Commandment XI: Thou Shalt Support My Healthcare Initiatives

August 20, 2009

President Obama has reached out via a conference call to thousands of religious leaders of many faiths to enlist their support for health care reform. The phone call apparently unearthed a secret, 11th Commandment that had been mysteriously missing from The Torah: Thou Shalt Support Socialized Medicine.

Obama accused those who are protesting health care reform with “bearing false witness” and that we have a “core ethical and moral obligation…that we look out for one another.”

Most of the people on the call were already on Obama’s side and all too willing to abnegate the role of their churches and synagogues and replace them with government bureaucracies. Father Bob Amundsen, a Catholic priest, said: “For us as Catholic Christians, we see this as a moral issue in which we carry on the healing ministry of Jesus.” Father, I am a Catholic Christian and would like to remind you that your statement is a political one, not a theological one. In that way, the fact that you have a white collar is interesting, but not of any theological (or moral) importance.

White House policy chief Melody Barnes claimed that health care reform was “at the crux of being a faithful steward of our resources.” I’m not even sure what that means, but I know it’s stupid. Is she telling the assembled religious leaders that health care reform is “a cross” that is necessary for being a steward (“shepherd”) of resources (parishioners or other congregants)? That’s the only meaning I can pull from this: you need to support this in order to be good leaders for your people.

We do have a moral obligation to look after those who need our help. “Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, you do unto me,” said Jesus. So go: volunteer at your church or hospital, donate money to charities, open a shelter for battered women, buy a sandwich for that homeless man on the street. Do what you want to do as dictated by your own conscience. Do what you can do as dictated by your own means. Take the responsibility of being a good Catholic or Christian or Jew or Muslim.

What we most emphatically do not have is a moral obligation to support a massive government program that will certainly make health care more expensive, ration care, drive up deficits, take money from taxpayers, and put faceless bureaucrats into the middle of decision-making processes. To suggest that it is somehow immoral to oppose Obamacare is another shining example of the megalomania that lives in our President like a tapeworm, hungry for ever increasing amounts of power and glory. Supporting a government takeover of health care is not being moral, it is abdicating personal responsibility. The idea that good Christians, Jews and Muslims must support Obamacare on moral grounds is extremely repulsive. It assumes that a man who spent 20 years attending a church led by a radical racist who Obama called “the best of what the black church has to offer,” a man who is right now looking for a new church to attend in Washington D.C. with the same dogged intensity with which O.J. searched for the real killers, a man who voted to allow infant survivors of abortion to be starved to death post-utero, and a man who counts terrorists and communists among his friends is in any kind of position to tell the rest of the nation the difference between moral and immoral.

While he’s adding new Commandments, Barack Obama should refresh himself with the ones already in place. “Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me” would be a good one to remember the next time he decides that his Big Government proposals are the moral thing to do.


UPDATED to include a link to Hot Air’s video of Barack Obama extolling the virtues of Jeremiah Wright and lamenting the fact that people look for scapegoats in tough economic times. You know, like evil insurance companies or organized mobs of right-wing false witness bearers.


Nice Insurance Company Ya Got Here…Shame If Anything Should “Happen” To It

August 20, 2009

At The Corner, Mark Steyn has a post about a letter that Congress has sent to health insurance companies…privately owned health insurance companies…demanding information about salaries and compensation:

Doctor O’s enforcers decide it’s time to get heavy with the insurance companies:

Letters sent to 52 insurance companies by Democratic leaders demand extensive documents for an examination of ‘extensive compensation and other business practices in the health insurance industry…”

By Sept. 4, the firms are supposed to supply detailed compensation data for board members and top executives, as well as a “table listing all conferences, retreats, or other events held outside company facilities from January 1, 2007, to the present that were paid for, reimbursed, or subsidized in whole or in part by your company.”

You first. How come the compensations and perks of a vice-president in a private company are to be subject to greater public forensic examination than those of Dodd or Rangel?

They’re supposed to be representatives not rulers. George III couldn’t have got away with a letter like that.

Politico has the full story.

The bottom line here, though, is that Mark Steyn is correct. George III couldn’t get away with such a request. More to the point, it’s doubtful that Old King George would even think of making such a request even at his craziest.

This is the story of a letter, and may not get much play in the media, but it should. What we’ve got here is a government that is so consumed with its own power that it feels it can reach into privately owned and operated companies and request confidential information. For what purpose?

The reason is obvious: they are looking for dirt on these companies in order to blackmail them into supporting Obamacare. They (led by the revolting Henry Waxman) are essentially threatening insurance companies by requesting this information. The might of the Internal Revenue Service, congressional investigations, and public demonization are all unwritten in this letter but clearly hanging in the air like the sword of Damocles over the heads of the insurance companies. This is rule by intimidation; this is rule by fear. Letters like these are the rough equivalent of the Monty Python line that’s been paraphrased so many times, “Nice [blank] you’ve got here…shame if anything should ‘happen’ to it.”

Am I exaggerating? Let’s get serious. What possible purpose could the government have in demanding this information other than to gather data to be used as a weapon? Why would the government want to know about “lavish spending” except to accuse the insurance companies of living the lifestyles of the rich and famous off the backs of sick people?

It must be stressed here that the insurance companies have not been accused of any crimes, and that they are not being investigated for illegal activities. This is just a fishing expedition from the government. If they get away with this, where will it end? Will the government suddenly start demanding information from any industry opposed to a government policy? Will they send letters to private citizens demanding information about your family budgets: how much do you spend on entertainment? On food? On alcohol? When you combine this latest tactic with “pay czar” Kenneth Feinberg’s claim that he can retroactively rescind executive compensation to companies that accepted TARP money, you can see an agenda that is anti-capitalist at its worst and ferociously power hungry at its best (Michelle Malkin has details).

I truly hope the insurance companies will tell Henry Waxman to go fly a kite, but my fear is that they will do what they have so far done and bend over for the mighty Barack Obama and his rule by intimidation.


The Rat Patrol: The Tattle Tale Raid

August 18, 2009

Keep fighting the power, folks. After a large public backlash the Obama Administration has disabled the health care snitch program. Operation Go Flag Yourself was very successful, putting a strain on the White House servers and forcing the Administration to back away from this ridiculous program.

But have they really? Yes, the email address flag@whitehouse.gov no longer works, but the Reality Check web site set up by the White House is still going strong, and still gathering email addresses.

At first the White House denied sending email to anyone who didn’t specifically request those emails. That was, as they say, a crock. I know, because I have never authorized the White House or anyone else in the Federal Government to send me email, yet I received at least two from David Axelrod, and a “Dear Comrade Friend” email from Barack Obama. The White House was collecting the email addresses of anyone who sent an email to the White House, and then adding those people to third party lists to receive propaganda emails like the ones from Axelrod. This is not simply a mistake. This is a violation of SPAM laws. It’s not really surprising to me, though. The arrogance of the Administration is such that a “laws are for others” mindset is to be expected.

Michelle Malkin has more.


Oh Sheila, You Make Me Feel Like A Surgeon, Hugged For The Very First Time

August 13, 2009

Patterico has the details on Roxana Mayer, an Obama delegate who posed as a pediatric physician at Sheila Jackso…hold on, I gotta get this call…watch the video while I’m talking to someone else…

Okay I’m back…Sheila Jackson Lee’s townhall. She even got a nice hug from the Congresswoman.

Do you think the Democrats would need to resort to union goons, moppet questioners with a high “cute” quotient, and phony physicians to help them make their case if what they were advocating was something good?

The Democrats are terrified of real questions and real constituent anger. It is not because they are in fear of their lives as some of the more squeamish members have alleged. It is because they are afraid that we the people can see that they offer us nothing but the prospect of massive debt and an ever-increasing government influence on our lives. Well it’s too late for them. We do see it. We are on to you.


UPDATE: Michelle Malkin has the rules for proper etiquette at town halls.


Obama Ripped By American College Of Surgeons

August 13, 2009

The American College of Surgeons has ripped President Obama a brand new orifice for the stupid and insulting statements he made in a town hall a few days ago.

If you recall, Obama stated that doctors should be counseling their diabetic patients to eat right, lose weight, get exercise, etc. That apparently doesn’t pay for Dr. Feelgood’s brand new Mercedes, however, so rather than counseling the patient to manage their diabetes the doctors are lopping off limbs because a foot amputation will pay the doctor $50,000. Hot Air has video.

This comes after Obama’s press conference where he warned us about doctors ripping out children’s tonsils because it was more lucrative than diagnosing allergies.

It can’t be stated strongly enough. These are not mistakes the President is making. These are lies. Great big lies. The President is insulting and demonizing the physicians as part of his pattern to demonize anyone who disagrees with him. Physicians who are opposed to Obamacare are cruel, heartless organ and limb thieves. Go to one of these doctors and you will be very lucky not to wake up in a bathtub filled with ice, a scar on your back, and a note written in lipstick on your chest. More and more, the Hope And Change administration and the Congressional majority are looking like a bunch of petulant thugs.