Native Americans and the Public Option

After decades of government-run care, some Indians are finally saying enough.

wsj.com
By TERRY ANDERSON

Bozeman, Mont.

Montana Sen. Max Baucus, a leading architect of national health-care reform, visited the Flathead Indian Reservation near Pablo, Mont., in May, and he was confronted with a surprising critique. "I hope any [new health-care] plan does not forget the nation's first people," Dr. LeAnne Muzquiz told the senator. Another person in the audience, according to the newspaper the Missoulian, followed up by telling the senator that the legislation pending in Congress would in fact do just that.


Native Americans have received federally funded health care for decades. A series of treaties, court cases and acts passed by Congress requires that the government provide low-cost and, in many cases, free care to American Indians. The Indian Health Service (IHS) is charged with delivering that care.

The IHS attempts to provide health care to American Indians and Alaska Natives in one of two ways. It runs 48 hospitals and 230 clinics for which it hires doctors, nurses, and staff and decides what services will be provided. Or it contracts with tribes under the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act passed in 1975. In this case, the IHS provides funding for the tribe, which delivers health care to tribal members and makes its own decisions about what services to provide
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Death Threats Against Bush at Protests Ignored for Years

zomblog
Aug 19, 2009

On Wednesday, August 12, a man holding a sign that said “Death to Obama” at a town hall meeting in Maryland was arrested and turned over to the Secret Service, which is pursuing an investigation into charging him with threatening the president.

As well they should. I fully and absolutely agree with this arrest, since anyone who threatens the president is breaking the law and should be prosecuted. It doesn’t matter that Obama was not at the meeting nor that the man was unarmed: the threat all on its own is a federal crime, according to the United States Code.

I support the arrest and prosecution of any person who threatens Obama or any president of the United States.


Bush was threatened frequently — but no arrests

But the story of this arrest got me to thinking: Why was no one ever arrested for threatening President Bush at protests, when they displayed signs in public that called for his death?

Many readers may naively think, “The answer is obvious: no protester was ever arrested for threatening Bush at a protest because no one ever threatened him at a protest. Who would be that stupid? I certainly never heard of any such threats.”

Alas, if only it were that simple. Because the bald fact is that people threatened Bush at protests all the time by displaying menacing signs and messages — exactly as the anti-Obama protester just did in Maryland. Yet for reasons that are not entirely clear, not a single one of those Bush-threateners at protests was ever arrested, questioned, or investigated.

Don’t believe me? Then keep reading. Because this essay exists for one reason only: To prove beyond any doubt that explicit and implicit threats to Bush’s life were commonly displayed at public protests throughout his term as president. Below this introduction you will find dozens of examples of such threats — unaltered photographs from a wide variety of sources, along with links verifying their authenticity.

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Nancy and the Astroturfers

lookingattheleft.com
Denver
August 6 2009


This was the scene when I arrived at Stout Street Clinic in downtown Denver. Nancy Pelosi is to pay a visit to the clinic within the hour. About 200 people opposed to Obama’s healthcare agenda braved the mile high Denver sun and high temperatures to show their opposition. Their signs indicate that they are well aware that they have been vilified and targeted in an Oval Office astroturfing campaign designed to discredit their opposition.




“When asked by a reporter whether the protests at various town-hall meetings represented legitimate grassroots opposition or were manufactured “AstroTurf” stunts, Nancy Pelosi replied, ‘I think they’re AstroTurf. You be the judge. They’re carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on health care.’” - Jonah Goldberg

Commonly at the tea parties and anti-big government protests hammers and sickles are used to protest democrat policies. The Democrat Party doesn’t seem to have a problem with wall to wall hammers and sickles and has never complained publicly. Maybe they think it’s a compliment? I find that interesting and very telling.

This clinic is adjacent to Denver’s day laborer pickup street, Park Avenue. Being fluent in Spanish, El Marco asked these guys “¿hablan ingles?” “casi nada” was the reply from our amigo on the left. I asked him if he could tell me what the signs said. “¿Quien sabe?” (who knows?) was all he said to me, with a big grin. I’m kicking myself for not asking them how much they were getting paid to support the grassroots.

The irony of their lack of comprehension of the signs they were holding was heightened by the fact that they were the most elaborate and detailed signs of either group.

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This is what mob rule looks like

michellemalkin.com
By Michelle Malkin
August 4, 2009 10:52 PM

I’ve noted the irony of the unhinged Left moaning about the “insane rage” of the Right many, many, many, many, many times.

Allahpundit reports tonight that the DNC is now decrying “mob rule.” Lefty bloggers are comparing grass-roots conservatives to Holocaust deniers and waving around the moral equivalence card to smear peaceful Tea Party activists as dangers to democracy and civility (check that link and you’ll get a chuckle out of Media Matters pointing to my archive exposing anti-war fraudsters, Code Pink thieves and home stalkers, and rock-throwing moonbats as some sort of proof that supporting the law-abiding Tea Party movement is hypocritical).
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The Folly of Hate-Crime Laws

washingtonpost.com
By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, August 4, 2009

James von Brunn, who is alleged to have opened fire and killed a guard at the Holocaust Memorial Museum, is apparently a consummate bigot. His former wife said that his hatred of blacks and Jews "ate him alive like a cancer," so it might seem appropriate that in addition to having been indicted last week for murder and gun-law violations, he was also charged with hate crimes. At age 89, he proves that you are never too old to hate.

He also proves the stupidity of hate-crime laws. A prime justification for such laws is that some crimes really affect a class of people. The hate-crimes bill recently passed by the Senate puts it this way: "A prominent characteristic of a violent crime motivated by bias is that it devastates not just the actual victim . . . but frequently savages the community sharing the traits that caused the victim to be selected." No doubt. But how is this crime different from most other crimes?

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Legalizing Deception: Why “Gender Identity” Should Not be Added to Anti-discrimination Legislation

Catholic Exchange
June 25th, 2009
by Dale O'Leary

Certain national and international groups are pushing for the addition of “gender identity” and “gender expression” to anti-discrimination laws. According to activists, gender identity is defined as: “An individual’s self–perception or inner sense of being a man, a male, a woman, a female, both, neither, butch, femme, two-spirit, bigender, or another configuration of gender. Gender identity often matches the gender typically associated with the person’s anatomy but sometimes does not” and gender expression refers to: “Any combination of how someone outwardly presents external characteristics behaviors that are socially defined as masculine or feminine, including dress, mannerisms speech patterns and social interactions.”[1]

For example, a bill introduced in the Maryland legislature reads as follows: “An owner or operator of a place of public accommodation …may not refuse, withhold from, or deny to any person any of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, or privileges of the place of public accommodation because of the person’s … gender identity.” This would mean that males dressed as females could use women’s restrooms and locker rooms.
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Ten reasons why America’s health care system is in better condition than you might suppose

August, 2009
Hoover Digest
By Scott W. Atlas

Medical care in the United States is derided as miserable compared to health care systems in the rest of the developed world. Economists, government officials, insurers, and academics beat the drum for a far larger government role in health care. Much of the public assumes that their arguments are sound because the calls for change are so ubiquitous and the topic so complex. Before we turn to government as the solution, however, we should consider some unheralded facts about America’s health care system.

1. Americans have better survival rates than Europeans for common cancers. Breast cancer mortality is 52 percent higher in Germany than in the United States and 88 percent higher in the United Kingdom. Prostate cancer mortality is 604 percent higher in the United Kingdom and 457 percent higher in Norway. The mortality rate for colorectal cancer among British men and women is about 40 percent higher.

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Homosexual Activists Intimidate American Psychiatric Association into Removing Homosexuality from List of Disorders

Conservative Colloquium
Posted by foospro86 on October 1, 2007
BY RYAN SORBA

“It was never a medical decision—and that’s why I think the action came so fast…It was a political move.”

“That’s how far we’ve come in ten years. Now we even have the American Psychiatric Association running scared.”
-Barbara Gittings, Same-gender sex activist

Let us, for a moment, rewind to the year1970. In this year, same-gender sex activists began a program of intimidation aimed at the American Psychiatric Association (APA). Activist Frank Kameny states the movement’s objective clearly, “I feel that the entire homophile movement…is going to stand or fall upon the question of whether or not homosexuality is a sickness, and upon our taking a firm stand on it…” (The Gay Crusaders, by Kay Tobin and Randy Wicker, p. 98)


In 1970, psychiatrists generally considered sexual desires toward members of one’s own gender to be disordered. Karoly Maria Kertbeny’s term, “homosexual” was the official descriptor for those inflicted by this mental-physical disassociative disorder. Psychiatry’s authoritative voice influenced public opinion, which at the time was negative toward same-gender sex. Of course, public sexual activity in parks and public restrooms contributed to societies negative views about the types of people that did such things, but “scientific opinion” was crucial in the public attitude.

Led by radicals like Frank Kameny, same-gender sex activists attacked many psychiatrists publicly, as Newsweek describes, “But even more than the government, it is the psychiatrists who have experienced the full rage of the homosexual activists. Over the past two years, gay-lib organizations have repeatedly disrupted medical meetings, and three months ago—in the movements most aggressive demonstration so far—a group of 30 militants broke into a meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in Washington, where they turned the staid proceedings into near chaos for twenty minutes. ‘We are here to denounce your authority to call us sick or mentally disordered,’ shouted the group’s leader, Dr. Franklin Kameny, while the 2,000 shocked psychiatrists looked on in disbelief. ‘For us, as homosexuals, your profession is the enemy incarnate. We demand that psychiatrists treat us as human beings, not as patients to be cured!’” (Newsweek, 8-23-71, p.47)

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