The True Goals of Healthcare

From the Washington Examiner

GOP on Pelosi: Whose door is she kicking in?

by Byron York

In a conference with left-wing bloggers Monday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that passing the current Democratic health care bill is the beginning, not the end, of the process of creating a national government health care system. "Once we kick through this door, there'll be more legislation to follow," Pelosi said, according to an account by Washington Post reform advocate Ezra Klein.

Democrats have often taken offense when Republicans have accused Pelosi and her fellow Democrats of trying to "ram" the health care bill through Congress. Now that Pelosi herself has used an equally violent term to describe her work, Republicans are left with new questions. "Whose door is the Speaker kicking in?" asks Brad Dayspring, a spokesman for Republican Whip Rep. Eric Cantor. "People tend to prefer a polite knock, and after a year of having their doors bashed and kicked in by Speaker Pelosi, President Obama, and Harry Reid, we'll see how the American people respond this November. Right now, they are trying to reinforce those doors with steel."

"The American people aren't stupid," says Kevin Smith, a spokesman for House GOP Leader Rep. John Boehner. "We know this is just the beginning for Speaker Pelosi and her comrades. Their government takeover of health care is the first step toward a single-payer system, and that's another reason we are doing everything within our power to stop this bill and start over with real reforms that actually lower health care costs."

"She's got a long way to go before she kicks down the door," says Matt Lloyd, a spokesman for House Republican Conference Chairman Rep. Mike Pence, "and if she wants to keep going against the will of the American people, I guess that's her prerogative, but I think folks are going to have long memories."

Read more at the Washington Examiner:

Just Honk No

Sign-up for a Honk Against The Health Care Takeover Rally!

AFP Urges Constituents to ‘Honk No’

Monday, March 8th, 2010

For Immediate Release – March 5, 2010 Contact: Amy Payne, (703) 224-3200 or (703) 585-4584 (cell) Americans for Prosperity Urges Constituents to ‘Honk No’ Outside Congressional District Offices March 16 effort puts pressure on House members as critical health care vote looms ARLINGTON, Va. – Americans for Prosperity, whose project Patients First has held hundreds of rallies against a Washington takeover of health care, is encouraging Americans to make their voices – and their horns – heard on March 16. “Our hard-working activists can’t make it to Washington to rally every ...

http://honkno.com/  to find out more.
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CBO and Obama's New Healthcare Bill, er, uh, Outline

The Obama Administration’s Health Care Proposal

This morning the Obama Administration released a description of its health care proposal, and CBO has already received several requests to provide a cost estimate for that proposal. We had not previously received the proposal, and we have just begun the process of reviewing it—a process that will take some time, given the complexity of the issues involved. Although the proposal reflects many elements that were included in the health care bills passed by the House and the Senate last year, it modifies many of those elements and also includes new ones. Moreover, preparing a cost estimate requires very detailed specifications of numerous provisions, and the materials that were released this morning do not provide sufficient detail on all of the provisions. Therefore, CBO cannot provide a cost estimate for the proposal without additional detail, and, even if such detail were provided, analyzing the proposal would be a time-consuming process that could not be completed this week.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 22nd, 2010 at 2:23 pm and is filed under Health.
h/t Instapundit

Important News from Today

I am busy packing for a Christmas trip so do not have much time to spend posting on the blog. This is going to be a fairly long post with many links I think are very important.  I know I will be leaving out some but please read these and any links that come up with them.

From American Thinker:Merry Christmas, from Harry

     

 According to the latest news, Harry Reid has the 60 votes needed to pass Obamacare. While the legislation itself is not available for reading, to my knowledge, the Congressional Budget Office did report on it December 19. I parse that CBO report here so we know what is about to happen to us.

     The CBO does not make the accounting all that easy, despite its many tables of numbers. The number Democrats like to cite is that this plan will reduce the deficit by $132 billion over the 10 years from 2010 to 019.

     Imagine that, more people insured and the deficit reduced. How do they do that? The short answer is: over $1 trillion in Medicare cuts and tax increases. For the longer story, read on.

From Investors Business Daily:
Penetration Even At The Pentagon: Muslim Spies Setting Muslim Policy
This is Part 3, read Part 1 and Part2

   

  The internal threat from Muslim extremists in the military extends to high-level

Defense Department aides who have undermined military policy. In fact, one top Muslim adviser pushed out an intelligence analyst who warned of the sudden jihad syndrome that led to the Fort Hood terrorist attack.

     An honored guest of the Ramadan dinner at the Pentagon this September was Hesham Islam, who infiltrated the highest echelons of the Ring despite proven ties to U.S. terror front groups and a shady past in his native Egypt.     As senior adviser for international affairs to former deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, Islam ran interference for the Islamic Society of North America and other radical fronts for the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood, the subject of my new book "Muslim Mafia." (Be sure to read all three parts of this.)

 
Read and support Michael Yon reporting from Afghanistan.
As Christmas Approaches
            As Christmas approaches, many people are thinking about the troops, who in turn are thinking about loved ones at home. Cards and letters are tacked up on many walls. The favorites are from the little kids, with questions like, "How do you go to the bathroom?" "Can you eat dinner?" "Does it hurt to get shooted?" It goes on.
               I emailed to Command Sergeant Major Jeff Mellinger, asking if he had any words for the troops this Christmas. Jeff came right back with this awesome letter: Read the letter here.  
 
From the Telegraph UK more on the ongoing scandal and fraud of Climategate.
Questions over business deals of UN climate change guru Dr Rajendra Pachauri        

The head of the UN's climate change panel - Dr Rajendra Pachauri - is accused of making a fortune from his links with 'carbon trading' companies, Christopher Booker and Richard North write.

       No one in the world exercised more influence on the events leading up to the Copenhagen conference on global warming than Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and mastermind of its latest report in 2007.

        Although Dr Pachauri is often presented as a scientist (he was even once described by the BBC as “the world’s top climate scientist”), as a former railway engineer with a PhD in economics he has no qualifications in climate science at all.  (my emphasis)

     What has also almost entirely escaped attention, however, is how Dr Pachauri has established an astonishing worldwide portfolio of business interests with bodies which have been investing billions of dollars in organisations dependent on the IPCC’s policy recommendations.

     These outfits include banks, oil and energy companies and investment funds heavily involved in ‘carbon trading’ and ‘sustainable technologies’, which together make up the fastest-growing commodity market in the world, estimated soon to be worth trillions of dollars a year. Read the whole thing.

Michael Goodwin in the NY Post writes about the Baby Boomers shame
Dreading our future                 

      I am a baby boomer, which is to say my life has coincided with turbulent and awesome times. From the Cold War to Vietnam, from Watergate to Monicagate, through the horrors of 9/11 and the stunning lifestyle advances, my generation's era has been historic and exciting.

     Yet for all the drama and change, the years only occasionally instilled in me the sensation I feel almost constantly now. I am afraid for my country.

     I am afraid -- actually, certain -- we are losing the heart and soul that made America unique in human history. Yes, we have enemies, but the greatest danger comes from within.

     Watching the freak show in Copenhagen last week, I was alternately furious and filled with dread. The world has gone absolutely bonkers and lunatics are in charge.

     Mugabe and Chavez are treated with respect and the United Nations is serious about wanting to regulate our industry and transfer our wealth to kleptocrats and genocidal maniacs.

     Even more frightening, our own leaders joined the circus. Marching to the beat of international drummers, they uncoupled themselves from the will of the people they were elected to serve.

     President Obama, for whom I voted because I believed he was the best choice available, is a profound disappointment. I now regard his campaign as a sly bait-and-switch operation, promising one thing and delivering another. Shame on me.

Read more, but remember he is one of those who voted for him and we ALL suffer for it.

 
Take a look at these important blogs:
Power Line  (poll data; Lockerbie bomber)
 
Gateway Pundit  Watch a video of John McCain stand up for Sarah Palin, I saw it live this morning and it was a treat.
 
Trying to Grok has three good links. CBO assesment from the Corner;  and why the insistence for healthcare.
 
Leon Hale, if you've read his columns through the years you will enjoy reading his blog posts. He is still great.

Just a little time online today

But here are some links you need to read:

From Watts up with That The Smoking Gun At Darwin Zero

From CNN a debate between scientists

# Right Truth - We must do something about … Leprechauns via Bookworm

# The Glittering Eye - Can Congress Reduce Healthcare Costs?

Hide the Decline" - The Great Global COOLING Coverup

Healthcare = NEW BUREAUCRACIES

There are a lot of MUST READs today, this is one of them:
OBAMACARE’S 111 NEW BUREAUCRACIES

Professor John Lewis of Duke University is one of the few people who have actually read HR 3962, the House version of Obamacare. Among the many unnerving facts revealed by his analysis is that this legislation creates more than 100 new hives of government apparatchiks:

click here for the list, this is the one that really got to me:
       4. Program of administrative simplification (Section 115, p. 76)

This Came in an Email

FW: House Bill 3200 - Attorney/Constitution Law Instructor comments...
Someone did read the entire House Bill 3200: The Affordable Health Care
Choices Act of 2009
From Michael Connelly - Retired attorney, Constitutional Law Instructor,
Carrollton, Texas

Well, I have done it! I have read the entire text of proposed House Bill 3200: The Affordable Health Care Choices Act of 2009. I studied it with particular emphasis from my area of expertise, constitutional law. I was frankly concerned that parts of the proposed law that were being discussed might be unconstitutional. What I found was far worse than what I had heard or expected.

To begin with, much of what has been said about the law and its implications is in fact true, despite what the Democrats and the media are saying. The law does provide for rationing of health care, particularly where senior citizens and other classes of citizens are involved, free health care for illegal immigrants, free abortion services, and probably forced participation in abortions by members of the medical profession.

The Bill will also eventually force private insurance companies out of business and put everyone into a government run system.

All decisions about personal health care will ultimately be made by federal bureaucrats and most of them will not be health care professionals. Hospital admissions, payments to physicians, and allocations of necessary medical devices will be strictly controlled.

However, as scary as all of that it, it just scratches the surface. In fact, I have concluded that this legislation really has no intention of providing affordable health care choices. Instead it is a convenient cover for the most massive transfer of power to the Executive Branch of government that has ever occurred, or even been contemplated. If this law or a similar one is adopted, major portions of the Constitution of the United States will effectively have been destroyed


The first thing to go will be the masterfully crafted balance of power between the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of the U.S. Government. The Congress will be transferring to the Obama Administration authority in a number of different areas over the lives of the American people and the businesses they own. The irony is that the Congress doesn't have any authority to legislate in most of those areas to begin with. I defy anyone to read the text of the U.S. Constitution and find any authority granted to the members of Congress to regulate health care.

This legislation also provides for access by the appointees of the Obama administration of all of your personal healthcare information, your personal financial information, and the information of your employer, physician, and hospital. All of this is a direct violation of the specific provisions of the 4th Amendment to the Constitution protecting against unreasonable searches and seizures. You can also forget about the right to privacy. That will have been legislated into oblivion regardless of what the 3rd and 4th Amendments may provide.

If you decide not to have healthcare insurance or if you have private insurance that is not deemed "acceptable" to he "Health Choices Administrator" appointed by Obama there will be a tax imposed on you. It is called a "tax" instead of a fine because of the intent to avoid application of the due process clause of the 5th Amendment.

However, that doesn't work because since there is nothing in the law that allows you to contest or appeal the imposition of the tax, it is definitely depriving someone of property without the "due process of law. So, there are three of those pesky amendments that the far left hate so much out the original ten in the Bill of Rights that are effectively nullified by this law. It doesn't stop there though. The 9th Amendment that provides: "The enumeration in the  onstitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people;" The 10th Amendment states: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are preserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Under the provisions of this piece of Congressional handiwork neither the people nor the states are going to have any rights or powers at all in many areas that once were theirs to control.

I could write many more pages about this legislation, but I think you get the idea. This is not about health care; it is about seizing power and limiting rights. Article 6 of the Constitution requires the members of both houses of Congress to "be bound by oath or affirmation" to support the Constitution. If I was a member of Congress I would not be able to vote for this legislation or anything like it without feeling I was violating that sacred oath or affirmation. If I voted for it anyway I would hope the American people would hold me accountable.

For those who might doubt the nature of this threat I suggest they consult the source. Here is a link to the Constitution:
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html

And another to the Bill of Rights:
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/bill_of_rights_transcript.html

There you can see exactly what we are about to have taken from us.

Michael Connelly
Retired attorney,
Constitutional Law Instructor
Carrollton , Texas

No Single Human Being

As the man says:

"And set aside the partisan BS for a moment, because it doesn’t matter who is in charge of HHS, or what party they belong to. It could be Kathleen Sebelius, Adolf Hitler, or Mother Effing Teresa — but no single human being should ever wield that kind of power.

No one.

Ever.

Democrat, Republican, or robot overlords."

Go read the whole thing.
Vodkapundit

This is Not a Surprise

via Gateway Pundit:
Figures. Obama’s Personal Physician Friend Was a Marxist, Too

New Zeal reported this week on Barack Obama’s Marxist neighbor and doctor friend who taught him about the single-payer health care system.

The push to socialize US Heathcare came, not from from the “people”, but from small clique of Marxists, led by a man with close persional ties to president Barack Obama.

This group’s goal is fully socialized, government run “single payer” healthcare-as long promoted through Congressman John Conyers’ National Health Insurance Act, or HR 676.

The leader of this Marxist clique is Quentin Young-a retired Chicago physician, a life long Marxist activist and long time friend and political ally of Barack Obama.

According to radical journalist John Nichols writing in The Progressive;

Obama…learned about single-payer health care from his old friend and neighbor Dr. Quentin Young, the longtime coordinator of Physicians for a National Health Program.

Quentin Young told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, that while an Illinois State senator, Obama was a strong supporter of “single payer.”

Barack Obama, in those early days—influenced, I hope, by me and others—categorically said single payer was the best way, and he would inaugurate it if he could get the support, meaning majorities in both houses, which he’s got, and the presidency, which he’s got. And he said that on more than one occasion…. ”

So who exactly is Dr. Quentin Young?
According to New Zeal:

Quentin Young is one of America’s most committed socialists, beginning with his time in the Young Communist League in late 1930s Chicago.

After WW2, into the mid 1970s, Young was closely associated with the Communist Party and was accused of belonging to the Bethune Club (a communist doctor’s club) by a US Congressional Committee investigating the riots at the 1968 Democratic Party convention in Chicago.

There’s much more.
Of course, this surprises no one.

Also from Gateway:

Hello?… Is anyone home?
Nancy Pelosi told leftist supporters today that the the reason Americans are mad about their record spending is that “they’re not getting anything for it.”

A Lot of Good Thinking at American Thinker Today

Just go there and read it all.
There is something of interest on a great many subjects.

Voter Fraud?

There is really no way to know. But... it is New Jersey and their reputation on that type thing is not very good. Read this and make up your mind. And remember it was one of the votes in the Congress that passed the healthcare travesty.

GOP Congressman Questions AARP Endorsement

We discussed this at the meeting of the Rockport 912 Texans for Freedom last night. This is an article from CNS News. It seems to me there was a conflict of interest when they stumped for the Medicare prescription plan and also on this healthcare bill.

AARP, the American Association of Retired Persons, which endorsed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) version of the health-care reform bill Thursday, is drawing fire from a member of Congress who questions the motives of the nation’s largest senior citizens’ lobbying group.

Rep. Dave Reichert (R-Wash.) told CNSNews.com that it is possible AARP could benefit financially from the passage of the bill, which includes $500 billion in cuts to Medicare and Medicare Advantage. According to Reichert, if the cuts to the programs result in reduced benefits, more seniors will have to purchase “Medigap” coverage, highly regulated private insurance that fills in holes in Medicare coverage.

Read it all here.

Illegal Immigrant Health Care?

From The Stratasphere

Rep Joe Wilson Vindicated

By AJStrata on Joe Wilson

As reader Frogg1 notes, the Senate Democrats scrambled to fix the loop holes in their bill to ensure illegal aliens could not get government subsidized (or rationed) health care. The liberal media shills can post and write whatever they want about Smokin’ Joe – but the fact he forced the Senate to make their bill ban illegal aliens from the government trough means he has been vindicated.

Case closed.

A Doctor Offers to Help Regulate Lawyers

I got a real laugh out of this. It is an opinion piece from the Wall Street Journal online. It is ironic but oh so true....

A Doctor's Plan for Legal Industry Reform
My modest proposal to rearrange how lawyers do business.

By RICHARD B. RAFAL a radiologist in New York City

Since we are moving toward socialism with ObamaCare, the time has come to do the same with other professions—especially lawyers. Physician committees can decide whether lawyers are necessary in any given situation.

At a town-hall meeting in Portsmouth, N.H., last month, our uninformed lawyer in chief suggested that we physicians would rather chop off a foot than manage diabetes since we would make more money doing surgery. Then President Obama compounded his attack by claiming a doctor's reimbursement is between "$30,000" and "$50,000" for such amputations! (Actually, such surgery costs only about $1,500.) ....

Following are highlights of a proposed bill authorizing the dismantling of the current framework of law practice and instituting socialized legal care:
• Contingency fees will be discouraged, and eventually outlawed,
over a five-year period.
• Legal "DRGs."
• Legal "death panels."
• Ration legal care.
• Physician controlled legal review.
• Discourage/eliminate specialization.
• Electronic legal records.
• Ban legal advertisements.
• New government oversight.
• Collect data about the supply of and demand for attorneys.
• Lawyer Reduction Act (H.R. -3200).

Each of these points is elaborated in the actual article.
Go read it all.

Eugenics? Yes or No?

A Wall Street Journal article (27 August) reviewed the President’s health adviser (commonly called czars) Emanuel’s recent publication in the Lancet on health care needs. A graph showed where the relative amount of health care by age should be allocated. It started very low at age 0 rising steeply to maturity, decreasing slowly until the early 50's, then steeply declining until 60, then continuing slowly down past age 70. It may roughly be a maturity/menopause model.

As a biologist this seemed peculiar to me and it was pointed out that this was the serfdom/slavery model, where you are more concerned with your serfs/slaves through their most productive years, throwing them away in old age. Reproductive age individuals are especially important to produce more young and product. Ethical considerations aside, if it has a scientific basis, as claimed, that is one thing, but if not, it is thrown into the social/political realm.

First, old age. Of course, diminishing abilities produce less physically, but in general, animals and plants are quite variable in what could be called natural survival. We have very old trees, occasional old fish, but in general there are many less older individuals, partly due to the fact that any age group can only decrease in numbers, if only by accident. Why keep the old? They are less productive, cannot reproduce, and consume things that younger individuals could use. Without getting into what an old tree might do, mammals generally use elders in a very complicated way. Is the wisdom of accumulated experience and care available to the family more valuable than the costs of keeping the old alive and, at least mentally, contributing? Emanuel’s curve values a 65 year old about the same (in terms of their right to medical care) as a four year old and a 75 year old about the same as a two year old. Peculiar.

Second, youth. Trees and fish produce lots of acorns and larvae. Very few can survive, otherwise filling the earth. Parental care is rare and when it occurs the number of young produced is small. In mammals, parental care is the rule, making each juvenile tremendously more valuable numerically than single acorns or larvae. In humans the juvenile stage is greatly extended, and some would say, now much beyond sexual maturity. Emanuel’s graph does not acknowledge the necessity of protecting this long maturing process. Peculiar.

Modern Eugenics is often thought to have begun with Charles Darwin’s cousin, Sir Francis Galton, who, if he had a political agenda, it is not apparent. Neither did Darwin’s ideas, however later used. Apparently conscripted by later geneticists and activists, eugenics is sometimes identified as a contributor to the development of the social democratic movement, part of it leading to the holocaust. After WWII it seems to have retreated into more statistical demographic treatments, except for the modern environmental movement, which actively still promotes birth and population control.

It seems fair to identify a scientific eugenics, merely a genetical/demographic analysis, and an advocacy/activist portion using at least some of the data for social/political purposes. Which is the Emanuel curve? First it is very simplistic and second it seems directly contradictory to human biology, which places especial value on birth and adolescence. Put in evolutionary biology terms, what is termed the probability that a newborn will survive to a given age, often reproductive, is used by actuaries to determine the expectation of further life. This also can be used to determine what evolutionists call the “Net Reproductive Rate” and “Reproductive Value,” which is what determines the potential for replacement of the population. Reproduction does not occur until maturity, so these values, a somewhat complicated formula, depends heavily on the survival of these non-reproductive individuals. In most animals, including humans, these are relatively high mortality years, especially early. Parental care is highest here, again especially early. The Emanuel curve is the opposite.

Therefore, it is difficult to see the biological basis of the Emanuel curve, especially for the young, perhaps less so for the old. Although other factors (medical, economic) could be involved, the evidence seems to force the conclusion that the curve has little scientific basis, again ethics aside. A maturity/menopause model could be argued as biological, but only in the strict individual physiological sense, ignoring all surrounding factors. The surrounding factors are what the model claims is important as a basis for the ration of medical care, as is also the potential survival of the individual. Therefore, this curve must lie outside the strict eugenics scientific basis, although some argue that control of populations are ecologically necessary.

That is another question.

The Wall Street Journal Tells us all about the Health Adviser to the President

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. Dr. Emanuel is part of a school of thought that redefines a physician’s duty, insisting that it includes working for the greater good of society instead of focusing only on a patient’s needs. Many physicians find that view dangerous, and most Americans are likely to agree.

The health bills being pushed through Congress put important decisions in the hands of presidential appointees like Dr. Emanuel.
They will decide what insurance plans cover, how much leeway your doctor will have, and what seniors get under Medicare. Dr. Emanuel, brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, has already been appointed to two key positions: health-policy adviser at the Office of Management and Budget and a member of the Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research. He clearly will play a role guiding the White House's health initiative.

Read it all in the WSJ.

From the New York Times...
Some Catholic Bishops Assail Health Plan
by David D. Kirkpatrick

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has been lobbying for three decades for the federal government to provide universal health insurance, especially for the poor. Now, as President Obama tries to rally Roman Catholics and other religious voters around his proposals to do just that, a growing number of bishops are speaking out against it.

As recently as July, the bishops’ conference had largely embraced the president’s goals, although with the caveat that any health care overhaul avoid new federal financing of abortions. But in the last two weeks some leaders of the conference, like Cardinal Justin Rigali, have concluded that Democrats’ efforts to carve out abortion coverage are so inadequate that lawmakers should block the entire effort. (bold by ed.)

Others, echoing the popular alarms about “rationing,” contend that the proposals could put a premium on efficacy that could penalize the chronically ill.

Read the whole article.

Consequences of Obamacare

by David Kopel in the Volokh Conspiracy
Economic projections of the consequences of Obamacare:

A brand-new Issue Paper from the Independence Institute features an analysis by Arthur Laffer on the national and Colorado consequences of Obama care, based on a one trillion dollar increase in health care subsidies over the next decade. These consequences include:

Overall, total federal expenditures will be 5.6 percent higher than otherwise by 2019, adding $285.6 billion to the federal deficit in 2019.

An increase in national health care expenditures by an additional 8.9 percent by 2019.An increase in medical price inflation by 5.2 percent above what it would have been otherwise by 2019.

Reduce U.S. economic growth in 2019 compared to the baseline scenario by 4.9 percent for the nation as a whole and 4.3 percent in Colorado.

Higher medical inflation and overall expenditures will ultimately lead to government expenditures that exceed the $1.0 trillion in expenditures on health subsidies. The net present value of all additional federal government
expenditures through 2019 that will occur as a result of a federal health care reform is $1.2 trillion, or a $3,900 bill for every man, woman, and child in the U.S.

Despite the additional $1 trillion in expected health care subsidies by the government, 30 million people would remain uninsured. The cost to reduce the number of uninsured by 16 million people is $62,500 in subsidy expenditures per person insured.

Be sure to read that Issue Paper, too.

This is why I love Ann Coulter

She has such a way with words. This is her latest in Human Events:
Liberal Lies About National Health Care: Second in a Series (Collect All 10!)

With the Democrats getting slaughtered -- or should I say, "receiving mandatory end-of-life counseling" -- in the debate over national health care, the Obama administration has decided to change the subject by indicting CIA interrogators for talking tough to three of the world's leading Muslim terrorists.

Had I been asked, I would have advised them against reinforcing the idea that Democrats are hysterical bed-wetters who can't be trusted with national defense while also reminding people of the one thing everyone still admires about President George W. Bush.

But I guess the Democrats really want to change the subject. Thus, here is Part 2 in our series of liberal lies about national health care.

Go read it all and then make sure to read Part 1.

Daschle's Dealings

From the New York Times:
Daschle Has Ear of White House and Industry
by David D. Kirkpatrick

Six months have passed since the morning when Tom Daschle, the former Senate Democratic leader, under fire for not paying certain taxes, called President Obama in his study off the Oval Office to withdraw his nomination as health secretary and reform czar.

But these days it often seems as if Mr. Daschle never left the picture. With unrivaled ties on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, he talks constantly with top White House advisers, many of whom previously worked for him.

He still speaks frequently to the president, who met with him as recently as Friday morning in the Oval Office. And he remains a highly paid policy adviser to hospital, drug, pharmaceutical and other health care industry clients of Alston & Bird, the law and lobbying firm.

Now the White House and Senate Democratic leaders appear to be moving toward a blueprint for overhauling the health system, centered on nonprofit insurance cooperatives, that Mr. Daschle began promoting two months ago as a politically feasible alternative to a more muscular government-run insurance plan.

It is an idea that happens to dovetail with the interests of many Alston & Bird clients, like the insurance giant UnitedHealth and the Tennessee Hospital Association. And it is drawing angry cries of accommodation from more liberal House Democrats bent on including a public insurance plan.

If you have the stomach for it, read the rest.