FOXNews.com – Tea Party Express Arrives for ‘March on Washington’ to Protest Government Spending

FreedomWorks Foundation, a conservative organization led by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, has organized several groups from across the country for the Saturday event, dubbed a “March on Washington.”

FOXNews.com
Saturday, September 12, 2009

The Tea Party Express — a gathering of activists protesting what they view as out-of-control spending by an expanding federal government — has arrived in the nation’s capital Saturday.

Thousands of people marched to the U.S. Capitol on Saturday, carrying signs with slogans such as “Obamacare makes me sick”

The line of protesters completely filled Pennsylvania Avenue for blocks, all the way to the capitol, according to the D.C. Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency. People were chanting “enough, enough” and “We the People.” Others yelled “You lie, you lie!” and “Pelosi has to go,” referring to California congresswoman Nancy Pelosi.

Others are waving U.S. flags and holding signs reading “Go Green Recycle Congress” and “I’m Not Your ATM.” Some men are dressed in colonial costumes. Police on motorcycles and horses watched as the marchers passed.

FreedomWorks Foundation, a conservative organization led by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, has organized several groups from across the country for the Saturday event, dubbed a “March on Washington.”

The demonstration is part of the so-called Tea Party Movement that gathered steam in April to protest tax policies. And Saturday’s event is the culmination of a 34-city, 7,000-mile bus tour that began Aug. 28 in Sacramento, Calif.

The “partiers” have cited a host of grievances and demands, such as a call for any health care reform to create more competition and be guided by market principles, not a government-run plan.

Organizers said they anticipated tens of thousands of proponents of limited government to attend. They say it will be the largest group of fiscal conservatives to ever gather in Washington.

Richard Brigle, 57, a Vietnam War veteran and former Teamster, came from Paw Paw, Mich. He said health care needs to be reformed — but not according to President Barack Obama’s plan.

“My grandkids are going to be paying for this. It’s going to cost too much money that we don’t have,” he said while marching, bracing himself with a wooden cane as he walked.

The rally comes on the heels of heated town halls held during the congressional August recess when some Democratic lawmakers were confronted, disrupted and shouted down by angry protestors who oppose President Obama’s plan to overhaul the health care system.

“I can’t figure out to save me what [Mr. Obama and the Democrats] are trying to accomplish, unless they want socialism,” 73-year-old Joseph Wright, a retired paper-mill worker, told The Wall Street Journal.

Wright rode from Tallahassee, Fla., to Washington this week on one of the many chartered buses bringing in demonstrators from states as far-flung as Massachusetts and Arkansas.

Many protesters said they paid their own way to the event — an ethic they believe should be applied to the government. They say unchecked spending on things like a government-run health insurance option could increase inflation and lead to economic ruin.

Terri Hall, 45, of Starke, Fla., said she felt compelled to become political for the first time this year because she was upset by government spending.

“Our government has lost sight of the powers they were granted,” she said. She added that the deficit spending was out of control, and said she thought it was putting the country at risk.

Other sponsors of the rally include the Heartland Institute, Americans for Tax Reform and the Ayn Rand Center for Individuals Rights.

The White House on Friday claimed it was unaware of the planned rally.

“I don’t know who the group is,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters with a shrug.

But a House leadership aide has warned fellow Democrats that up to 2 million demonstrators could turn out.

“It looks like Saturday’s event is going to be a huge gathering, estimates ranging from hundreds of thousands to 2 million people,” Doug Thornell, an aide to Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., wrote in a memo obtained by FOXNews.com.

But conservatives believe the memo is ploy to inflate expectations for the turnout anticipating that it will fall short.

“It’s an old political tactic to get out in front and make wild projections and when they’re not met, claim their opponents don’t have the juice,” said Pete Sepp, a spokesman for the National Taxpayers Union, one of the organizers of the rally.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Canada’s top doctor: Health care system ‘imploding’…

‘We all agree that things are more precarious than perhaps Canadians realize’…

The Canadian Press: Overhauling health-care system tops agenda at annual meeting of Canada’s doctors.

And Obama & his Democrat cronies want to shove this down our throats? No thank you, sir.

- Noel

Desperately Seeking Swastikas

What’s behind Nancy Pelosi’s despicable slur against Americans who oppose ObamaCare.

From the BEST OF THE WEB TODAY on online.wsj.com
By JAMES TARANTO

Desperately Seeking Swastikas

Sam Stein of the Puffington Host believes he has found a photo that vindicates Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose comment vilifying ObamaCare opponents we noted yesterday. The actual photo is at the link; here is Stein’s description and argument:

A woman protesting Democratic plans for health care reform was captured holding up a sign of a Swastika, with the president’s name below it, encircled and crossed out by a red line. The implication is that Obama is a Nazi–though the culprit, in this case, added a question mark next to his name, as some sort of caveat.

Earlier this week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested that the protests at these events were illegitimate, in part because the protesters were carrying signs with “swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on health care.” She was ridiculed by right-wing media for making an unsubstantiated charge in an effort to defame these grassroots demonstrators.

The photo was shot in Fort Collins, Colo., at a protest outside the office of Rep. Betsy Markey, a Democrat. Just in case it isn’t clear from the description, the poster looks like a symbolic no-smoking sign, with a swastika in place of a cigarette.

Reader Sean Sorrentino reports on another swastika sighting:

I went to the Philadelphia Town Hall and enjoyed the opportunity to tell Benedict Arlen [Specter (R2D2., Pa.)] exactly how I felt about this unprecedented power grab. In the famous YouTube video of the Bible-waving lady used in the latest Democratic Party video you can see me just behind and to the left of the Bible lady [at 0:16]. I’m in a red shirt with a backpack and a ponytail. (Strange for a lifelong Republican, but even so . . .)

You can see that Barbara Boxer is correct about the well-dressed part as well. I changed out of my normal cargo pants and put on slacks. I wore leather shoes rather than my normal “urban hiker” boots. I took a shower and brushed my hair. I also left my gun, pepper spray and knife at home. (Pennsylvania is a right-to-carry state, and I have a license to carry.) I did all of these things out of respect for the process. Maybe it has something to do with the way I was raised, but I think that if you are going to “peaceably assemble,” you should at least dress nicely and take a shower out of respect for your fellow citizens. Who knew that was a bad thing?

There were in fact swastikas displayed on several of the signs outside. Signs were not permitted inside the hall. Apparently they were willing to let the “Tell the Government NO!” bumper stickers go, but my “ObamaCare is bad medicine” sign was not permitted. On the walkway in front of the building on Arch Street, there were some antiabortion/antieuthanasia protesters. There was at least one sign that protested “Obama’s Nazi healthcare” bill. Apparently the contention was that the bill would fund abortions and would lead to euthanasia of senior citizens, and that this was basically Nazi territory.

This, I believe, is where the swastikas were spotted. You can be the judge of whether or not this is effective or even reasonable debate. I personally don’t see how it helps to compare Obama to Nazis, but then I couldn’t see what the left was getting at with the whole Bush-Hitler thing either, so maybe my fascism meter is broken.

Sorrentino tells us that the signs he saw were hand-lettered, nor preprinted, as was the one in the Stein photo. Or, as IowaHawk puts it:

Note that their signs are scrawled, fiendishly tricking cameramen into closeups. All are expertly handmade, an expensive graphic design luxury only affordable to their puppet masters in the drug and insurance cartels.

Now, let us say that we disapprove, on both rhetorical and moral grounds, of comparisons between Obama and Hitler or ObamaCare and Nazism. (It should go without saying that such expression is fully protected by the First Amendment.) One should never in earnest liken a political opponent to the Nazis if that opponent does not practice or advocate genocide or totalitarianism.

To do so is a rhetorical error because it calls attention away from the speaker’s message and toward his lack of perspective. It is a moral error because of that lack of perspective. There may be plausible arguments that ObamaCare is evil in intent or would be evil in effect, but it is insane to equate it to the singular evil of Nazism. The easy recourse to Nazi analogies–far more common on the left than the right–debases the currency of moral outrage and can only diminish moral clarity.

So was Nancy Pelosi right? Not a chance.

Let’s review her words again: “I think they’re AstroTurf. You be the judge. They’re carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on health care.” Who carries swastikas? Nazis. Pelosi did not complain that the protesters were comparing ObamaCare to Nazism; she insinuated that they are Nazis.

The most charitable thing that can be said about the speaker’s comment is that it was no better than the speech she was criticizing. She likened her political opponents to Nazis, just as a handful of them had done to their opponents.

But it is one thing for a citizen to say vile things about an elected official, quite something else for an elected official to say vile things about a citizen. As speaker of the House, Pelosi is not only the representative of her San Francisco constituents but a leader of her party and the leader of a branch of the federal government.

It is despicable for someone in her position to liken private citizens to Nazis. Nancy Pelosi owes America an apology.

Be a Constitutional Watchdog for America

After reading this article, please click here (or on the link at the bottom of this post) to visit this article in its original context on GlennBeck.com. Thank you.

August 1, 2009 – 0:09 ET
By Glenn Beck

We need you to keep watch over the most perfect political document ever given to mankind. Heaven knows our politicians aren't doing it.

I’ve been telling you lately I am no longer searching for answers about what is going on with this administration. I believe I now know exactly what they’re doing. They are putting a structure in place, around our existing government.

An exoskeleton is being built around our Republic. And rather than support and protect, as exoskeletons are designed do in the animal kingdom, this one is designed to feed off its host. At the same time, the host is being attacked from every direction, also by design.

The attack agents are cap-and-trade; health care reform; card check; the collapsing dollar; bailouts; stimulus bills; “cash for clunkers”; gigantic, unsustainable debt, and on and on.

Remember, the only thing you need to know about Barack Obama: He is a community organizer. ACORN, SEIU and their 300-plus affiliate organizations, along with AmeriCorp, with the help of Barack Obama, have embedded themselves into the structure of this government. If and when they can overwhelm the system to the point it finally collapses, they already have the new system built, already in place, to restart it and “fundamentally transform the United States of America.”

In the movie “Contact,” a space-travel machine was built using alien technology. Everyone knew they would face widespread public opposition to the plan: It was wildly expensive and no one even knew if it would work. So, when the machine was destroyed, it was revealed to the nation and the world, that there just happened to be a second machine, already built and ready to go, that no one knew about:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ACTOR JOHN HURT AS S.R. HADDEN: First rule in government spending: Why build one when you can have two at twice the price? Only, this one can be kept secret.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

We need to stop that machine from being put into place.

The question I am asked more than anything else — well, other than, “when the studio lights get really hot, do you actually sweat gravy?” And by the way, the answer is yes — that’s why I always keep a gravy boat handy under the desk here at FOX. But the second most-asked question is: “Glenn, what can I do?”

You can be a “Constitutional Watchdog” for America. I’m shifting my focus to another project: I’ll still be here, doing my shows on TV and radio, but our attention will be on something else, which I’ll tell you about when I can.

So we need you to keep watch over the most perfect political document ever given to mankind. Heaven knows our politicians aren’t doing it. Go to my Web site — GlennBeck.com — and look for the shield you see here at the bottom of the screen for more details.

Briefly here it is: Don’t try to pay attention to everything — it’s impossible. As we’ve discussed, they’re throwing so much at us at once — again, by design — that it’s just too much to assimilate. Find something that you know about or have interest in. Watch what Congress is doing on that. If it’s cap-and-trade, look for everything you can find on that issue. Whatever it is, when something comes up that doesn’t sound right, start barking loudly, like the Constitutional Watchdog you are.

Send me an e-mail or tweet and we’ll highlight the story you’ve uncovered. When you see the Watchdog Shield, you’ll know that it wasn’t us who found the story — it was one of our Watchdogs.

I am more optimistic — more hopeful — now than I’ve been in a long time, that, together, we can wake up enough Americans to stop what I firmly believe is an attempt to “fundamentally transform America.”

— Watch Glenn Beck weekdays at 5p & 2a ET on FOX News Channel

Here’s that link I mentioned at the beginning of this article.

The Dishonesty of the New York Times in the Debate Over Health Care

By Noel Bagwell
July 16, 2009

“If there is any point at which you say, ‘No, an extra six months isn’t worth that much,’ then you think that health care should be rationed.”

- Peter Singer, Why We Must Ration Health Care,
The New York Times, July 15, 2009

I would respectfully disagree with Mr. Singer, as would, I believe, most clear-thinking Americans.  Mr. Singer relates, as an analogy to his reasoning, the bawdy joke about a man propositioning a woman for $1 million and, after she accepts, trying to haggle the price down. The moral of the joke is that “if a woman will sell herself at any price, she is a prostitute,” but is that really the case?

More relevantly to the discussion of health care, the question could be phrased, does putting a limit on how much one is willing to spend to extend one’s life or improve one’s health over a finite period of time necessarily require us to ration health care?

I contend that it does not. Under the current health care system, the only rationing of which I am aware is the rationing of transplant organs, according to very ethical practices. Occasionally, one hears about limited availability of influenza vaccines, but aside from that, I can’t really recall an instance of “rationing” health care in the United States – certainly not the sort of rationing that is the norm in countries where socialized medicine / health care is the so-called “standard.”

In a fit of uncharacteristic honesty, Mr. Singer cites the following facts:

“The case for explicit health care rationing in the United States starts with the difficulty of thinking of any other way in which we can continue to provide adequate health care to people on Medicaid and Medicare, let alone extend coverage to those who do not now have it. Health-insurance premiums have more than doubled in a decade, rising four times faster than wages. In May, Medicare’s trustees warned that the program’s biggest fund is heading for insolvency in just eight years. Health care now absorbs about one dollar in every six the nation spends, a figure that far exceeds the share spent by any other nation. According to the Congressional Budget Office, it is on track to double by 2035.” (emphasis added; remember the phrase in bold; we’ll come back to that)

Yet, even after this candid observation with regard to the government’s track record on involvement with the health care industry, somehow (read: leftist ideology compels him), Mr. Singer is able to conclude that the reason health care is so expensive is because government – which is, in Mr. Singer’s view of course, always efficient and honest (unless Republicans are in charge) – is not involved enough.

Mr. Singer holds up Britain, where health care rationing is S.O.P., as the model for health care:

“In Britain, everyone has health insurance. In the U.S., some 45 million do not, and nor are they entitled to any health care at all, unless they can get themselves to an emergency room.”

The assumption on which Mr. Singer seems to be operating is that people, generally speaking, are “entitled” to health care. They’re not. They’re certainly not Constitutionally entitled to health care. There is no “entitled to health care” clause anywhere in the U.S. Constitution. The health care industry is precisely that – an industry. Industries are comprised of businesses. Businesses exist to make a profit. Incidentally, the health care industry also provides, as a product, goods and services that promote health and longevity.

What liberals, secular-progressives and, apparently, most Democrats and some Republicans fail to understand is that, while we do have a Constitutional right to life (which they ignore, when it conflicts with the unconstitutional right to “a woman’s right to have a doctor stab her baby in the head, suck its brains out and discard the corpse” – a.k.a. “the right to choose”), we do not have a Constitutional right to a certain quality of life. We have the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” The pursuit. Not the guarantee.

SIDE NOTE: Interestingly, that phrase was originally intended by Jefferson to be written “life, liberty and property,” (a phrase he used prolifically throughout his writings, and which has its roots in the writings of John Locke) but the Founding Fathers – you know the old, white guys that liberals hate for their closed-minded, religious way of seeing things, who dared to use words like “Creator” in the Declaration of Independence – had the foresight to change “property” to “pursuit of happiness” in order to protect slaves, in the hope that one day this nation would live up to the assertion that “all men are created equal,” and abolish slavery. (More on “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” vs. “life, liberty and property” here.)

Equality is a funny concept. You see, if you really practice equality, none of us are better than any of the others of us. That means that no one is very well suited to the task of determining who should live or who should die or when or how. That’s part of the reason we have laws against murdering each other. What specialist is qualified to put a price tag on any moment, to say nothing of six months, of anyone else’s life? What bureaucrat is so qualified?

Accepting rationing means that you trust the government and the bureaucrats in charge of your health care to properly determine the value of each moment of your life, and ration your health care in such a way as to properly care for those precious moments. What happens when you disagree with the bureaucrats about how much a moment – or six months or a year or more – of your life is worth? You lose; that’s what… and not just in the sense that you lose the argument. You lose in the sense of losing your life. Literally.

Oh, by the way, that’s unconstitutional… depriving someone of their life (technically, it’s unconstitutional to deprive someone of their life “without due process of law,” but I’m sure the government will decide what constitutes “due process” in time to save your life).

“So, what are the alternatives,” you might ask (I said I’d come back to that), and rightly so. If someone’s going to criticize policy, they should have a solution that’s better than the one they’re criticizing, right? Otherwise, they’re just a whiner. Okay, fine. So, here’s a better solution to solving the health care “crisis” than socialized health care and rationing, which we have determined is, arguably, unconstitutional.

How about fostering competition by letting consumers in one state buy coverage offered in other states? In a recent article, Steve Chapman wrote:

“If WellPoint has more than half the business in Indiana, why not let Indiana residents or companies go to California or Minnesota to see if they can find options that are cheaper or better?

But the administration and its allies show no interest in removing that particular barrier to competition. Maybe that’s because it would reduce the power of state regulators to boss insurance companies around.

Nor does Obama believe in fostering competition in other health insurance realms — such as existing government health insurance programs. John Goodman, head of the National Center for Policy Analysis, suggests letting Americans now enrolled in Medicare, Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) select a voucher to buy private coverage if they want. Don’t hold your breath waiting for the administration to push that idea.”

Interesting. “It would reduce the power of state regulators to boss insurance companies around.” So, it’s about power. It seems that so much of what President Obama wants to do – and has done in hitherto, in his first term – boils down to a massive power grab. The government now effectively controls AIG, and GM, and now they’re pushing a public health care “option” that will bankrupt the health insurance industry, all the while, the New York Times tries to convince us that “‘rationing’ has become a dirty word.” Mr. Singer, rationing hasn’t “become” a dirty word; it is a dirty word, when it comes to health care. It is, and always has been and always should be. Even President Obama impliedly admits this, according to Mr. Singer who, in the aforementioned article wrote, “Meeting last month with five governors, President Obama urged them to avoid using the term [rationing], apparently for fear of evoking the hostile response that sank the Clintons’ attempt to achieve reform.”

This manipulation of language is smoke and mirrors to try to trick the public into buying into something they have known, instinctively, for generations is a bad idea. Ask yourself, my fellow Americans, if you want some bureaucrat deciding what even one moment of your life is worth. If the answer is, “No,” you do not believe in rationing, and by extension, you do not believe in socialized health care! Call your Senators and Congressmen, and tell them that, if they vote for socialized health care, you will vote against them in the next election!

The ‘Public Option’ Health Care Scam

July 16, 2009
By Steve Chapman

Some statements are inherently unbelievable. Such as: “I am an official of the government of Nigeria, and I would like to deposit $60 million in your bank account.” Or: “I’m Barry Bonds, and I thought it was flaxseed oil.” And this new one: “I’m Barack Obama, and I favor more competition in health insurance.”

That, however, is the claim behind his support of a government-run health insurance plan to give consumers one more choice. The president says a “public option” would improve the functioning of the market because it would “force the insurance companies to compete and keep them honest.”

He has indicated that while he is willing to discuss a variety of remedies as part of health insurance reform, this one is non-negotiable. House Democrats, not surprisingly, included the government plan in the 1,000-page bill they unveiled Tuesday.

It will come as a surprise to private health insurance providers that they have not had to compete up till now. Nationally, there are some 1,300 companies battling for customers. Critics say in many states, one or two insurers enjoy a dominant position. But market dominance doesn’t necessarily mean insufficient competition.

Health Care Will End Obama’s Honeymoon

Andrea Tantaros , Conservative Commentator – FOXNews.com – June 21, 2009

The politician who has been billed as “untouchable” will soon be revealed for what he is: an amateur who lacks the credible answers and the ability to really lead.

Andrea Tantaros

In the last two weeks we’ve seen President Obama endure treatment that he isn’t exactly accustomed to: harsh criticism from his own party, a significant slip in the polls, and unfavorable headlines instead of glowing, inflated puff pieces. It seems that biting off more than he can chew when it comes to health care, government intervention into the private sector, and ballooning deficits have left him choking in what might be the first major sea change as his policy positions have started to eclipse his personal popularity.

Reality is creeping onto front pages everywhere. The Wall Street Journal recently reported “Rising Doubts Threaten to Overshadow Obama’s Agenda;” Politico’s above the fold headline trumpeted “Obama Health Care Plan Imperiled;” and the CBS News/New York Times poll inspired this headline in the paper: “Poll Finds Unease with Obama on Key Issues.”

The Times specifically found “a distinct gulf between Mr. Obama’s overall standing and how some of his key initiatives are viewed, with fewer than half of Americans saying they approve of how he has handled health care and the effort to save General Motors and Chrysler. A majority of people said his policies have had either no effect yet on improving the economy or had made it worse, underscoring how his political strength still rests on faith in his leadership rather than concrete results.”

However, that faith is diminishing.

GOP Health Care Talking Points – GOP.gov

By Noel Bagwell
May 19, 2009

GOP Health Care Talking Points – GOP.gov.

It would appear that the GOP is not the “party of ‘No,’” as their critics would like to assert. These talking points reflect the Republican Party’s commitment to staving off socialist, government- run health care.

While the Republican Party is still far to the left of our founding fathers, in the battle against government- run healthcare, at the moment, they may be the strongest bulwark in which Americans can place their hope, if not their trust.

When the Republican Party starts saying, “GOVERNMENT HAS NO BUSINESS WHATSOEVER IN THE HEALTHCARE INDUSTRY AT ALL, EVER, NO MATTER WHAT,” (and for you smart asses out there, no I don’t mean we should not have legal recourse for medical malpractice and the like) then I’ll think they’re probably headed in the right direction. I don’t really hear that from the Republicans, but at least they’re not trying to get the government to completely takeover and nationalize healthcare, like the Democrats are.