Blogs For Victory

The future of “health” care if liberals get their way:

An Oregon woman suffering from lung cancer was notified by the state-run Oregon Health Plan that their policy would not cover her life-extending cancer drug, telling her the health plan would cover doctor-assisted suicide instead.

Barbara Wagener discovered her lung cancer had recurred last month, the Register-Guard said. Her oncologist prescribed a drug called Tarceva, which could slow the cancer growth and extend her life.

The Oregon Health Plan notified Wagner that it would not cover the drug, but it would cover palliative care, which it said included assisted suicide.

“Treatment of advanced cancer that is meant to prolong life, or change the course of this disease, is not a covered benefit of the Oregon Health Plan,” said the letter Wagner received from LIPA, the Eugene company that administers the Oregon Health Plan in Lane County.

“I think it’s messed up,” Wagner said. She said she was particularly upset because the letter said doctor-assisted suicide would be covered.

“To say to someone, we’ll pay for you to die, but not pay for you to live, it’s cruel,” she said. “I get angry. Who do they think they are?”

A doctor appealed to Genentech, the company that markets Tarceva in the U.S., to cover Wagner’s medication. On Monday Wagner was told the company would cover the drug treatment for a year, after which she could re-apply for the drug.

“I am just so thrilled,” Wagner said. “I am so relieved and so happy.”

This is the inevitible outcome of government-run health care. You can talk all you want about greedy insurance companies, but the greediest and most Scrooge-like in existence is still afraid of a lawsuit…the government isn’t; and when it comes to budget-time, the need to provide care for the ill is balanced against the need to provide pay raises and perks for the people who run the government health care system. Guess which will come out on top?

There is no perfect solution, ever, in human affairs – given the fallen nature of mankind, there will always be laziness, sloppiness, greed and all the normal human vices. Mixed in, of course, with human greatness…but to think that you can fix a problem for good and all is stupd. And, finally, the larger a human enterprise is – the more it tries to do, that is – the more likely it is to fail. Trying to figure out what everyone from newborn to elderly needs for health care is beyond the capability of any human being, or even any group of human beings.

Obama and his Democrats propose to fix the problem. McCain and his Republicans propose to work out systems which will allow people to fix themselves up with health care. Obama’s program, however crafted not only will not work but it cannot work. McCain’s will work as well as can be achieved in human affairs. We have our choice this November – I choose to work with humanity as it is, not as liberals wish it were.

And Obama just gave us a big dose of it:

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama dropped in on the Chicago 2016 Olympics rally on Friday and declared he is confident that he will be winding up his second term in the White House when Chicago hosts the 2016 Summer Olympic Games.

Such bravado about his own future is not typical of Obama, even in private. And, in the highly scripted world of modern politics, today’s last-minute appearance was unusual. Obama had told CBS 2 Political Editor Mike Flannery on Thursday night that he had intended to ”chill out” at home for a few days.

“It’s a good time to be in Chicago,” Barack Obama said to the cheering crowd. “The White Sox are winning. The Cubs are winning. And Chicago’s going to win the 2016 Olympics.”

“In 2016, I’ll be wrapping up my second term as president, so I can’t think of a better way than to be marching into Washington Park alongside Mayor Daley, alongside Rahm Emanuel, alongside Dick Durbin, alongside Valerie Jarrett as President of the United States, and annoucing to the world, ‘Let the games begin!'”

Perhaps you will, Senator – but only the most arrogant cretin would be that certain about it. We’ll see you in November.

From G K Chesterton’s Orthodoxy:

Now here comes in the whole collapse and huge blunder of our age. We have mixed up two different things, two opposite things. Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to suit the vision. Progress does mean (just now) that we are always changing the vision. It should mean that we are slow but sure in bringing justice and mercy among men: it does mean that we are very swift in doubting the desirability of justice and mercy: a wild page from any Prussian sophist makes men doubt it. Progress should mean that we are always walking towards the New Jerusalem. It does mean that the New Jerusalem is always walking away from us. We are not altering the real to suit the ideal. We are altering the ideal: it is easier.

Thus our liberals – who started with an ideal of liberty and equality, and are now on an ideal of sexual license and socialism. Its easier, you see?

Discuss.

The economy was doing a lot better before the Democrats controlled congress…

Pink slips piled up and jobs disappeared into thin air in May as the nation’s unemployment rate zoomed to 5.5 percent in the biggest one-month jump in decades. Wall Street swooned, and the White House said President Bush was considering new proposals to revive the economy.

Help-wanted signs are vanishing along with jobs, so the unemployment rate is likely to keep climbing, a government report indicated, underscoring the toll the housing and credit crises are taking on jobseekers, employers and the economy as a whole.

Adding to the pain, oil prices soared to a new record high, while the value of the dollar fell.

The Dow Jones industrials tumbled almost 400 points.

If you want the economy to move in the right direction then vote Republican in November.

Ann Coulter points out the obvious:

Words mean nothing to liberals. They say whatever will help advance their cause at the moment, switch talking points in a heartbeat, and then act indignant if anyone uses the exact same argument they were using five minutes ago.

When Gore won the popular vote in the 2000 election by half a percentage point, but lost the Electoral College — or, for short, “the constitutionally prescribed method for choosing presidents” — anyone who denied the sacred importance of the popular vote was either an idiot or a dangerous partisan.

But now Hillary has won the popular vote in a Democratic primary, while Obambi has won under the rules. In a spectacular turnabout, media commentators are heaping sarcasm on our plucky Hillary for imagining the “popular vote” has any relevance whatsoever.

Sounds just about right. For Democrats, rules are only important when they work in their favor. in 2000, Democrats wanted to abolish the Electoral College. In 2004, Democrats wants to challenge the results of Ohio. Mathematically it was impossible for Kerry to edge out a victory in the state, but even if they could have stolen the state by a couple thousand votes, Kerry would have achieved an electoral victory without winning the popular vote.

Coulter makes an interesting case for Hillary to take her fight to the convention… which considering Hillary didn’t drop out today as she was allegedly going to… she may be contemplating such a strategy.

Hillary’s argument that she won the popular vote is manifestly relevant to that determination. Our brave Hillary has every right to take her delegates to the Democratic National Convention and put her case to a vote. She is much closer to B. Hussein Obama than the sainted Teddy Kennedy was to Carter in 1980 when Teddy staged an obviously hopeless rules challenge at the convention. (I mean rules about choosing the candidate, not rules about crushed ice at after-parties.)

And yet every time Hillary breathes a word about her victory in the popular vote, TV hosts respond with sneering contempt at her gaucherie for even mentioning it. (Of course, if popularity mattered, networks like MSNBC wouldn’t exist. That’s a station that depends entirely on “superviewers.”)

After nearly eight years of having to listen to liberals crow that Bush was “selected, not elected,” this is a shocking about-face. Apparently unaware of the new party line that the popular vote amounts to nothing more than warm spit, just last week HBO ran its movie “Recount,” about the 2000 Florida election, the premise of which is that sneaky Republicans stole the presidency from popular vote champion Al Gore. (Despite massive publicity, the movie bombed, with only about 1 million viewers, so now HBO is demanding a “recount.”)

Liberal hypocrisy? How shocking!

Politico’s Ben Smith reports…

Sen. Barack Obama on Thursday batted down rumors circulating on the Internet and mentioned on some cable news shows of the existence of a video of his wife using a derogatory term for white people, and criticized a reporter for asking him about the rumor, which has not a shred of evidence to support it.

“We have seen this before. There is dirt and lies that are circulated in e-mails and they pump them out long enough until finally you, a mainstream reporter, asks me about it,” Obama said to the McClatchy reporter during a press conference aboard his campaign plane. “That gives legs to the story. If somebody has evidence that myself or Michelle or anybody has said something inappropriate, let them do it.”

Asked whether he knew it not to be true, Obama said he had answered the question

Now it appears to me that Obama isn’t so much denying that his wife gave such a rant, but rather denying the existence of the video (which has yet to be released if it exists) and he’s also choosing to attack the messenger for daring to ask about it.

Now, I don’t know if the videotape exists. But, I’m wondering why Obama didn’t say “The tape cannot possibly exists because my wife never has made any comments like that.” But, it doesn’t appear from Ben Smith’s report that Obama made such a definitive denial. His response sounded more like a strategically crafted response a politician gives when they don’t want to lie just in case whatever they are trying to hide does become exposed.

Obama’s focus on attacking the messenger seems highly suspect.

The day the Allies came ashore in Normandy for the liberation of Europe.

Don’t forget those men, and what they did.

This video, compiled by the RNC says it all … and it’s all said by Democrats about Obama..

Videos like this need to be shown throughout this campaign.

So… the question of the day, who should McCain pick as his running mate, and who should Obama pick as his?

UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: Seems that one of Obama’s VP researchers – former Fannie Mae chief Jim Johnson – has some problems…Byron York over at NRO stating that an oversight report indicates mismanagement when Johnson was in charge, and that the size of his salary was hidden from the public. Change you can believe in? Only if you believe in the Tooth Fairy.