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Georgia Democrat Yells at Doctor Over Obamacare

Mark Noonan

We’ve got them on the run:

Tensions are running so high at town hall meetings that Rep. David Scott, a Georgia Democrat, yelled at a local doctor concerned about health care after mistaking him for an “astroturf” political operative looking for a fight.

Mr. Scott became visibly agitated when one of his constituents, a practicing doctor, asked a few questions about health care reform during a town hall meeting. The meeting was held to discuss a road project, but was opened up for questions near the end. That’s when Dr. Brian Hill stood up to speak.

Dr. Hill asked Mr. Scott why he was going to vote for a health care plan similar to that implemented in Massachusetts “that is shown not to work” and if he supported a government-provided health care insurance option.

The congressman replied by accusing the doctor of “hijacking” his event.

“I’m listening to my constituents, OK?” Scott said, “These are people who live in the 13th Congressional district, who vote in this district. That’s who I’ve got to respond to … So what you’ve got to understand, those of you who are here, who have taken and came and hijacked this event we dealing with here, this is not a health care event.”

“You chose to come and to do it on your own,” he yelled. “Not a single one of you had the decency to call my office and set up for a meeting.” He went on, in a threatening voice, “You want a meeting with me on health care, I’ll give it to you!”

The Congressman is clearly a dolt – and thus a perfect Democrat backbencher. He’s been told that the people causing a ruckus at the town halls are bogus and he simply believed it…thus, when a local doctor rose to ask reasonable questions about health care, he went ballistic (probably as he was coached to do) and tried to play the tribune of the people defending reasoned debate. What a tool.

But it also shows we’ve got them very badly rattled – and I just pray that Reid and my own House member hold a town hall…Reid probably won’t as he’s afraid to show his face among his fellow Nevadans these days, but Buckley might…yes, she just might. We shall see.

Obama Justice: Intimidate American Voters, Ok; Be Mean to Terrorists, Go to Jail

Mark Noonan

There’s just this creeping sense of complete stupidity I’m getting out of DC these days – well, I hope its stupidity, because if its a plan, then we’re all in trouble:

U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. is poised to appoint a criminal prosecutor to investigate alleged CIA abuses committed during the interrogation of terrorism suspects, current and former U.S. government officials said.

A senior Justice Department official said that Holder envisioned an inquiry that would be narrow in scope, focusing on “whether people went beyond the techniques that were authorized” in Bush administration memos that liberally interpreted anti-torture laws.

Current and former CIA and Justice Department officials who have firsthand knowledge of the interrogation files contend that criminal convictions will be difficult to obtain because the quality of evidence is poor and the legal underpinnings have never been tested.

We’re wasting time, wasting resources, turning up the heat on domestic divisions…and, for what? So that some kooks on the left can be thrown a sop? We get to rake our intelligence people over the coals while Black Panther fascists are given a free ride?

As I said, it’s gonna be a loooong four years…and we can at least be happy that its 1/8th over.

The Sublime Legacy of President Bush

Mark Noonan

He’s hated, he’s reviled – he’s the man Obama will blame for everything, including his defeat in 2012. But he’s better that what we’ve got now, and far better than we actually deserved:

What if a president, on his own initiative, under no demands from staff or from supporters or opponents, set out to spend an unprecedented amount of money on AIDS in Africa, literally billions of dollars, at a time when the nation could not afford it, citing his faith as a primary motivation and, ultimately, saved more than a million lives?

Wouldn’t the story be front-page news, especially in top, liberal newspapers? Wouldn’t it lead on CNN, MSNBC and the “CBS Evening News”? Might statues be erected to the man in the nation’s more “progressive” cities?

What if the president was George W. Bush?

I pose these uncomfortable questions for two reasons: 1) President Bush did precisely that regarding the African AIDS tragedy; and 2) a study claims that Bush’s remarkable action has indeed saved many precious lives.

And as someone who has closely followed Bush’s humanitarian gesture from the outset, I’m not surprised that the former president continues to not receive the accolades he deserves — including even from conservative supporters — for this generous act.

Bush himself realizes the lack of gratitude and media attention. I personally witnessed it very recently, on June 17, when I was in attendance for one of Bush’s first postpresidential speeches, in Erie, Pa. There, too, he mentioned the AIDS initiative — even adding that one of his daughters is in Africa today, working on the epidemic — and, there again, it received no press coverage whatsoever.

In a large sense, we deserve Barack Obama – a mindless drone who is all image and no grit. A nation which spends its time watching trash like “American Idol” deserves no better – only our military and our civil volunteers (those who actually do things, not those who “community organize”) redeem us. President Bush has a mind of his own and tremendous courage – and thus he was well suited both to those who get down and dirty fighting poverty and disease as well as those who don our nation’s uniform and battle for liberty around the world; and such people, especially in the military, showed untold devotion to the man’s ideas. Sacrificing again and again to bring this humane and, dare we say it?, Christian vision to the world.

One wonders how devoted people will be to Obama’s “soft” approach to terrorism and his plans for US government aid for abortion around the world? Not exactly the sort of thing one chargers over the top for, huh?

Once this generation is dead – especially this generation of hate-filled leftists – then, and only then, will the full truth about President Bush come out. Certainly, a flawed man. A sinner, as we all are. A man who made mistakes – but a man who always tried to do the right thing and who wasn’t a slave to polls, as Democrats are. I said we’d miss President Bush, and we do – but his legacy is secure, and the world is a better place for him having been President of the United States.

Phrase of the Day

Mark Noonan

Putting things in proper perspective:

God doesn’t require us to succeed; he only requires that you try.

Give yourself fully to God. He will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe much more in His love than in your own weakness. – Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta

Religious Correspondence Censored

Mark Noonan

This is just downright weird:

Civil rights and religious freedom groups are criticizing the Rappahannock Regional Jail in northern Virginia, charging that the jail illegally censored the letters a Christian mother sent to her jailed son for being “too religious.” Jail authorities cut out so many Bible passages that her letters resembled “Swiss cheese,” the groups said.

The letters of inmate mother Anna Williams were stamped for censorship with the words “Religious Material from Home,” a press release from the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty reports. On at least one occasion, all that was left of a three-page letter was its salutation, its first paragraph, and its signature “Love, Mom.”

There hasn’t, as far as I know, been a response to this, nor an explanation as to just why the censorship happened. It is legitimate to censor inmate’s mail, but such censorship is supposed to extend only to things affecting prison security (so, if you send a blueprint of the prison which might help a prisoner escape, that probably wouldn’t make it past the censor) – its not legitimate to censor religious material.

There seems to be a growing problem in official circles about religion – especially the Christian religion. Leftist propaganda has made out that religion, in itself, is a problem and thus has to be carefully watched. The result of this paranoia is such things as this censorship – and other efforts to expunge religious expression. We do need to get to the bottom of this and, in the long run, pass laws enforcing the Constitution’s “free exercise” clause.

Palin: Beware Obama's "Death Panel"

Mark Noonan

Indeed:

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin called President Barack Obama’s health plan “downright evil” Friday in her first online comments since leaving office, saying in a Facebook posting that he would create a “death panel” that would deny care to the neediest Americans.

“The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care,” the former Republican vice presidential candidate wrote.

“Such a system is downright evil,” Palin wrote on her page, which has nearly 700,000 supporters. She encouraged her supporters to be engaged in the debate.

Call it what you will, Obama-bots, but any government panel deciding health matters will eventually decide health matters based on the need of the bureaucrats who run the system and the politicians who want to keep problems under wraps. Its a certainty that if we go with Obamacare we’ll eventually all be forced in to single-payer (as Obama said we would – later obfuscations not withstanding) and then we’ll be forced in to rationed care because you can’t have an unlimited supply of anything which is “free”.

I don’t want my fate decided on the basis of anything other than God’s will – certainly not on the recommendation of a faceless, bureaucratic panel.

Weekly Recap (2009-08-08)

Matt Margolis

Why Were the Black Panther Fascists Let Off?

Mark Noonan

Inquiring minds want to know:

As I have reported here at Pajamas Media and most recently at the Weekly Standard, the inexplicable dismissal by the Obama Justice Department of the default judgment in a case of egregious voter intimidation at a Philadelphia polling place on Election Day 2008 has unleashed a torrent of questions about why the case was dropped against all but one defendant (the individual actually wielding a nightstick got off with a proverbial slap on the hand) and who made the decision to drop it. The Justice Department has stonewalled, claiming career attorneys made the call.

But with news reports that career lawyers who did the legwork on the case were overridden and that the associate attorney general was involved in the decision to dismiss, Republicans on Capitol Hill and the bipartisan U.S. Commission on Civil Rights are swinging into action.

First, Rep. Lamar Smith, the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, and Senate Republicans have joined together to block, at least temporarily, the confirmation of the president’s pick to head the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, which handled the New Black Panther case. Roll Call reports:

Frustrated by what they say the Department of Justice is stalling in an investigation into alleged voter intimidation by the New Black Panther Party during the 2008 election, House and Senate Republicans have coordinated a temporary blockade of President Barack Obama’s nomination of Tom Perez to be assistant attorney general of the Civil Rights Division. …

In a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans, House Judiciary ranking member Lamar Smith (R-Texas) formally requested that a Member place a hold on Perez’s nomination.

“I write to request that you place a hold on the nomination of Mr. Tom Perez. … I ask that the hold remain in effect until the Department provides Congress with sufficient information about the sudden dismissal of a case alleging voter intimidation by the New Black Panther Party on Election Day 2008,” Smith said in the letter.

It is clear that it was a political decision to let the Panthers off the hook – Obama’s supporters look to fascist groups like the Panthers to provide the muscle necessary to intimidate the streets at election time. And all with plausible deniability – “what, us? No, no, no – that was them; they did it. We’re just sweet, innocent liberals who wouldn’t harm a fly”. If we don’t put a stop to this, we’ll soon find gangs of thugs around all our polling places – all of them menacing anyone they think might vote “wrong”.

The US Commission on Civil Rights is demanding that Justice – specifically, AG Holder – provide documents to show just why this clear violation of the Voting Rights Act was dropped. Holder can comply, or can stonewall. I believe he’ll stonewall as long as he can and then let out info in driblets, hoping it won’t go anywhere – but with the rise in voter anger as expressed in the TEA Party movement, the raucus town halls and the use of union thugs to beat anti-Obama demonstrators, this is all coming to a head. Either we’ve got a government which secures our liberty, or we’ve got liberal fascists intimidating us with government consent (actual or implied).

You liberals out there should really think hard about this.

France's Health Care System Punishes Patients to Cut Costs

Mark Noonan

Ah, the last bastion of “see, socialized medicine works“:

When Laure Cuccarolo went into early labor on a recent Sunday night in a village in southern France, her only choice was to ask the local fire brigade to whisk her to a hospital 30 miles away. A closer one had been shuttered by cost cuts in France’s universal health system.

Ms. Cuccarolo’s little girl was born in a firetruck.

France claims it long ago achieved much of what today’s U.S. health-care overhaul is seeking: It covers everyone, and provides what supporters say is high-quality care. But soaring costs are pushing the system into crisis. The result: As Congress fights over whether America should be more like France, the French government is trying to borrow U.S. tactics.

In recent months, France imposed American-style “co-pays” on patients to try to throttle back prescription-drug costs and forced state hospitals to crack down on expenses. “A hospital doesn’t need to be money-losing to provide good-quality treatment,” President Nicolas Sarkozy thundered in a recent speech to doctors.

It doesn’t work. It can’t work. Its stupid to think it could possibly work. We’re dealing with people here, for crying out loud. If you make it less than real cost to use a thing, then it will be used more than it should be – and then you’re stuck either charging more, cutting services or trying to do both. “Do both” is what France seems to have opted for (while the UK and Canada seem to have come down hard on the side of cutting services).

What should health insurance be? Coverage for chronic and/or catastrophic injury or illness, with various provisions for pregnancy. A trip to the doctor should cost $50. If it costs that much, people will only go when they need to – and they’ll go without any worry because if it starts to become more costly than a regular office visit plus, perhaps, a few regular tests and minor procedures, then the insurance is going to kick in and take care of it. We’ve been mind-bogglingly stupid over this thing for 40 years.

Fortunately, it looks like ObamaCare will drive the final nail in the socialized medicine coffin. After that, we might be able to start a rational debate about what we want insurance to be for.

His Majesty, Barry I

Mark Noonan

Or, so he seems to wish:

Yesterday, at a rally for R. Creigh Deeds in Virginia, President Obama said: “I don’t want the folks who created the mess do a lot of talking. I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. I don’t mind cleaning up after them, but don’t do a lot of talking.”

For Barack Obama, democracy appears to be a distraction. He really does seem to view himself as a Caesar.

Shortly after taking office, Obama held a meeting with governors. At the time, one person in the room relayed Obama’s request that critics and skeptics of the stimulus plan keep their concerns to themselves. Just let me do it, was his attitude. He got pushback and he wasn’t happy. He wanted democratically elected state governors to shut up so he could do as he pleased. He knows better and we should respect that, seems to be the attitude.

Nothing worse in power and an ignorant man who thinks he knows what he’s doing. This will get a lot worse before it gets any better.