Free Our Health Care Now Petition Break Record with over 1.3 Million Signatures

Nice work everybody! This is a cheap post, basically a reprint of an email from Jeanette Nordstrom of NCPA.org, the people responsible for the Free Our Health Care Now petition.

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MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! Thanks to your hard work, the "Free Our Health Care NOW!" petition ( www.freeourhealthcarenow.com ) which is your statement that you do not want government run health care, is now the largest health policy petition ever delivered to Congress. More than 1.275 million Americans have joined you in fighting government-run health care.

Sign, Sealed, Delivered. Today is a historic day! On Wednesday afternoon, Governor Pete du Pont, Chairman of the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), and Dr. John Goodman, President of the NCPA, along with Mike Gallagher and other Salem Radio hosts Dennis Prager, Michael Medved and Hugh Hewitt will deliver the "Free Our Health Care NOW!" petition to the leaders of Congress. At 1:30 pm the petition will be driven to Capitol Hill in an ambulance; when it arrives, volunteers will stack the petition- 55,000 pages contained in 15 boxes -on a gurney and deliver this incredible expression of America's voices to Congress at a 2:00 pm EDT press conference.

Your Identity is Secure. Some of you have asked if the government will know your email address because of your association with the petition. Please know that we have not and will not release your personal information to any other party, including the government. The petition only provides your first and last name and the state of your residence.

Thank you for your support! In response to our requests, many of you have given to the "Free Our Health Care NOW!" petition. We appreciate it. Please know that your support is crucial to keeping the fight alive! We are now on to the fall debate, Phase II Solutions. If you can afford to give to help us with Phase II, please do so.

Showdown at Capitol Hill. Yours is not the only voice that's trying to be heard on Capitol Hill. In an attempt to regain control of the health care debate, President Obama plans to address a joint session of Congress only hours after the delivery of the "Free Our Health Care NOW!" petition. Call your Congressmen - tell them that yours is the voice that they should remember.

The Fight Continues! Join Freedom Works Foundation for the 9.12 March on Washington: The Tea Party Movement Comes to Capitol Hill! Please join thousands of grassroots Americans from across the country in our nation's capital to tell the politicians the era of big government is over! For more information, see www.FreedomWorks.org/912.

Britain: Where It's Better to be a Prisoner than a Patiet. An examination of Britain's government-run health care system reveals how terrifying nationalized health care can be.

• This article in the Daily Telegraph explains that the British government's National Health Service has promulgated a policy which wrongly determines some patients as "close to death" and deprives them of the basic care that would otherwise sustain them.
• Meanwhile, this article in the Daily Mail reveals that British prisoners have a better diet than patients in National Health Service hospitals.
  

Welcome to Massachusetts, Welcome to Rationed Health Care. As this New York Times article reports, Massachusetts has begun rationing its state-sponsored health care after only three years since the state adopted a government-run health care system. Last week, Governor Deval Patrick announced that 31,000 legal immigrants will no longer receive dental, hospice or skilled-nursing care because of scale-backs.

In response to rationing falling on her constituents, Eva Millona, executive director of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, said she was worried about immigrants' having to find new primary care doctors at a time when the state is suffering from a shortage of such providers. The question observant Commonwealth residents must be asking now is, "Am I next to see a reduction in benefits, services and care?"

The British and Massachusetts experience: government-run health care leads to higher cost, lower quality, and reduced access. As taxpayers and as patients, Americans simply can't afford government-run health care!

Worried about the cost, quality and access of government-run health care? You should be. The good news is that a growing number of Americans share your concern. If you'd like to find out more about the problems of cost, quality and access, you can here.

There are lots of ways to get involved!

There is also a wealth of other educational and resource material available, including better alternatives to government-run health care:

Health Care Solutions: http://www.ncpa.org/pdfs/Health_Care_Solutions_072909.pdf

Five Steps to a Better Health Care System: http://www.ncpa.org/pdfs/Five_Steps_to_a_Better_Health_Care_System_Web.pdf

Dr. John Goodman's Blog - Current, up-to date information on the debate: www.john-goodman-blog.com

Heartland Institute's Health Care Solutions: http://www.chcchoices.org

Thank you again for your support of the "Free Our Health Care NOW!" and for fighting against government-run health care.

Jeanette Nordstrom
National Center for Policy Analysis
www.ncpa.org

Sarah Palin on Health Care

I'm betting that Sarah's WSJ Article makes more sense and includes more specifics than Obama's upcoming helath care rah-rah speech to Congress can hope to. Mrs. Palin agrees with President Obama on one thing:

Writing in the New York Times last month, President Barack Obama asked that Americans "talk with one another, and not over one another" as our health-care debate moves forward.

I couldn't agree more. Let's engage the other side's arguments, and let's allow Americans to decide for themselves whether the Democrats' health-care proposals should become governing law.

She disagrees with him on another:

How can we ensure that those who need medical care receive it while also reducing health-care costs? The answers offered by Democrats in Washington all rest on one principle: that increased government involvement can solve the problem. I fundamentally disagree.

Common sense tells us that the government's attempts to solve large problems more often create new ones. Common sense also tells us that a top-down, one-size-fits-all plan will not improve the workings of a nationwide health-care system that accounts for one-sixth of our economy. And common sense tells us to be skeptical when President Obama promises that the Democrats' proposals "will provide more stability and security to every American."

Face it, people. Sarah Palin is smart, she's cute and she's here to stay. Her looks are merely a bonus; I like her because she doesn't talk down to me like Mr. Community Organizer does.

Barack Obama is not stupid. Sarah Palin rightly scares the shit out of him.

Wonder why they wouldn't publish it?

I'm intrigued. I just got this email back from the intellectuals Urban Dictionary informing me that they decided not to publish my alternate definition for concerned parent. Here's the content of the letter:

Subject: Urban Dictionary - concerned parent was not published

Thanks for your definition of concerned parent!

Editors reviewed your entry and have decided to not publish it.

To get a better idea of what editors publish and reject, sign up as an Urban Dictionary Editor here: http://editor.urbandictionary.com/

Urban Dictionary

-----

concerned parent

The person who just killed one of your friends for messing with his/her kids. Don't worry; it was most likely painless. Parents don't have a lot of extra time to enjoy this sort of work.

concerned parent: That was for f*cking with my kids. Think you'll try that again?
dead person: (no reply)

You don't think it's too violent? If so, how do you explain this, or this? (Warning: very, very offensive material.)

I think I'm just going to keep submitting this from time to time. Their "editors" probably die from AIDS and drug overdoses a lot, so maybe someone will indulge my specific mode of parental sarcasm.

We're Just Friends

Great shirt.


Nothing like damning with faint praise.

Tomorrow is Doomsday

Batten down the hatches because, I forgot to tell you, tomorrow is doomsday. Don't worry about getting a flu-shot; instead just store up 100 or so gallons of water, lots of duct tape and plenty of toilet paper. Tomorrow is 09-09-09 and will cause computers to fail all over the planet which will cripple the economy and crash all the markets.

Well, not really, but it is sort of funny since one company for which I'd consulted used the "fake date" of 09/09/09 as a code for "backordered" or some such thing when placed in the due date field of an order. They had started the practice in the mid 1990s. I kept telling them, "You know guys, that is a real date, and it's not too far off...." They would laugh and say "Yeah, we know...."

But that plant has closed down, everyone is laid off and the business has all been moved to Singapore. So they dodged a bullet; let's hear it for offshoring.

Here's a little bit of numbers fun from an amateur numeralogist who evidently has not yet been confined to a rubber room.

Also witness here the height of the Beatles' drug abuse.

Nice Thread over at Midwest Conservative Journal

Hat tip goes to Dianonymous for this MCJ post countering Mr. Dreher's latest episode where once again he is embarrassed by frothing Republicans. It is concise and informative:

I don’t have any kids, Rod. Always wanted ‘em but, like I said before, Hemingway married three St. Louis women for a reason. Anyhoo, if I had kids, I’d kind of insist on parenting them myself; I’m funny that way. Whatever “stay in school and get a good education” lectures my kids get would come from me and nobody else.

Given the nature of the current administration(the campaign’s over but that damned O symbol still keeps turning up on everything), if the first lesson plan these people issued before the firestorm hit doesn’t alarm the crap out of you, then you’ve drunk the Obama Kool-Aid, my man.

I'm not sure it's Kool-Aid so much as a really big blind-spot, which I'll leave other optometrists to diagnose. Anyway, the blog comments are mostly good after you get beyond the usual incomprehensible blather from an online Orthodox guy (whose primary trademark appears to be that when he has nothing to say, he says it anyway.) I liked this one from Bill2, which gets to the point:

Presidents make speeches at schools all the time about their various education initiatives. It looks like it was just covered by the usual media suspects. I’d be willing to bet a fin that Bill Clinton and George Bush (43) gave a speech or two at a school too.

Were there guided discussion sheets from the executive branch? Was there any expectation that it be broadcast to the school kids throughout the nation? I don’t see any indication of that from your link. It just looks like a speech given at a school. That’s way different than a presidential “back to school” to the total student body of the US. The intent is way different.

If Obama chose one of my kid’s school to be the stage for the run of the mill inspirational/policy speech that was broadcast on CNN, Fox news, ABC, etc., I’d think was pretty cool. This just seems like the kind of over-play/over-reach we’re getting used to from Obama.

That's my point also; I left this comment which as of this point in time hasn't gotten approved by the moderator:

Isn't it funny how this "Reagan and Bush Sr. did it and no one complained" is spreading among the left as a hypocrisy charge? Reagan did an "informal exchange" at Bayou View Elementary School in Gulfport, Mississippi. And Geo. Bush I gave a speech at Alice Deal Junior High School in Washington D.C. Is there anyone who isn't too stupid to note a tiny difference between what President Obama is doing and those one-offs? To quote Sesame Street, "One of these things is not like the others."

I think this really needs to be hammered on. The left has this knee-jerk response that is weak, weak, weak. No one has done what Obama is doing here. This is not a whistle-stop campaign spot or an appearance at one school in DC to deliver a speech. It's like Mark Steyn said on the Rush show last week, that it's not so much the content of a speech which offends as it is the ubiquity of this President, his continued attempts to inject himself everywhere via mass media. That sums up my main problem with it, and everyone else I know has the same reaction. This objection is what lies behind Kathleen's letter, and anyone who bothers to read it will note that words like socialism, dictator and fascism do nowhere appear in it. The President showing up at a school is a sort of nice occasion, and of course we'll let him speak if he makes an appearance. But the concerted effort to broadcast on the part of the President is the message moreso than any of the text of the speech. If you have kids, or if you deal with kids in any serious capacity, then you know this implicitly.

Thanks for reading my blog. For current commentary and what-not, visit the Est Quod Est homepage

Note to Daily Kos Hobbyhorse Riders

Just for the record, I never accused anyone of being "unpatriotic for disagreeing with Bush". I'm not sure anyone I know did, to be honest. I know some people accused opponents of the Iraq war for being unpatriotic—I think Tom DeLay did, but he's gone now, or maybe they didn't notice. This could be placed under the general heading of not allowing politics to end at the water's edge, as was at once precedent. That is a little different than "disagreeing with the President" which seems to me to be a respectable American tradition regardless of one's political stripe. However this GWB squelching of dissent meme is a sacred mantra and a hallowed hobbyhorse on the left at this point, and I suppose I am guilty of religious discrimination for relegating it to fairy tale status.

But go on ahead and try to mock Kathleen's letter. Ridiculing parents' concern for their children should serve to further marginalize your radical views.

And thanks for reprinting the letter. I'll bet Kathleen is happy you reprinted it which is more than the moldy pigskin blogettes did.

New Movie "2081" Based on Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron

Via Kathleen...

Whoa -- Tammy Bruce as Diana Moon Glampers? She'll hit that out of the park.

I never saw the other version. I heard negative things about it, for example I guess Sean Astin ironically turned in a performance far below his talent level as the main character.