Union as
a free state, but allowed slavery in the rest of the territories. In 1854 Congress passed the
Kansas-Nebraska
Act. This law partially repealed the Missouri Compromise by allowing the settlers of the Kansas and Nebraska
territories (which included most of the present day states of Kansas, Nebraska, Montana, South Dakota, and North Dakota) to
decide for themselves if they wanted slavery. This was known as popular sovereignty. Those hostile to this
law and other opponents of slavery responded by forming the Republican Party. Popular sovereignty soon degenerated into a civil
war in Kansas-known as the Border War, or "Bleeding Kansas"-as Southerners
and Northerners battled over the status of slavery.
Dred Scott Case, landmark case of the 1850s in which the
Supreme Court of the
United States declared that African Americans were
not U.S. citizens. The court also determined that the portion of the Missouri Compromise of 1820 that banned slavery in U.S. territories north and west of the state of Missouri was unconstitutional. The
Dred Scott case intensified ongoing debates over slavery that further polarized the American North and South and eventually
gave rise to the American Civil War in 1861.
In 1846 Dred Scott, a slave living in
St. Louis, Missouri, sued to
prove that he, his wife Harriet, and their two daughters were legally entitled to their freedom. After being tried in Missouri
state courts and in a federal circuit court, the case went before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1856. The following year, the
court rejected Scott’s claim. Speaking for the court, Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney concluded that blacks, even when free, could never become citizens of the United States and thus did not have a right
to sue in federal courts. Taney also declared that Congress lacked the power to prohibit slavery in federal territories, a
ruling that invalidated the part of the Missouri Compromise that banned slavery in the western territories.
The Dissents Justices John McLean of Ohio and Benjamin R. Curtis of Massachusetts issued dissenting opinions. Curtis
attacked Taney’s historical arguments, showing that blacks had voted in five states at the founding of the United States.
Thus, they were citizens of the nation from the beginning and could not now be denied citizenship.
Republicans also opposed the court’s decision. In speeches and throughout his famous debates with
Stephen A. Douglas, Abraham Lincoln alleged a conspiracy to nationalize slavery that had been hatched
by Taney, Douglas, former U.S. president Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan, then the president of the United States (see Abraham Lincoln: Lincoln-Douglas Debates).
On May 26, 1857, shortly after Taney’s decision, Scott gained his freedom when the sons of his first owner, Peter
Blow, purchased and freed Scott and his family. Scott remained a free man until his death a few months later, on February
17, 1858.
His case, however, remained a key issue in American politics and law until the outbreak of the Civil War. Taney’s
controversial decision in the case widened the breach between the North and South and further aggravated debates over slavery.
It also played a decisive role in the emergence of Lincoln as the Republican Party’s presidential candidate in 1860
and his election later that year. Despite the decision in the case, Dred Scott and the Civil War ultimately helped
to usher in the
Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863 and what
Lincoln called "a new birth of freedom" for African Americans. In 1865 the nation adopted the 13th Amendment to the
Constitution, which ended slavery. In 1868 it adopted the 14th Amendment, which declared that all persons born in the United
States are citizens of the nation and of the state in which they live. These two amendments effectively reversed Taney’s
assertions that the U.S. Constitution protected slavery and that African Americans could never be citizens of the United States.
This is a history lesson that is factually accurate and proves that the Republican Party
is the party of civil rights. This history lesson has been purposely excluded from the class rooms of our children for too
many decades.
