A lot of Americans were delighted to hear that, once Barack Obama was elected, absolutely everyone would be getting exactly the same kind of health care enjoyed by US senators. If you believed that, you need to talk to me about this bridge I have for sale.

Today’s Daily Mail has a story illustrating how government-provided health services really work: by rationing.

Thousands of patients with terminal cancer were dealt a blow last night after a decision was made to deny them life prolonging drugs.

The Government’s rationing body said two drugs for advanced breast cancer and a rare form of stomach cancer were too expensive for the NHS.

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence is expected to confirm guidance in the next few weeks that will effectively ban their use.

The move comes despite a pledge by Nice to be more flexible in giving life-extending drugs to terminally-ill cancer patients after a public outcry last year over ‘death sentence’ decisions. Leading campaigners last night said Nice had failed the ‘acid test’ of whether it really intended to give new priority to people with just a few months to live.

One drug, Lapatinib, can halve the speed of growth of breast cancer in one in five women with an aggressive form of the disease.

Dr Gillian Leng, Nice deputy chief executive, said ‘The committee concluded that Lapatinib is not a cost-effective use of NHS resources when compared with current treatment.’

Up to 1,500 stomach cancer patients also face a ban on Sutent – the only drug that can extend their lives.

California’s San Francisco Bay area is notorious for both its inhabitants’ lack of enthusiasm for conventional religion and their hair-trigger political sensitivities.

Zomblog was consequently therefore more than a little surprised at the lack of protests, condemnations, or even public discussion of a new Islamic advertising campaign, funded by the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), the North American branch of Jamaat-e-Islami, the fundamentalist Pakistani political party.

“No enemies to the left” seems to apply even to Islamic fundamentalism, and even in the Castro, despite the obvious problems with regarding organizations dedicated to the imposition of sharia law as being on the left.

Suckers!

Jennifer Rubin observes how quickly Barack Obama has persuaded last autumn’s conservative turncoats to reconsider their wardrobes.

It’s not quite LBJ losing Walter Cronkite on the Vietnam War, but the president has lost David Brooks.

Well, well. First Chris Buckley and now Brooks. Usually it takes more than a month for presidents to disappoint those they have bamboozled during the campaign. But, as Brooks points out, Obama threw caution to the winds when he unveiled his monstrous budget.

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David Brooks:

[The] Obama budget is more than just the sum of its parts. There is, entailed in it, a promiscuous unwillingness to set priorities and accept trade-offs. There is evidence of a party swept up in its own revolutionary fervor — caught up in the self-flattering belief that history has called upon it to solve all problems at once.

So programs are piled on top of each other and we wind up with a gargantuan $3.6 trillion budget. We end up with deficits that, when considered realistically, are $1 trillion a year and stretch as far as the eye can see. We end up with an agenda that is unexceptional in its parts but that, when taken as a whole, represents a social-engineering experiment that is entirely new.

The U.S. has never been a society riven by class resentment. Yet the Obama budget is predicated on a class divide. The president issued a read-my-lips pledge that no new burdens will fall on 95 percent of the American people. All the costs will be borne by the rich and all benefits redistributed downward. ...

Those of us who consider ourselves moderates — moderate-conservative, in my case — are forced to confront the reality that Barack Obama is not who we thought he was. His words are responsible; his character is inspiring. But his actions betray a transformational liberalism that should put every centrist on notice. As Clive Crook, an Obama admirer, wrote in The Financial Times, the Obama budget “contains no trace of compromise. It makes no gesture, however small, however costless to its larger agenda, of a bipartisan approach to the great questions it addresses. It is a liberal’s dream of a new New Deal.”

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Chris Buckley:

Hold on—there’s a typo in that paragraph. “$3.6 trillion budget” can’t be right.The entire national debt is—what—about $11 trillion? He can’t actually be proposing to spend nearly one-third of that in one year, surely. Let me check. Hmm. He did. The Wall Street Journal notes that federal outlays in fiscal 2009 will rise to almost 30 percent of the gross national product. In language that even an innumerate English major such as myself can understand: The US government is now spending annually about one-third of what the entire US economy produces. As George Will would say, “Well.”

Now let me say: Unlike Rush Limbaugh, I want President Obama to succeed. I honestly do. We are all in this leaky boat together—did I say “leaky”? I meant “sieve-like”—and it would be counterproductive, if not downright suicidal, to want it to go down just to prove a conservative critique of Keynesian economics. ...

One thing is certain, however: Government is getting bigger and will stay bigger. Just remember the apothegm that a government that is big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take it all away.And remember what de Tocqueville told us about a bureaucracy that grows so profuse that not even the most original mind can penetrate it.

If this is what the American people want, so be it, but they ought to have no illusions about the perils of this approach. Mr. Obama is proposing among everything else $1 trillion in new entitlements, and entitlement programs never go away, or in the oddly poetic bureaucratic jargon, “sunset.” He is proposing $1.4 trillion in new taxes, an appetite for which was largely was whetted by the shameful excesses of American CEO corporate culture. And finally, he has proposed $5 trillion in new debt, one-half the total accumulated national debt in all US history. All in one fell swoop.

He tells us that all this is going to work because the economy is going to be growing by 3.2 percent a year from now. Do you believe that? Would you take out a loan based on that? And in the three years following, he predicts that our economy will grow by 4 percent a year.

This is nothing if not audacious hope. If he’s right, then looking back, March 2009 will be the dawn of the Age of Stimulation, or whatever elegant phrase Niall Ferguson comes up with. If he turns out to be wrong, then it will look very different, the entrance ramp to the Road to Serfdom, perhaps, and he will reap the whirlwind that follows, along with the rest of us.

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Who could possibly have predicted that a red diaper baby community organizer with a life-long record of radical associations would adopt an ultra-left program of taxing and spending? Messrs. Buckley and Brooks obviously weren’t paying attention when they read Dreams from My Father. Obama explains that he learned as an adolescent that he could get away with doing drugs and raising Cain, simply by mollifying the adults in his life by speaking softly and politely.

DFMF, 94-95:

It was the start of my senior year in high school… and one day she [his mother] marched into my room, wanting to know the details of [his friend’s] arrest. I had given her a reassuring smile and patted her hand and told her not to worry. I wouldn’t do anything stupid. It was usually an effective tactic, one of those tricks I had learned: People were satisfied as long as you were courteous and smiled and made no sudden moves. They were more than satisfied; they were relieved—such a pleasant surprise to find a well-mannered young black man who didn’t seem angry all the time.

Sent to my class list this morning in response to the contention that “government had to step in” because capitalism failed, because businessmen “made such a mess.”

Government created a credit crisis by arm-twisting lenders to make uncreditworthy loans while supplying securitization of the same. Government (at more than one level) additionally laid the groundwork for a housing bubble by forcing prices upward by making 30 year financing of home loans universal and easy to obtain and by creating regulatory environments that made building extremely expensive and nearly impossible in some of the housing markets featuring the greatest demand. Government lent people money to fuel bidding wars, while doing everything it could to keep new housing in short supply.

George W. Bush’s administration pursued simple-minded conventional policies attempting to placate the economy with characteristic timidity and inconsistency. Obama has taken the housing-bust induced recession as an excuse to throw funding at every democrat party special interest and constituency and to justify a power grab socializing large segments of the economy. Bush did not succeed in calming economic turmoil largely because he could not persuade the markets that he had not already lost the next election to a democrat party radical. Obama has, in a very short time in office, demonstrated that he isn’t simply a bloviating and benign big city machine crook, but is rather an extreme radical leftwing ideologue philosophically committed to every form of economic destruction. The economy is cratering as a result.

He’ll need to change the tie

The Obama Administration’s constant and ever-increasing attacks on Rush Limbaugh demonstrate perfectly clearly that, at this point in time, there is no more effective and articulate representative of Conservative political thought in America than the genial and talented radio talk show celebrity and that Rush is the single most effective source of opposition to the radical democrat agenda. Rush Limbaugh is the Republican leader that democrats most fear, and decidedly not Michael Steele.

Barack Obama has himself demonstrated in the most effective possible way the ability of the combination of eloquence and personal charm to substitute for a meaningful resume featuring either significant occupancy of, or achievement in, high office.

The conclusion is unmistakable. We should, at once, start grooming Rush Limbaugh as the next GOP presidential candidate. Limbaugh should run for a governorship or senate seat in 2010, and proceed, in precisely the way Barack Obama did, to let his newly acquired seat grow cobwebs, while he pursues higher office.

Running an inexperienced outsider candidate is bound to be something of a long shot, and Rush has a few vulnerabilities, but just compare Limbaugh’s essentially trivial prescription drug scandal with Barack Obama’s raft load of unsavory associations. The press will not treat Rush as clemently as they did the Kenyan Caliban, but Rush Limbaugh has a real genius for counter-framing an issue. Rush can defend himself.

Rush’s sometimes slightly transgressive sense of humor and his entertainer’s style represent admittedly a greater handicap. Americans want their politicians to provide a primary note of dignity and gravitas. But there is time still for Rush to strike a different tone, to present a modified version of himself. Besides, the continuing economic crisis and the practically assured foreign humiliations and debacles that the current administration will inevitably produce are bound to provoke a passionate desire for change on the part of the electorate so strong that any credible and effective GOP candidate will be starting out with a strong hand.

The White House is trying to link the GOP to Rush. Let’s really link them.

Never Yet Melted endorses Rush Limbaugh for President in 2012.

In a move that makes former president Jimmy Carter look manly, Barack Hussein Obama has launched a secret diplomatic initiative aimed a trading European security for a little Russian help with his Iranian problems.

In return for a bit of restraint on Russia’s part in selling rifles to the Indians, the United States would concede the vital Russian strategic interest of being able to conduct its diplomatic relations with Europe at the point of an array of nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles aimed at Europe’s principal population centers.

The Russian News and Information Agency Novosti could scarcely conceal the note of triumph in its news dispatch.

Washington has told Moscow that Russian help in resolving Iran’s nuclear program would make its missile shield plans for Europe unnecessary, a Russian daily said on Monday, citing White House sources.

U.S. President Barack Obama made the proposal on Iran in a letter to his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, Kommersant said, referring to unidentified U.S. officials.

Iran’s controversial nuclear program was cited by the U.S. as one of the reasons behind its plans to deploy a missile base in Poland and radar in the Czech Republic. The missile shield has been strongly opposed by Russia, which views it as a threat to its national security. The dispute has strained relations between the former Cold War rivals, already tense over a host of other differences.

The leaders have exchanged letters and had a telephone conversation since Obama was sworn into office in January, Kommersant said. The first high-level Russia-U.S. meeting will take place later this week, when Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov meets with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Geneva.

Moscow has not yet responded to the proposal by Obama, the paper said, adding that a decision was unlikely to be made during Lavrov and Clinton’s meeting.

Maybe it’s not enough, Barack H.. Why don’t you try offering to give them back Alaska, too?

The Onion reports from Arkham, Massachusetts:

Arguing that students should return to the fundamentals taught in the Pnakotic Manuscripts and the Necronomicon in order to develop the skills they need to be driven to the very edge of sanity, Arkham school board member Charles West continued to advance his pro-madness agenda at the district’s monthly meeting Tuesday.

“Fools!” said West, his clenched fist striking the lectern before him. “We must prepare today’s youth for a world whose terrors are etched upon ancient clay tablets recounting the fever-dreams of the other gods—not fill their heads with such trivia as math and English. Our graduates need to know about those who lie beneath the earth, waiting until the stars align so they can return to their rightful place as our masters and wage war against the Elder Things and the shoggoths!”

The controversial school board member reportedly interrupted a heated discussion about adding fresh fruit to school lunches in order to bring his motion to the table. With the aid of a flip chart, West laid out his six-point plan for increased madness, which included field trips to the medieval metaphysics department at Miskatonic University, instruction in the incantations of Yog-Sothoth, and a walkathon sponsored by local businesses to raise money for the freshman basketball program. “Our schools are orderly, sanitary places where students dwell in blissful ignorance of the chaos that awaits,” West said. “Should our facilities be repaired? No, they must be razed to the ground and rebuilt in the image of the Cyclopean dwellings of the Elder Gods, the very geometry of which will drive them to be possessed by visions of the realms beyond.”

West has served on the school board since 1997, when he defeated 89-year-old incumbent Doris Pesce by promising to enforce dress codes and refer repeat disciplinary cases to the three-lobed burning eye. He has run unopposed ever since.

“Charles sure likes to bang on that madness drum,” fellow school board member Danielle Kolker said. “I’m not totally sold on his plan to let gibbering, half-formed creatures dripping with ichor feed off the flesh and fear of our students. But he is always on time to help set up for our spaghetti suppers, and his bake sale goods are among the most popular.”

“I must admit, he’s very convincing,” Kolker added.

West’s previous failed proposals include requiring the high school band to perform the tuneless flute songs of the blind idiot god Azathoth and offering art students instruction in the carving of morbid and obscene fetishes from otherworldly media.

Several parents attending the meeting were not impressed by West’s outburst.

“Last month, he wanted us to change the high school’s motto from ‘Many Kinds of Excellence’ to ‘Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn,’” PTA member Cathy Perry said. “I asked if it was Latin, and he said that it was the eldritch tongue of Shub- Niggurath, the Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young. I don’t know from eldritch tongues, but I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”

“We already changed the name of the school from Abraham Lincoln High to Nyalrothotep Academy,” Perry added. “What more does he want?”

Immediately before the vote on his motion, which was defeated eight to one, West gave his final remarks, arguing that the children are our future and that it’s the school board’s obligation to make sure they are fully versed in the unspeakable horrors still to come.

Ben Smith, at the Politico blog, joins the conventional chorus of down-shouters, marginalizing everyone with doubts on the question of Barack Obama’s native born status as irrational conspiracy theorists.

Personally, I always experience a dramatic increase in skepticism when I observe the argument from intimidation underway. Whenever people point to a bien pensant media consensus as established and inarguable fact, I start looking around for the alternative theory.

As to Obama’s native born status, I’ve read Internet rumors that say his grandmother supposedly said some time somewhere that he was born in a hospital in Kenya, but I’ve never seen any form of reliable report confirming that.

I’m well aware, and support the fact, that the United States traditionally bases citizenship both on jus sanguinis (citizenship by right of blood descent) and jus soli (citizenship by right of birth on US soil). I also think that if a person elected to national office by 60-odd million votes as the result of a process as expensive, time-consuming, and elaborate as a US Presidential election were to be disqualified by an arcane, subsequently eliminated, technical and ill-conceived provision of 1960s era citizenship laws, that it would be a disaster.

But I do also think the law is the law, and Barack Obama’s citizenship status, which undoubtedly features a number of occasions for questions, ought to have been thoroughly and openly explored before the democrat party ever nominated him.

I think it is probable that democrat party member state officials in Hawaii are telling the truth, and Obama’s birth certificate is real, valid, and in proper order, but I also wonder, if that is the case, why has he spent more than $800,000 (at last count, which was some time ago), fighting lawsuits in numerous states to resist allowing it to be released.

Obama’s effort and expense at litigating only makes sense if there is something to hide. (In an earlier post, I suggested that perhaps he was really named Sue.)

Beyond the alleged birth in Kenya to a slightly underage US citizen mom, there are also obviously live possibilities of problems with conflicting dual citizenships held contrary to US law. Obama might very well have been adopted by Mr. Soetero. His admission to Indonesian schools apparently required Indonesian citizenship. If Obama lost his US citizenship by adoption as a juvenile, he would have had to take official steps later to restore it.

Obama could have in the past claimed to be a British subject by virtue of his father’s Kenyan nationality. It is reported that Obama travelled to Pakistan in 1981, at a time when US citizens were not allowed to enter the country. Those circumstances suggest he could have used a different passport at the time.

There can be no doubt that the national news reporting organizations allowed political partisanship to deter them from undertaking the questioning and scrutiny of the candidacy of Barack Obama that would normally be expected. It would not be hard to argue that, at this point, the country would be better off, our electoral processes better served, simply by averting our eyes from what is bound to be, at most, some technical disqualification, faced with plunging the country into an appalling and unprecedented leadership crisis (and perhaps making that idiot Biden president), but it is simply not true that no rational basis for skepticism of Barack Obama’s eligibility for office exists.
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Earlier posts.

Trench lines directed animals to a terminal pit trap

Arutz Sheva reports that a research team from University of Haifa, the Arava Institute, the Geological Institute in Jerusalem, the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, and Bar-Ilan University, working with National Geographic, has concluded that so-called “desert kites,” kite-shaped lines discovered by British pilots during the WI era, marking the surface of the Negev and Arava Deserts represent the remains of man-made Neolithic period hunting traps used to direct driven animals into pits, the same way Plains Indians used to drive buffalo herds toward unexpected cliffs.

Only the Scottish Herald and WorldNetDaily are reporting that President Barack Obama got a letter from an admirer asking for a favor.

Obama’s correspondent was the more effective International equivalent of Wiliam Ayres, no less than Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, “Carlos the Jackal” himself.

Carlos was asking his comrade “in Revolution” in Washington to arrange the release, or at least return the remains of his one-time right-hand man, the Swiss terrorist Bruno Breguet.

Breguet disappeared in 1995 after being refused entry by Italy upon his arrival on a Greek ferry.

Carlos refers to Breguet as “our comrade,” possibly meaning both his and Obama’s, and concludes “as your Luo grandfather would say: ALLAHU AKBAR!,” then finally he signs: “Yours in Revolution.”

Sunday Herald (Scotland)

WorldNetDaily