The Face of Obamacare: how much is your life worth?

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, health adviser to President Barack Obama, is under scrutiny. As a bioethicist, he has written extensively about who should get medical care, who should decide, and whose life is worth saving, writes Betsy McCaughey. And he says this:

“Adolescents have received substantial education and parental care, investments that will be wasted without a complete life. Infants, by contrast, have not yet received these investments. . . . As the legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin argues, ‘It is terrible when an infant dies, but worse, most people think, when a three-year-old dies and worse still when an adolescent does,’ this argument is supported by empirical surveys.” (thelancet.com, Jan. 31, 2009).

Dr. Emanuel can smile. His life is worth more than yours. Think so? I want to see the empirical survey that measures the perceived worth of a bioethicist’s life. I’m thinking that the survey would probably look a lot like Obama’s current approval ratings, and the trend would be going down.

How much is your life worth?
Read the entire Wall Street Journal piece by Betsy McCaughey (while you still can).

Do you trust Obama with Your Life?

Will you trust your life — or the life of your loved ones — to President Obama? This is the same guy, who as an obscure State Senator in Illinois opposed Born Alive legislation. He was opposed to giving life-saving medical treatment to premature infants who survived an abortion procedure. He was afraid it would undermine the legality of abortion. He was worried about legal technicalities — that was more important to him than the life of a child.

Even abortion proponents have — until now — believed that the child is a child after it’s born. But not then State Senator Obama.

Now he’s President of the United States, and he wants us to trust him. Why should we? President Obama was in favor of “end of life” discussions at the very beginning of life. Why should anyone suppose that he has changed? Yet he thinks we’ll believe him when he scoffs at the idea of rationing, of death panels, of euthanasia, of European-style medical socialism (they love him in Europe, so we’re told). Misinformation, he says.

Misinformation? He said he was in favor of a “single payer system” back when no one was looking. He said that Born Alive legislation might “die” in a Constitutional challenge. He was afraid of the legislation dying, but the children dying didn’t bother him at all. Read the transcript. It’s there for anyone to inspect.

Democrats think you don’t get it. They think you’re not paying attention. They think if they say you’re “unpatriotic” that you’ll back down.

They think they can shove legislation down your throat, and that’s there’s nothing you can do about it.

But you can do something. Let them know, that next election, they’re through.
Vote them out. Get legislation that Americans really want.

The Only Flag Obama Wants to Wear

What was it the Lefties worried about so ardently all during President George W. Bush’s tenure in the White House? Civil Liberties! The Patriot Act was destroying the Constitution, they said. The government was spying on American citizens, they said.

Well, guess what? This is not stuff that George Bush was doing. This is stuff, it turns out, that Lefties wanted the government to do. And now that they’ve got their man, Orwellian politics is here!

Now, am I just sounding the alarm in that facile way that Democrats were always doing 24/7? Is anyone really being harmed by Obama’s attack on liberty? Can we name anyone who has gotten interference from the United States government just for voicing an opinion? Well, how about Joe the Plumber. It started with him. And then Sarah Palin, the target of frivolous lawsuits costing her family in excess of $600,000 in legal fees. And how about Sgt. Crowley, the police officer who arrested Henry Gates and had to get some “sensitivity training” at the White House as a consequence?

Don’t believe that President Obama would stifle free speech, do you. Well take a look at this at the White House website. I read a post about this yesterday and could hardly believe it. But here it is, folks. flag@whitehouse.gov

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Facts-Are-Stubborn-Things/

They want citizens to report suspicious internet messages on the topic of health care. So I did. I wrote an email to the White House and cited this link as very suspicious. In the name of “health care” the government is asking people to spy.

So I reported it. I reported them to themselves.

And if you love your freedom, you should report them too. Anyone can create an anonymous email name and address to send the message. I didn’t use my name! And you shouldn’t use yours either. Use the tool of anonymity to fight these people. Intimidation can work both ways.

Save your identity for the polling place when we vote these people out of Dodge.

Why I bought the Post today

I actually purchased a copy of the print edition of the Washington Post today when I saw someone in a restaurant reading this article, or to be more specific, when I saw the large photos of Palin on the inside. I was curious what the Post was printing about Palin and how biased it would be and how early the bias would appear in the article. So, it was definitely good for a laugh.

I thank the writers for telling me Palin was picked up in a black car. Many of us have been intensely curious about that bit of information. However the writers could have researched Palin's support among conservatives a little more extensively. To say that conservatives I know were elated at McCain's choice of Palin is to indulge in necessary understatement since it would be difficult to capture the enthusiasm that she evoked then and even now.
It intrigues me that the Post demographic doesn't get it. But it chimes with the paper's little motto: "if you don't get it, you don't get it."

Let's put some numbers into the mix. At various times Rush Limbaugh's audience is estimated to be between 13 - 20 million people. The conservatives are a large segment of the population, and depending upon how the question is asked more people identify themselves as "conservative" than as "liberal" -- and this even despite the media's relentless attacks over at least 2 decades (my rememberance) of the term "conservative" which they usually link to "extremist."

Are most Americans "extremist"?

I note in another article in today's paper, in E.J. Dionne's editorial that the "birthers" have become the new faddish way to continue the slander against "the right." Even the term is supposed to conjure visions of tin foil hats. However, the question of Obama's citizenship should be easily resolved -- that there is ANY question concerning it should prick the ears of the "where there's smoke there's fire" people. But the media has so solidly ignored any deep examination of the candidate, now president, that this one item does not provoke the sorts of questions it should.

Of course if Obama were not a citizen, even now he would be occupying the White House illegally. Some debate whether it would "matter." But one assumes that some in the media are aware just how much of a real firestorm it would provoke, and that, I believe, is the reason they try to associate the question with fanatics and conspiracy theorists. The Constitution does not specify many conditions for the office of the president, but those it does cite are unambiguous. In modern times, even the reasoning behind proscribing the office from aliens is perhaps inscrutable to Democrats, but that's another story.

Conservatives that I know are still very interested in Palin (as this series tacitly acknowledges). Some, however, question whether she is ready for the White House. This readiness was not an issue in the last election because she was not running for president, and because she was manifestly more qualified than the man who afterwards won the presidency.

***

Obama will fall from his own mistakes which if the first few months are any indication will be legion. I like the characterization that the Post's writers put upon Obama's vice presidential choice: "Obama had gone the safe route in his selection of Joe Biden, a do-no-harm pick that followed the classic vice presidential manual." Is it part of the "manual" that the VP should routinely put his foot into his mouth so reliably, one wonders.

I stopped reading the Post a long time ago after it became clear how incurably biased it has become. It would be more aptly named "The Washington Democrat."

I did buy the paper today, however, because I wanted to see what portrait was offered of Palin. Certainly even Democrats should be asking themselves why everyone is still talking about her. When is the last time people were so mesmerized by the candidate that lost? And who was second on the ticket too!

The question of Obama's birth certificate would be a minor point except for the Constitution. But what strikes me as more significant than even this serious Constitutional question are things like his associations. Most Democrats still know next to nothing about their candidate's personal history: his relationships to Ayers and Wright which were long and close, Wright having been his pastor for some 20 years and Ayers the probable author of the very poetic and very un-Obama-esque book about Obama's youth entitled "Dreams of My Father" should have been raised in the media a long time ago and never were.

Obama's critics know more about the man than his supporters. Big questions abound concerning Obama: such as who financed his early career? Why was Obama offered the extraordinarily large advance for his first book, back when it was a proposal by an unknown? "Follow the money" was once a dictum in journalism. But that was then. And this ... is the era when journalism is dying.

Adieu.