Wisconsin Cut-and-Run Democrats Are FleeBaggers

Michelle Malkin has a way with words.  Handle her wit with extreme care, because that sucker is razor sharp.

We were called “tea baggers” by journalists like CNN’s Anderson Cooper who masquerades as someone who is remotely objective.  The word “tea baggers,” as Cooper made sure we understood, is a crude sexual reference to a rather disgusting act.

And, of course, we were also called “Astroturf” by liberals like Nancy Pelosi, which was an accusation that somehow we weren’t an authentic grass roots movement. 

Now we’ve got liberal union thugs being bussed in to protest events from all over the country, and we get to see what morally intelligent people knew all along: that if you want to see actual Astroturf, look at the Democrats’ field.

And in honor of the 14 Wisconsin Democrats who actually fled the state so that democracy could not take place (well, unless showing up and voting is somehow the OPPOSITE of the democratic process), Michelle Malkin has coined a new term: “fleebaggers.”

Fleebaggers: The New Cut-and-Run Democrats
By Michelle Malkin  •  February 23, 2011

First lady Michelle Obama said, “Let’s Move!” Who knew Democratic politicians in Wisconsin and Indiana would take her literally?

Faced with stifling debt, bloated pensions and intractable government unions, liberal Midwestern legislators have fled those states — paralyzing Republican fiscal reform efforts. Like Monty Python’s Brave Sir Robin and his band of quivering knights, these elected officials have only one plan when confronted with political hardship or economic peril: Run away, run away, run away.

Scores of Fleebagger Democrats are now in hiding in neighboring Illinois, the nation’s sanctuary for political crooks and corruptocrats. Soon, area hotels will be announcing a special discount rate for card-carrying FleePAC winter convention registrants. Question: Will the White House count the economic stimulus from the mass Democratic exodus to Illinois as jobs “saved” or “created”? More important question: How much are taxpayers being charged for these obstructionist vacations?

Voters have spoken: In Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio and across the heartland, they put Republican adults in charge of cleaning up profligate Democrat-engineered messes. Instead of defending their same old tax-hiking, union-protecting, spending-addicted ways, Democrats are crossing their state borders into big government sanctuary zones — screaming “la, la, la, we can’t hear you” all the way.

Wisconsin Democrats warned that their delinquent members — evading state troopers and literally phoning it in — could be gone “for weeks” to prevent a quorum on GOP Gov. Scott Walker’s modest plan to increase public union workers’ health insurance and pension contributions, end the compulsory union dues racket and rein in collective bargaining powers run amok.

Big Labor insists its intransigence isn’t about money, but about “rights.” But the dispute is about nothing but money and power — the union’s power to dictate and limit its members’ health insurance choices to a lucrative union-run plan, for example, which adds nearly $70 million in unnecessary taxpayer costs.

On Tuesday, only three of 40 House Democrats in Indiana showed up for legislative debate on a similar bill to end forced unionism and join 22 other “right to work” states. Hoosier media reported that some of the fugitive pols may be headed to Kentucky in addition to President Obama’s old political stomping grounds.

The White House and Beltway Democrats have paved the way for subverting deliberative democracy, of course. If only Republicans in Wisconsin and Indiana had followed the Obama/Pelosi/Reid model and rammed their behind-closed-doors-crafted legislative agenda through in the middle of the night on a holiday weekend, the Fleebaggers wouldn’t be on the lam today. But GOP legislators just don’t roll that way. It’s Democrats who cut and run — abroad in wartime and at home in crisis.

Almost eight years ago, more than 50 Texas Democratic state lawmakers holed up in Oklahoma and New Mexico for weeks to stymie a vote on Republican-sponsored redistricting plans they opposed. Over the past week, it was thousands of public school teachers in Wisconsin who faked illness and boycotted their classrooms. And it’s union henchmen calling out loud for statewide strikes to bring Republican reformers to their knees.

The Party of Truancy has become a laughingstock — and Americans aren’t waiting for left-wing late-night comedians to bring down the hammer of well-earned mockery. The Internet has lit up over the past week with “Wanted” posters and all-points-bulletin alerts for missing Democrats.

Blogger John Hayward of the conservative Human Events newspaper joked that “the next issue of National Geographic will track the migratory patterns of fugitive Democrats across the great plains.” Seton Motley of LessGovernment.org weighed in: “First, Wisconsin. Now, Indiana. When we said ‘runaway government,’ it was a complaint — not a suggestion.” Comedian Stephen Kruiser snickered that OFA — the Democrats’ political organizing arm, Organizing for America — now stands for “Organizing Fleeing Americans.”

Note: Many of the loudest Washington and Hollywood critics of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s decision to resign from office in 2009 are themselves now AWOL on the Wisconsin and Indiana AWOL-ians. Who’s all for mocking “quitters” now? Anyone?

One mortified Wisconsin taxpayer speaks for many. “As the daughter of former Wisconsin Senate Minority Floor Leader William R. Moser (D-Milwaukee, Dist. 6),” Mary Magdalen Moser told me, she’s humiliated by the “flee-bagging” politicians. “I am ashamed of the actions taken by the minority party to subvert our system of government by boycotting its legitimate processes. Anarchy is undemocratic, and I know that my Dad is spinning in his grave right now. … I do not support refusing to participate, because that will not solve any of the issues facing our state.”

Remember the 2008 Democratic Party chant: “Fired up! Ready to go!” Well, there’s a new Democratic Party motto in town: “Ready to go? OK, then, let’s blow this pop stand!” It’s difficult to see how Obama and his absconder allies can “win the future” when they’re stampeding over each other to escape the present.

I remember not that long ago when liberals were actually tearing into Republicans merely for VOTING their consciences.  How DARE they not support us in our hard-core liberal agenda that we rammed down their throats?  Then it was un-American to show up to vote.  As long as you were a Republican.

They sneered at us, “Elections have consequences.  And you lost!”  But as angry as we were about every trick in the book used to ram home a liberal agenda, we showed up every day to fight our cause.

Democrats abused their power.  They abused the people’s trust.  And they lost that trust massively as displayed in November.

Now, all of a sudden, elections SHOULDN’T have consequences.  Now, all of a sudden, any vile dirty trick is fine as long as its liberals who get to play them.

The Democrats are now fleeing their states so they don’t have to attend to the democratic process of that state and do its business.  They flee to other liberal states so that they won’t be sent back in handcuffs.  If this were the national Congress, these Democrats would be fleeing to Cuba or North Korea or Libya where similar-minded dictators would welcome them as they turn their backs on democracy.  That’s what the Democrat Party has degenerated to.

Principle means staying in the ring and fighting, even when the fight isn’t going your way.  Just imagine if Republicans had decided that they didn’t want to play “democracy” any longer and fled town during the ObamaCare debacle.  Imagine how they would have rightly been excoriated by the media!!!

Republicans in Wisconsin – and anywhere else Democrats play this un-American game of shutting down democracy by literally fleeing from their states like child molesters – need to first pass every non-budget item in their agenda.  Every single one, such that they can set the Democrat Party in that state back 100 years for refusing to represent their constituents.  And then they should strip the collective bargaining element of the budget out and then vote for it as a non-budgetary matter.

Of course, now that Democrats say it’s fine to shut down the government, now that Democrats say it’s fine to ignore democratic processes and simply run out of town, shutting down the government this way should become the new norm.  The only reason this wouldn’t be the case is because Democrats are inherent childish hypocrites who damn others for doing what they did first.  And America will therefore continue – led by vile Democrats – to degenerate.  Democrats are like a giant reciprocating engine, whose every downward stroke and counterstroke inevitably drives the whole culture further and further down into the sewers of a banana republic.

Liberals Seeking To Bring Chaos Of Islamic World To America

Liberals brought chaos to the Middle East.

Oh, yes they did.  Liberal Marxist terrorist professors like William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn and liberal Marxist terrorist organizations like Code Pink did everything they could to light matches to the Middle East powder keg by creating violent incidents such as the Free Gaza Movement flotilla.  You’ve had George Soros acting as a puppetmaster of pro-leftist destabilization for years.

Heck, as the entire Middle East now goes up in flames, with the uprising in Egypt being bracketed by Tunisia and now by bloody Yemen and even bloodier Libya, remember that Democrats “credited” Barack Obama with being behind the spark behind it all (see also here).  And Obama seems to want that credit himself.  Because it might end up becoming the spark that blew up the world.

It’s probably about time to finally understand that Obama has his roots as a leftwing community agitator.  And that while you can talk the man out of community agitation, you can never take the community agitator out of the man.

Obama is trying to do unto Wisconsin (and from there on to Ohio) what he apparently did in the Middle East.  Because vile leaders have always known that blood and unrest tends to benefit the vile:

The Democratic National Committee’s Organizing for America arm — the remnant of the 2008 Obama campaign— is playing an active role in organizing protests against Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s attempt to strip most public employees of collective bargaining rights.

OfA, as the campaign group is known […has been] riding to the aide of the public sector unions… OfA’s engagement with the fight — and Obama’s own clear stance against Walker — mean that he’s remaining loyal to key Democratic Party allies…

OfA Wisconsin’s field efforts include filling buses and building turnout for the rallies this week in Madison, organizing 15 rapid response phone banks urging supporters to call their state legislators, and working on planning and producing rallies, a Democratic Party official in Washington said.

And with all of that evidence that liberals are burning up the powder keg in the Middle East and are trying to do the same thing in America, let me introduce the article that prompted me to write what I wrote above:

Documents show Wisconsin unrest orchestrated and spreading
February 19th, 2011 3:12 pm ET.

While part of the current unrest in Wisconsin is driven by local issues, new information has been uncovered indicating an orchestrated attempt to stir up ‘worker protests’ not only in Wisconsin but in at least a dozen states.  The coordinated effort is part of a ‘revolution’ spearheaded in part by a group called ‘Heartland Revolution,’ a Kentucky-based political action organization. The group was first envisioned by a Kentucky Democrat, John Waltz, who announced his candidacy in 2009 to oppose 2-term Republican Geoff Davis for the 4th Congressional District. Waltz was defeated in the November 2010 midterm elections but embarked on an effort to create ‘revolution’ throughout America, stemming from his anger toward what he terms ‘the hijacking of political discourse by right-wing propagandists.’ His group is invovled in the continuing Wisconsin protests of teachers unions upset over Governor Scott Walker’s plan to have them pay for part of their healthcare and pension benefits, to which they currently contribute very little of the total costs. 

Waltz frames his revolution in terms of a ‘political war,’ which he claims is being waged against the middle class by Republicans and corporate interests. His aim is to ‘shut down right-wing political cash machines’ using whatever means possible.

For example, in Wisconsin members of his organization were instructed to boycott a Subway Sandwhich Shop in downtown Madison during the protests.  The reason?  The owner of the deli is a large contributor to Governor Scott Walker.

The following Twitter alert from the Walsh organization was sent to Heartland protesters in Madison this morning:

02.19.11ALERT: If you are @ the protests in WI boycott the Subway in the square. The owners are the 2nd largest contributors to Gov. Walker

Waltz makes no attempt to hide the fact that he is a ‘progressive.’  The term is indicative of a mindset that wishes not only to hide the true intent of those who proudly own the description but promote an agenda that is based on a collectivist view of government and society where decisions concerning the personal lives of citizens can best be made by those in a centralized government complex.  The goal is to increase the scope of government so that workers, unions, and others can benefit from a confiscatory tax structure aimed at draining ‘the rich’ to pad the pockets of others.  

But perhaps the most troubling aspect of ‘Heartland Revolution’ is its coordinated efforts to create unrest across America, beginning in Wisconsin, but extending to Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Florida, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, New York, Maine, New Hampshire, and New Jersey.

The map displayed here on the group’s blog page will reveal their upcoming plans and targeted areas, along with their Twitter messages to members.

Curiously, the group refers to its protesters as ‘boots on the ground,’ and war terminology abounds.  A cursory scan of Heartland Revolution’s website will reveal that members view their efforts as a war, a revolution, with boots on the ground that are determined to intimidate conservatives, overthrow politicans who represent the voices of taxpayers, and target the businesses of those who support them.

Far from being for the ‘working poor,’ as the group claims, Waltz and his minions are dedicated to preverving and expanding union power and protecting the high salaries and benefit structures enjoyed by many who work for various government entities.  For example, in Wisconsin  the average city school teacher earns over $100,000 per year including pay and benefits, and pays next to nothing toward their retirement or healthcare. The benefits are paid overwhelmingly by taxpayers. Waltz and his group, however, believe that asking these teachers to contribute more to their plans like most Americans do is tantamount to ‘waging war against workers.’

It will be interesting to see in the coming weeks if the average American agrees with him.

If America doesn’t want to burn, it had better vote out all these Democrats and make sure they don’t have enough fire to light anything.

‘Together We Thrive’ Slogan Used In Tucson ‘Memorial’ Came From Organizing For America

Obama gave a very good speech last night.  But when he said:

“But what we can’t do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on one another. As we discuss these issues, let each of us do so with a good dose of humility. Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together…”

I would have believed it to be far more sincere had Obama mentioned his own spiteful and polarizing rhetoric –

Didn’t Obama spend more than 20 years with a church that by any reasonable standard would be readily identified as a racist hate organization?  You remember: that whole sordid “God Damn America” thing?

Didn’t Obama say of rural white Pennsylvanians, “they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations”?

Didn’t Obama command, “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun”?

Didn’t Obama command, “I want you to argue with them and get in their face.”?

Didn’t Obama say, “I don’t want to quell anger.  I think people are right to be angry.  I’m angry!”

Didn’t Obama tell his followers to “punish our enemies”?  With said “enemies” being Republicans?

And there are so many others.  Even ones that most people would find minor, such as the campaign slogan, “Fired up, ready to go!”, should sound sinister given the attack that Sarah Palin’s “Don’t retreat, reload” has received.

– and disavowed many of his own words as contributing to the hostile climate that we have seen spring up in his presidency.

Obama ran as the man who would transcend the political divide by rising above partisan and polarizing politics as usual.  That was his core promise to the American people.

But in reality – as affirmed by the American people – he has been the most polarizing president in American history.

It’s always do as I say, not as I do with Obama.

We’re not supposed to make a great tragedy political???

Tell it to Obama:

“Together We Thrive” was the slogan (and just when in the hell did Memorial services start getting “slogans”?)  of the Tucson memorial service.  You know, the one where the crowd cheered as though they were at a political rally, rather than at an event to mourn and honor people who were just ruthlessly gunned down by a psychopath.

Here are the T-shirts printed with the political slogan (yes, we can factually say that this is was very much a political slogan, having been the slogan of Obama and his “Organizing for America” organization):

And just when the hell was the last time you attended a memorial service for people who were gunned down and murdered or maimed, and received a T-shirt with bearing a political slogan???

The mainstream media continued to make it all about Obama, with the headline, “Obama Could Get Political Boost From Tucson Speech.”  They say:

President Barack Obama’s consoling, sermon-like speech at a service for the victims of the Arizona shooting rampage steered clear of politics, yet it may have given him one of the biggest political boosts since he took office two years ago.

“Steered clear of politics”???  The partisan crowd cheering at the “memorial service” were literally wearing their politics like T-shirts!!!

I mean, my God.  I’m just disappointed now that I didn’t get my Bush 9/11 victims memorial speech commemorative T-shirt, featuring a George W. Bush for president election slogan.

Meanwhile liberals are congratulating themselves at their marvelous “tolerance” expressed in Obama’s speech, even as they continue to pile on in their hate for conservatives like Sarah Palin.

And here’s the fruits of Obama’s ostensible call for tolerance and understanding:

Death threats to former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin have increased to unprecedented levels in the wake of Saturday’s shooting in Tucson, an aide tells ABC News.

Following the attack that seriously wounded Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and killed 6 others, Palin has found herself embroiled in a firestorm of controversy. Numerous left-wing commentators have accused Palin’s hard-hitting partisan rhetoric of influencing accused shooter Jared Lee Loughner.

The Daily Caller reported that dozens of Twitter users called for Sarah Palin’s death in the hours following the shooting, with some going so far as to wish for her assassination.

Major mainstream media figures continued to demonize Sarah Palin even after Obama’s speech.  Keith Olbermann attacked her for speaking out in her video one day after attacking her for not speaking out.  Bill Press said that Sarah Palin’s self-defense against the vicious leftwing attacks against her reminded him of a terrorist hostage video.

Sarah Palin’s worst “crime” was coming out with a map that “targeted” vulnerable districts for Republican election victories, including Gabrielle Giffords’ seat.  It is conveniently overlooked that the DEMOCRAT PARTY has used similar maps.  It is conveniently forgotten that powerful leftwing site Daily Kos targeted the moderate Gabrielle Giffords.  It is conveniently forgotten that Daily Kos featured an article literally saying of Gabrielle Giffords, “she’s dead to me.”

Funny.  I don’t recall Sarah Palin saying that Gabrielle Giffords was dead to her.  All she did was use a map the same way Democrats have been doing basically since Lewis and Clark rowed around America in their canoes.

All I can say is I watched the Tucson memorial service.  I thought the Native American blessing thing was bizarre (were any of the shooting victims Native American?).  I thought the University of Arizona president thought the event was to celebrate his university.  And I thought the cheering at what was supposed to be a memorial service was just flat-out wrong.

But even the cheering dims in sheer brazenness to the “Together We Thrive – Organizing for America” political sloganeering.

It very much seems to be ALL about politics to the left.  Because they don’t seem to believe in anything else but raw political power.  And that goes from the lowest leftwing blogger furiously writing in his parents’ basement all the way up to the president of the United States.

Why Won’t Obama Invite The Doctors Who Will Resign If His Health Agenda Passes?

Michelle Malkin had the best title for the propaganda event that saw white-coated doctors milling around on the White House lawn: “Spin Doctors for Obamacare.”  She said:

Creators Syndicate – Lights, camera, agitprop! The curtains opened on yet another artfully staged performance of Obamacare Theater this week. One hundred and fifty doctors took their places on the plush lawn outside the West Wing — many acting like “Twilight” groupies with cameras instead of credible medical professionals. The president approved the scenery: “I am thrilled to have all of you here today, and you look very spiffy in your coats.”

White House wardrobe assistants guaranteed the “spiffy.” As the New York Post’s Charles Hurt reported, the physicians “were told to bring their white lab coats to make sure that TV cameras captured the image.”  President Obama’s aides hastily handed out costumes to those who came in suits or dresses before the doc-and-pony show began.

But while Halloween came early to the Potomac, these partisan single-payer activists in White House-supplied clothing aren’t fooling anyone.

Obama’s spin doctors belong to a group called Doctors for America (DFA), which reportedly supplied the white lab coats.  The White House event was organized in conjunction with DFA and Organizing for America, Obama’s campaign outfit.

OFA and DFA are behind a massive new Obamacare ad campaign, letter-writing campaign and doctor-recruitment campaign. The supposedly “grassroots” nonprofit DFA is a spin-off of Doctors for Obama, a 2008 campaign arm that aggressively pushed the Democrats’ government health care takeover. DFA claims to have thousands of members with a “variety of backgrounds.” But there’s little diversity in their views on socialized medicine (98 percent want a taxpayer-funded public insurance option) — or in their political contributions.

And she went on to document what a bunch of political hacks the “Doctors for Obama” and various “spin doctor” groups mentioned above had been for Obama and the Democrats.

Gateway Pundit revealed the typical Obama White House hypocrisy of this event:

What the media won’t tell you is that the doctors were former members of the “Doctors for Obama” organization.

150 doctors including supporters from Doctors for America, the former Doctors for Obama organization, assembled on the White House lawn today for a Astroturfed show with the president.

The operational word is “Astroturf.”  As angry as the Democrats have been about “Astroturfing,” they sure have done a lot of it.  We’ve had the children of high level Obama supporters planted to ask planted questions at Astroturf health care town halls to go with the busloads of union thugs being sent even across state lines to attend town halls.  We’ve had Astroturf former Obama delegates fraudulently pretending to be doctors at town hall events.  And now we have real, but still Astroturf doctors being brought in for Astroturf photo-ops – complete with Astroturf white coats.

The truly dishonest thing was when Barack Obama deceitfully misrepresented these doctors to claim that they somehow represented the medical mainstream.  Obama said:

“When you cut through all the noise and all the distractions that are out there, I think what’s most telling is that some of the people who are most supportive of reform are the very medical professionals who know the health-care system best,” the president said.

But when you actually realize what is happening, you find that this scripted – and even costumed – White House event is an all too typical example of the “noise” and “distractions” coming from the very guy who is complaining about the “noise and distractions.”

My question to Obama is, “WHAT ABOUT THESE FOLKS?”

45% Of Doctors Would Consider Quitting If Congress Passes Health Care Overhaul

By TERRY JONES, INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY Posted 09/15/2009
Two of every three practicing physicians oppose the medical overhaul plan under consideration in Washington, and hundreds of thousands would think about shutting down their practices or retiring early if it were adopted, a new IBD/TIPP Poll has found.

The poll contradicts the claims of not only the White House, but also doctors’ own lobby — the powerful American Medical Association — both of which suggest the medical profession is behind the proposed overhaul.

It also calls into question whether an overhaul is even doable; 72% of the doctors polled disagree with the administration’s claim that the government can cover 47 million more people with better-quality care at lower cost.

The IBD/TIPP Poll was conducted by mail the past two weeks, with 1,376 practicing physicians chosen randomly throughout the country taking part. Responses are still coming in, and doctors’ positions on related topics — including the impact of an overhaul on senior care, medical school applications and drug development — will be covered later in this series.

Major findings included:

• Two-thirds, or 65%, of doctors say they oppose the proposed government expansion plan. This contradicts the administration’s claims that doctors are part of an “unprecedented coalition” supporting a medical overhaul.

It also differs with findings of a poll released Monday by National Public Radio that suggests a “majority of physicians want public and private insurance options,” and clashes with media reports such as Tuesday’s front-page story in the Los Angeles Times with the headline “Doctors Go For Obama’s Reform.”

Nowhere in the Times story does it say doctors as a whole back the overhaul. It says only that the AMA — the “association representing the nation’s physicians” and what “many still regard as the country’s premier lobbying force” — is “lobbying and advertising to win public support for President Obama’s sweeping plan.”

The AMA, in fact, represents approximately 18% of physicians and has been hit with a number of defections by members opposed to the AMA’s support of Democrats’ proposed health care overhaul.

• Four of nine doctors, or 45%, said they “would consider leaving their practice or taking an early retirement” if Congress passes the plan the Democratic majority and White House have in mind.

More than 800,000 doctors were practicing in 2006, the government says. Projecting the poll’s finding onto that population, 360,000 doctors would consider quitting.

• More than seven in 10 doctors, or 71% — the most lopsided response in the poll — answered “no” when asked if they believed “the government can cover 47 million more people and that it will cost less money and the quality of care will be better.”

This response is consistent with critics who complain that the administration and congressional Democrats have yet to explain how, even with the current number of physicians and nurses, they can cover more people and lower the cost at the same time.

The only way, the critics contend, is by rationing care — giving it to some and denying it to others. That cuts against another claim by plan supporters — that care would be better.

IBD/TIPP’s finding that many doctors could leave the business suggests that such rationing could be more severe than even critics believe.  Rationing is one of the drawbacks associated with government plans in countries such as Canada and the U.K. Stories about growing waiting lists for badly needed care, horror stories of care gone wrong, babies born on sidewalks, and even people dying as a result of care delayed or denied are rife.

In this country, the number of doctors is already lagging population growth.

From 2003 to 2006, the number of active physicians in the U.S. grew by just 0.8% a year, adding a total of 25,700 doctors.

Recent population growth has been 1% a year. Patients, in short, are already being added faster than physicians, creating a medical bottleneck.

The great concern is that, with increased mandates, lower pay and less freedom to practice, doctors could abandon medicine in droves, as the IBD/TIPP Poll suggests. Under the proposed medical overhaul, an additional 47 million people would have to be cared for — an 18% increase in patient loads, without an equivalent increase in doctors. The actual effect could be somewhat less because a significant share of the uninsured already get care.

Even so, the government vows to cut hundreds of billions of dollars from health care spending to pay for reform, which would encourage a flight from the profession.

The U.S. today has just 2.4 physicians per 1,000 population — below the median of 3.1 for members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the official club of wealthy nations.

Adding millions of patients to physicians’ caseloads would threaten to overwhelm the system. Medical gatekeepers would have to deny care to large numbers of people. That means care would have to be rationed.

“It’s like giving everyone free bus passes, but there are only two buses,” Dr. Ted Epperly, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, told the Associated Press. [Link added].

Hope for a surge in new doctors may be misplaced. A recent study from the Association of American Medical Colleges found steadily declining enrollment in medical schools since 1980.

The study found that, just with current patient demand, the U.S. will have 159,000 fewer doctors than it needs by 2025. Unless corrected, that would make some sort of medical rationing or long waiting lists almost mandatory.

[Snip]

Other states with government-run or mandated health insurance systems, including Maine, Tennessee and Hawaii, have been forced to cut back services and coverage.

This experience has been repeated in other countries where a form of nationalized care is common. In particular, many nationalized health systems seem to have trouble finding enough doctors to meet demand.

In Britain, a lack of practicing physicians means the country has had to import thousands of foreign doctors to care for patients in the National Health Service.

“A third of (British) primary care trusts are flying in (general practitioners) from as far away as Lithuania, Poland, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Switzerland” because of a doctor shortage, a recent story in the British Daily Mail noted.

British doctors, demoralized by long hours and burdensome rules, simply refuse to see patients at nights and weekends.

Likewise, Canadian physicians who have to deal with the stringent rules and income limits imposed by that country’s national health plan have emigrated in droves to other countries, including the U.S.

ObamaCare is all about rationing.

Doctors will begin retiring in droves because government-funded healthcare already has them operating at a loss.  On average, Medicare only pays 93% of the COST of providing care.  Doctors and hospitals subsidize Medicare patients at a loss by counting on private insurance-covered patients to allow them to operate at an overall profit.  If you expand government-covered patients, and reduce the role of private insurance, medical practice will simply become unprofitable.  Hence the mass retirements as physicians stop swimming against the tide of government red-tape and low-balling and just quit.

Why doesn’t Obama invite these doctors to the White House.  They can even give them white coats when they get there, to look more “doctorly” like they did with the pro-ObamaCare doctors.

If Obama had the best interests for the nation in his heart, he would want to hear from these doctors.  Instead, he’s doing everything in his power to shut such professionals out of the debate while he tries to ram his ideological and partisan agenda through.

ObamaCare will cost this country hundreds of billions – and over time trillions – of dollars at a time when we can least afford it, even as its imposition results in thousands of doctors choosing to retire at a time when we can least afford it.

Obama Increasingly Revealing His Dishonest Side On Health Care

It’s kind of funny.  Obama comes out and says:

“Now, let me just start by setting the record straight on a few things I’ve been hearing out here –“

and then proceeds to lie in the name of correcting the record.  Keith Hennesy goes into detail on 20 significant factual errors from Obama’s Portsmouth town hall (the link is to the first of 20 parts)

One of his most blatant lies was his statement about AARP:

– “We have the AARP on board because they know this is a good deal for our seniors.  (Applause.)”

– “Well, first of all, another myth that we’ve been hearing about is this notion that somehow we’re going to be cutting your Medicare benefits.  We are not.  AARP would not be endorsing a bill if it was undermining Medicare, okay?”

Obama DOESN’T have AARP – one of the most powerful lobbying organizations in the country – “on board.”  AARP has pointedly stated that they haven’t yet endorsed ANYTHING.  Obama’s press secretary says Obama merely “misspoke.”  But it was a profoundly self-serving “misspeaking.”  It’s like the grocery store or the bank: why do the errors always seem to be in their favor?

Obama’s out there “addressing ‘outlandish’ and ‘misleading’ claims about health reform.  But my God, he’s one the making the outlandish and misleading claims.

I mean, GEEZ!  This former community organizer has been angered that communities have organized.  And the Democrats are out demonizing conservatives for organizing even as Obama starts up his new “Organizing for America.”  Free speech was the highest form of dissent until Democrats took over everything and started demonizing any dissent.  Where do you go to get such naked chutzpah?

At his incredibly organized Portsmouth town hall event, Obama said:

“OK, I’ve only got time for a couple more questions.  Somebody here who has a concern about health care that has not been raised, or is skeptical and suspicious and wants to make sure that — because I don’t want people thinking I just have a bunch of plants in here.  All right, so I’ve got one right here  — and then I’ll ask the guy with two hands up because he must really have a burning question. (Laughter.)  All right, go ahead.”

The event was so scripted and so packed with Obama-friendly attenders that he literally couldn’t FIND someone who had a critical question.

What he got was this:

Her question:  “I saw — as I was walking in, I saw a lot of signs outside saying mean things about reforming health care.  How do kids know what is true, and why do people want a new system that can — that help more of us?”

And if a little girl that cute says that people “outside” are mean, then how can you possibly NOT believe here?

The Boston Globe reported:

Eleven-year-old Julia Hall asked: “How do kids know what is true, and why do people want a new system that can — that help more of us?”

The question opened the door for the president to respond to what he called an “underlying fear” among the public “that people somehow won’t get the care they need.”

Well, who was this little girl, who had been “randomly chosen” to ask a question after being “randomly picked by a computer” to attend the event?

Julia’s mother [Kathleen Manning] was an early Obama supporter and donor in Massachusetts during the presidential election, so she had previously met First Lady Michelle Obama, the Obama daughters Sasha and Malia, and Vice President Joe Biden.

In fact, she actually was a top mucky-muck in the Massachusetts Obama campaign operation.

What a shock that such a little girl with such a liberal Obama-supporting pedigree would be “randomly” selected to ask such a blatant set-up question (How come you’re so wonderful and the people who oppose your plan so evil?).  What are the odds that THAT kind of a coincidence would occur?

What are the odds that all the mean people with the mean signs somehow didn’t end up getting their names drawn in that “random” drawing so they could be INSIDE instead?

Given the fact that Obama is so scripted that he doesn’t even sneeze unless he’s told to by his teleprompter, pretty darn good.

The blatant audacity of hypocrisy.  These people are demonizing folks who are coming out to tell anybody who will hear them that they don’t want this terrible heath care bill as “plants” and “orchestrated” and “organized” (not to mention “angry mobs” and “racists” and “Nazis”).  But the plant simple truth is that these people are so phony that they can only assume that everybody else must be as phony as they are.

As I’ve mentioned before, we get Obama attending a phony, controlled, contrived, choreographed, orchestrated, organized, “Astroturf” town hall filled with plants even as his attack dogs demonize protesters as being “plants” and saying things like:

“I have not said that I was a single-payer supporter”

when he is on record having said:

“I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care program.”

and he is on the record as having said:

“The very first promise I made on this campaign was that as president I will sign a universal health care plan into law by the end of my first term in office.”

“I was for that thing before I said I had never been for that thing.”

You keep on clearing up them “misconceptions” from the other side, Barry Hussein.  Never mind all of your lies.

According to a Gallup poll released yesterday, the demonization of ObamaCare protesters has made 34% of Americans more sympathetic to the protests, versus only 21% who are less sympathetic of the protests.  Independents are sympathetic to the protesters by a more than than 2-1 margin.  And 61% of Americans believe the protests are “appropriate.”  Sorry, Nancy Pelosi.  I guess your riding in on that broom of yours to throw out swastikas and call Americans “un-American” isn’t working so good for you.

Harry Reid, the corresponding Democrat leader of the Senate, called town hall protesters “evil mongers,” and was clearly quite proud of his creativity.  I hope he’s as proud of his next job after he gets voted out of office.

Every poll is showing that support for the Democrats’ health care bill is plunging by the day.  Polls are showing that Obama’s own numbers are plunging massively, primarily as a result of his support for ObamaCare and for his demonization of average Americans who oppose his plan.  Obama now has only 47% support.  He no longer speaks for the country.  And he won’t listen as the country shouts at him.

But the less support Obama and the Democrats have, the more rabid they are in demonizing more and more and more ordinary Americans who oppose their agenda.

Democrats keep pounding on conservatives for “organizing.”  But 65% of independent voters now disapprove of Obama’s performance.

The Democrats are lying about their health care bill, and they are lying about the people who are increasingly opposing it.

Obama said:

Now, one of the things you’ve been doing in your campaign to change the situation is you’ve been striving for bipartisanship. I think it’s a wonderful idea, but my question is, if the Republicans actively refuse to participate in a reasonable way with reasonable proposals, isn’t it time to just say we’re going to pass what the American people need and what they want, without the Republicans?  (Applause.)

But not only have Republicans offered a plan for health care reform, but Fox News reported the irony that a Republican was actually offering a proposal at the very moment that Obama was claiming Republicans weren’t offering “reasonable proposals.”  And as for “reasonable,” there frankly aint a whole ought of Americans left who think YOUR proposal is reasonable, Mister President.

What do Republicans want?  They agree on seeking to implement cost control measures.  They want Congress to reign in the out-of-control and about-to-become-the-Titanic Medicare before we try to nationalize the remainder of our health care system.  They want to introduce “tort reform” such as “loser pays” or limiting huge “pain and suffering awards” (while keeping awards for actual damages) to prevent the lawsuits that are eating our medical industry alive.  They want to allow private insurance companies to be able to compete with one another across state lines.  There are 1300 private health care insurers; why not provide them with competitive incentive to lower their own costs?  They want to limit access to free health care to citizens rather than illegal aliens.  Republicans would like to see an end to federal and state mandates that require (as one examples) single males to purchase prenatal care and pap smear coverage which add to the costs of plans.  It’s not like the Republicans don’t have plenty of proposals; and it’s not like they’re not quite “reasonable” for a statist who wants government control above anything else.

Right now, the Democrats and Barack Obama are doing virtually everything they can – portraying Republicans as offering nothing, demonizing protesters, holding carefully orchestrated events of their own, ridiculing the notion of “death panels” while ignoring the fact that their plan WILL lead to rationing of care and passive euthansia – rather than actually BOTHERING TO DEAL WITH THE FACTS ON HEALTH CARE.

Sarah Palin was demonized for using the term “death panels,” but the egg is on the faces of those who demonized her:  she won, they lost.   The “death panel” language has been dropped from the Senate version.  And word is coming out that many Democrats are backing away from the government system that would actually result in “death panels” altogether.

But you have to understand that Barack Obama is the president who told a woman that her mother might be better off “taking the painkiller” than having life-prolonging surgery.  Barack Obama is the man who said this about his own grandmother having a hip replacement that would prolong her quality of life:

Q: And it’s going to be hard for people who don’t have the option of paying for it.

THE PRESIDENT: So that’s where I think you just get into some very difficult moral issues. But that’s also a huge driver of cost, right?

I mean, the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here.

Q: So how do you — how do we deal with it?

THE PRESIDENT: …you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance. It’s not determinative, but I think has to be able to give you some guidance. And that’s part of what I suspect you’ll see emerging out of the various health care conversations that are taking place on the Hill right now.

In other words, a death panel.

It’s buried deep within the beaurocracy, but don’t think it won’t become a part of any “public option.”

And Barack Obama is the man who appointed top level officials such as Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, John Holdren, and Cass Sunstein.  Cass Sunstein, by the way, has introduced a concept known as the “nudge.”  Nudging and tweaking the vaugeries of the law to impose the socialist agenda.

They can blame Republicans all they want, but given their total control over government, it’s THEIR OWN FAULT that they don’t have a health care bill that isn’t anything but a twisted ideological monstrosity.

Stop the lies and the demagoguery, Mr. President.  Stop the partisan ideology.  If you really want to reform health care, stop demonizing the authentic outrage American people and actually listen to them.  Make your reform geninely bipartisan, and don’t offer any more “change” than the people are willing to accept.