“Liar”?
Congressman Joe “Liar” Wilson of South Carolina is obviously right in his objection to illegal immigration. So we can only assume that he was not out there this time last year, campaigning to give the Presidency to John McCain. Never mind to secure the re-election of McCain’s consligliere, Lindsey Grahamnesty. Rather, Wilson must surely have given his all in the cause of that Ron Paul supporter and traditional Catholic, Bob Conley.
As for the speech generally, there are many things we may not know about Barack Obama. One of them now appears to be that, far from having somehow risen without trace, he is in fact a real old pro. He stumbled with his lines a couple of times. But what the hell, he got them all out: the restrictions on the public option, the legal requirement to insure your health as you insure your car, the tactical masterstroke of co-opting McCain’s scheme from last year, the dismissal of the death panels nonsense, no coverage for illegal immigrants (never going to happen, anyway – his own black base was the safeguard against that), no federal funding of abortion (never going to happen, anyway), no repeal of the federal conscience clauses on abortion (never going to happen, anyway).
While it makes no moral sense that so many people draw the line at federal funding of abortion in America (all three conditions must be met, it seems), nevertheless that is what and where they do. Better, I suppose, to draw the line there than to draw no line at all. No Congress or President was ever going to commit electoral suicide by legalizing such funding, banned by a Republican amendment, but a Republican amendment passed by a Democratic Congress and signed into law by Jimmy Carter. The same sheer electoral calculation also applies to the federal conscience clauses.
So there we have it. Since there was never any proposal from any quarter for death panels, Obama is going to get his way simply by promising not to sign any Bill that contained certain provisions that no Bill submitted for his signature ever would have contained. His only serious opposition will be from his own left wing. From which he will thus be able to distance himself.
A real old pro.
With the added advantage of not looking like one.
This from The Hill;
A leading pro-life Democrat in the House is threatening to block healthcare reform if Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) doesn’t allow a vote that would prevent the bill from funding abortions.
Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), co-chairman of the House Pro-Life Caucus, says the Democratic leadership must allow a vote adding the “Hyde Amendment” to the bill. That amendment prevents federal dollars from going to abortion funding.
“First of all, you have to give us our vote,” Stupak told CBN News, repeating the message he’s relaying to the Democratic leadership. “If you don’t give us our vote, everything’s off the table.”
Stupak said he has enough votes to block the legislation in the House if the Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) prevents a vote on the pro-life proposal.
Stupak added that he’s particularly “cautious” about the Hyde Amendment language because the Obama administration has helped beat back previous pro-life efforts this year.
“Every time we’ve tried to do it this year, under this administration, we’ve kind of been denied the opportunity to present our amendments, or we have some watered down language,” Stupak said.
Whether in the House or in the Senate, this one will be won. Even if a Bill without it reached Obama’s desk, he is now very publicly committed to not signing any such Bill. And a Bill that he cannot sign is not going to happen. Not now. Not this time.
I hope you are right but I take no solace in Obama’s public commitment to not underwrite abortion. Hyde language has to be included and Stupak better have the votes.
As for the end of life rationing regime that is allegedly not part of this reform, a repugnant cautionary tale from the other side of the pond is below;
“Rosemary Munkenbeck says her father Eric Troake, who entered hospital after suffering a stroke, had fluid and drugs withdrawn and she claims doctors wanted to put him on morphine until he passed away under a scheme for dying patients called the Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP).
Mrs Munkenbeck, 56, from Bracknell, said her father, who previously said he wanted to live until he was 100, has now said he wants to die after being deprived of fluids for five days. ”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/6156076/Daughter-claims-father-wrongly-placed-on-controversial-NHS-end-of-life-scheme.html
Yes, but that goes on in America anyway, probably at public expense considering who already pays the medical bills of the very old.
Euthanasia and assisted suicide are illegal in Britain, and Gordon Brown himself is very strongly committed to keeping them that way. As in America, breaches are a matter for the criminal law. And death panels simply do not exist.
The thought of our post-Christian state subsidizing end-of -life counseling to a fiscally strapped, demographically upside down people is simply euthanasia by other means.
A BBC report has revealed that physicians in the UK are increasingly seeing and using “continuous deep sedation” as a form of “slow” euthanasia. Adam Brimelow, BBC News health correspondent, writes that the use of continuous deep sedation, also known as “terminal sedation” is becoming more common in the UK and may be the way physicians are skirting the law prohibiting direct euthanasia, reports Hilary White, LifeSiteNews.com.
http://www.christiantelegraph.com/issue6569.html
This will already be happening in the US. It isn’t about cost. It’s about a mistaken philosophy of medicine. Like abortion.