In the Wall Street Journal Friday evening, the president of the National Center for Policy Analysis explained the town-hall protests, and their significance:

“They’re un-American,” says House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “They’re spreading lies and distortions,” says senior White House adviser David Axelrod. They are “being funded and organized by out-of-district special-interest groups and insurance companies,” says the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

“They,” as you probably guessed, are the concerned citizens who’ve shown up at town-hall meetings across the country to express their displeasure over what President Barack Obama and the Democrats are about to do to our health-care system. But who are they really? What motivates them? And why are they so angry?

….. These are a very diverse group of people. Some of them are part of a 40,000-person network of former Obama supporters who are experiencing buyer’s remorse. Others are part of various disease networks, including patients concerned about the future of cancer care. There are networks of senior citizens worried about cuts in Medicare and the possible closing of their private Medicare insurance plans. There are Christian conservatives worried about taxpayer-funded abortions and subsidies for euthanasia. And there are an enormous number of people who are simply concerned about their health care.

For the most part, these individuals are not funded or organized by anybody. They really are grass roots. …. there is no way the kind of spontaneous outpouring we’ve witnessed could be bought or organized by anyone.

Why are they so angry? The reasons are manifold, but the single biggest reason is the arrogance of our elected officials in Washington. Think about it. For the past seven months a small group of politicians has been meeting behind-closed-doors with powerful special interests to decide whether you will be able to keep your current insurance, where you will be directed to get new insurance and at what price, what fines you and your employer will have to pay if you don’t conform, and how they’re going to get your doctor to change the way he or she practices medicine. In the process, they never asked you what you thought about anything. If you are not mad about this, odds are you don’t understand the situation.

….. most opponents of ObamaCare are much better informed than is commonly believed. At a typical town-hall meeting, the citizens are usually better versed on the Obama plan than the member of Congress. Some have actually read the 1,000-plus page House bill (HR3200), which most representatives have definitely not read. In my opinion, Mr. Obama is losing the health-care debate because his critics are better informed than his defenders.

….. (The White House has) chosen to scapegoat the insurance industry, making them out to be the villains in the health-care debate. These are the very same companies that have been negotiating with the administration behind closed doors in good faith, and are even spending millions of dollars on television ads supporting health reform.

The new tactics it is employing show the White House is completely out of touch with the American people. Those who attend town-hall meetings know they are not being organized or funded by anyone. And when the administration attacks their character and their motives and intentionally distorts the truth, it only adds to the anger people already feel.

And as more people learn that imported thugs are either keeping out legitimate attendees by taking available seats well before these events begin, and are in some cases attacking attendees themselves, the outrage will only increase.

From Hollywood:

August 21, 2009

Jim Caviezel, the star of the highly-anticipated new movie “The Stoning of Soraya M,” says being pro-life is more important to him than this acting career. In a new interview, Caviezel talks about his reason for opposing abortion and the adoption that changed his life and family.

Caviezel and his wife Kari recently became adoptive parents to an orphaned boy, Bo, and girl, LeLe, from China.

He told the Catholic Digest that the adoptions changed his life in ways he never imagined.

“Dennis Quaid told me a long time ago when he had his son Jack, ‘You’ll have emotions in you that you didn’t even know existed before you had a child.’ I now know what that feels like,” he said.

“Even though they’re adopted, it’s as strong as any instinct. That’s what blew me away,” Caviezel added. “I always thought if I adopted that I wouldn’t have the same feeling [as I would] if they were genetically my own children. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

The actor said a challenge from a colleague sparked his interest in pursuing an adoption.

“This guy I know said, ‘You’re pro-life. Tell you what, if you really believe in what you speak, adopt a child — not any child, he’s got to have a serious deficiency,’ (and I will become pro-life),” the Passion of the Christ star explained.

“He never changed his (position), but it convicted me. I don’t think he thought I would step up to the plate,” he said. …..

Go here for the rest of the story.

It’s here.

Sub-headline:

Despite his recent attempted reputation rehab, Zeke always ends up at the same place: not treating the somehow unworthy or letting them die.

It will go up at BizzyBlog on Monday morning (link won’t work until then) under my originally submitted title (“Zeke the Bleak Tries a Sneak”) after the blackout expires.

_______________________________________

The column’s early paragraphs remind readers of the three central incurable moral problems with ObamaCare, first mentioned in my “ObamaCare as a Moral Clunker” column a couple of weeks ago, and how they are still quite present:

…. there are three insurmountable moral objections to the president’s and Democrats’ versions of mislabeled “health care reform”:

1. They are all designed and destined to ration care. This will lead, as it has in state-run systems virtually everywhere, to long waits for even critical services. In Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, Harvard professor and chairman of President Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers Martin Feldstein confirmed this obvious and inconvenient truth, writing that “rationing health care is central to President Barack Obama’s health plan.”
2. Under the idea of “Comparative Effectiveness Research” (CER), which has already been funded to the tune of over $1 billion, the inevitable and unavoidable rationing just described would more than likely be carried out under a regime of care denial driven by age-based and “quality of life” criteria. This will, formally or informally, lead to a system similar to that found in the UK, where its National Health Service, under the concept of “Quality-Adjusted Life Years” (QALY), won’t pay for medical procedures that “cost” more than $50,000 for each year of additional life expected to be gained (“cost” is in quotes because I believe that such “costs” are often overloaded with fixed overhead that largely should not be relevant to such decisions).
3. The people who would be in charge of implementing a state-controlled system, which remains the objective of President Obama and Congress as long as they seek any kind of “public option” or government-managed “co-operative” set-up, have viewpoints that are ethically questionable at best and morally abhorrent at worst.

Ezekiel Emanuel is, of course, primarily a Point 3 problem, because his track record indicates no qualms about the presence of Points 1 and 2. There are many others who hang with President Obama who hold to similar beliefs. The president’s indifference to infanticide, and his suggestion at the ABC infomercial in June that the mother of the woman who had a pacemaker installed at age 99 would have been better off taking a pill instead, are both strong indicators that he is a kindred spirit with Zeke et al.

Zeke, as I refer to him, is attempting to rehabilitate his reputation based on an alleged conversion during the last “five to seven years.” He now wants us to believe that statist health care can be managed without rationing. The column shows that positions he has taken on health matters in just the past few years render that claim an epic fail.

Read the rest at PJM.

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UPDATE: There’s a great comment at PJM from “jerryofva” (after correcting typos) –

This is fundamentally a story about ethics. The question one has to ask is how did a Jew like Ezekiel Emanuel become a proponent of a medical care regime that Henrich Himmler would applaud. The entire idea of “QALY” based system smacks of disposing of the “lives unworthy of living” criteria established by Nazi Germany.” Is there a Rabbi in America who will step up and condemn Dr. Emanuel to the Jewish community?

That transitions into a reminder to anyone who believes otherwise that the regime that attempted to exterminate the Jews was socialist and left-wing. Here are 10 reasons. More discussion is here. A good related vid is here.

_________________________________________

UPDATE 2, August 23: The Washington Post editorially attempted to defend Emanuel yestereday, ginning up as much “we’re outrage” language as it could in a few paragraphs.

But the WaPo unwittingly ended up proving opponents’ point by citing the Lancet study I mentioned in the column –

Critics also point to a January 2009 piece in the Lancet in which Dr. Emanuel and co-authors discuss how to determine which patients should obtain scarce resources such as organs for transplant. The authors consider various possibilities — lotteries; first-come, first-served; sickest first — and propose a combined “complete lives” approach that would consider age, prognosis and maximizing lives saved. Importantly, this would not apply to all health care — only “when genuine scarcity makes saving everyone impossible.” Ms. Palin misleadingly describes this as a “rationing system” that “would refuse to allocate medical resources to the elderly, the infirm, and the disabled who have less economic potential.”

First of all, compare the full range of considerations Emanuel said he would include at Lancet — “youngest-first, prognosis, save the most lives, lottery, and instrumental value” — to what WaPo listed above (“age, prognosis and maximizing lives saved”). Conveniently editing, don’t you think?

Then go back to Point 1 at the very beginning of this post — “They (state-controlled health care systems) are all designed and destined to ration care. This will lead, as it has in state-run systems virtually everywhere, to long waits for even critical services.”

State-run care inevitably creates the conditions for what WaPo itself described as “genuine scarcity that makes saving everyone impossible.” It imposes those conditions on a nation as a permanent part of the landscape, causing a top-down care-decision process that the likes of Zeke Emanuel would manage, a la NICE in the UK, to inevitably kick in. NICE currently and routinely does what Sarah Palin describes and decries, i.e., it “refuse(s) to allocate medical resources to the elderly, the infirm, and the disabled who have less economic potential.”

Q.E.D.

Thanks, WaPo.

From Hollywood:

August 21, 2009

African-American pro-life advocates are delighted that reality television star Kourtney Kardashian has chosen life for her unborn child over abortion. In an interview with People magazine that LifeNews.com recently profiled, Kardashian talks at length about her decision-making process.

“My doctor told me there is nothing you will ever regret about having the baby, but he was like, ‘You may regret not having the baby.’ And I was like: That is so true,” she said. “And it just hit me. I got so excited.”

Alveda King, the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King and a woman who personally knows the pain and regret that accompanies having an abortion, told LifeNews.com she welcomes Kardashian’s decision.

“The courage of Kourtney Kardashian, and the hundreds of young women who are coming to similar conclusions regarding unplanned pregnancies is proof that abortion is not the answer” for women, she said.

King says Kourtney’s story shows that women need help and support in an unplanned pregnancy, not abortion.

“Kourtney is singing our song. We’ve been saying this in the Black Community for years. We love our children. We just need help with becoming and being mothers,” she said. “This shift in understanding about a woman’s life, her body and her baby is a welcome addition.” ….

Go here for the rest of the story.

At CNNMoney.com:

We’re more than halfway through the third quarter, and we haven’t returned to growth yet? And there’s only a “good chance” for the “near-term”?

I thought you guys predicted positive third-quarter growth not that long ago.

I’ll have to find it later due to other commitments, but a positive range for predicted third- and fourth-quarter growth, or a scenario for the second half that virtually requires the third quarter to be positive, is buried here in BizzyBlog somewhere, or elsewhere ….

UPDATE: I don’t know how you get to this from what Bernanke said, but here’s how at least one press report interpreted it:

The United States is expected to post positive growth in the third quarter

UPDATE 2: Now I remember, from this post a month ago:

The chart doesn’t need a rework despite the late-July comprehensive GDP revision, because the current combined 1st and 2nd quarter actuals of -7.4% (-6.4% in the first and -1.0% in the second) are only slightly worse than the -7.3% in the original analysis (-5.5% in the first and -1.8% in the second).

If you predict a negative third quarter (which I think is what Bernanke is saying), then, as seen above, you put a lot of pressure on the fourth quarter to be robust. But Bernanke is saying recovery “could be slow.” I think there’s reason to question whether the recovery will be there. Of course, I hope I’m wrong, and that growth does return. At this point, any recovery will clearly have nothing to do with anything the Obama administration did, while a continued recession would only be evidence that its statist outlook and/or additional statist legislation continues to rattle those who could get this economy moving again, keeping them on the sidelines.

As noted at this late June post, former Spanish Prime Minister José Aznar, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, admonished world leaders not to let Iran go on its merry way in the wake of an election marred by rampant fraud followed by a government crackdown:

It would be a shame …. if our passivity gave carte blanche to a tyrannical regime to finish off the dissidents and persist with its revolutionary plans.

Well, it is a shame, and a disgrace, because passivity and carte blanche is exactly what has followed.

You don’t see much in the press about Iranian dissidents any more, do you? At best, there are only occasional references to ongoing repression. Powerline notes that we are standing by and watching “Iran’s Great Purge.”

And the ignoramuses in the White House and Foggy Bottom are probably scratching their heads wondering how Ahmadinejad and Ali Hoseyni Khamenei, the guy who really runs it all with “virtually unlimited authority,” could do what they just did after the nicey-nice, carte-blanchey thing we did for them a few weeks ago (“Obama Frees Iranian Terror Masters”). Those who were freed, as Andrew McCarthy noted, “were coordinating terrorist attacks in Iraq that have killed hundreds — yes, hundreds — of American soldiers and Marines.”

From the Washington Times: “Terror suspect tapped as Iran defense minister” –

Ahmad Vahidi, nominated Thursday by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to serve as Iran’s defense minister, is a suspected international terrorist sought by Interpol in connection with a deadly 1994 attack on a Jewish community center in Argentina.

Mr. Vahidi, a former commander of the elite unit of the Revolutionary Guard known as the Quds Force, was one of 15 men and three women named to Cabinet posts by Mr. Ahmadinejad as he begins his second term in office. The choice is likely to further chill relations between Iran and the international community, especially Israel.

…. The bombing, which killed 85 people, is thought to have been carried out by members of Hezbollah, a Lebanese militia and political party with close links to Iran.

Kenneth Katzman, a senior analyst on Iraq and Iran at the Congressional Research Service, said that Mr. Vahidi is also suspected of having played a role in a 1996 attack on the U.S. Air Force barracks in Saudi Arabia known as Khobar Towers.

…. “This sends a signal that the Iranians are unconcerned with anybody’s sensibilities about the regime’s prior record of terrorism,” said Kenneth Piernick, a former chief of the FBI’s Iran-Hezbollah unit.

Further, BBC reports that:

He (Vahidi) is a close and hardline ally of Mr Ahmadinejad, suggesting the president is already getting ready for student protests that are expected to break out when the university term begins in a month.

Regardless of whether or not Iran’s dissidents miraculously prevail, Barack Obama blew what Victor Davis Hanson described at the time as “the Moment” to assert moral clarity, to orchestrate worldwide pressure, and put a stake into the heart of the world’s most deadly terrorist regime.

From Castel Grandolfo, Italy:

Aug 20, 2009 / 10:13 am

Rajiv Janine is an 18 year-old Sri Lankan who was left without his arms after a train accident. On Wednesday he fulfilled his dream of meeting Pope Benedict XVI and receiving his blessing after yesterday’s general audience.

Rajiv told the Holy Father his story and asked for a special blessing for his brother, who will soon be ordained to the priesthood, and for his sister who is a nun in the Philippines. His older sister who helps take care of him was also present at the audience.

The prosthetic arms that Rajiv wears were purchased with help from a group of Italians that is also engaged in a series of solidarity projects in Sri Lanka to aid those affected by the 2004 tsunami, Fr. Giuseppe Iasso explained.

He told L’Osservatore Romano the money raised to help Rajiv was collected by “sending letters and knocking on the doors of parishes and families until $56,000 dollars were raised. Many kids gave all of their savings and even an elderly woman in a wheelchair helped us with her savings.”

The meeting with Pope Benedict took place after the priest sent a letter to the Holy Father recounting Rajiv’s story. ….

Go here for the rest of the story.

On Sunday evening, NewsBusters colleague Noel Sheppard highlighted a health care-related story from the Canadian Press (CP), which is that country’s rough equivalent to the USA’s Associated Press.

It appears that the CP is more open to reporting inconvenient news than is “our” AP, judging from a report earlier that day by the CP’s Jennifer Graham. In an interview with Graham, the incoming president of the Canadian Medical Association said that the supposedly idyllic wonderland known as Canadian medical care is in deep trouble. Lo and behold, Graham actually reported it:

The incoming president of the Canadian Medical Association says this country’s health-care system is sick and doctors need to develop a plan to cure it.

Dr. Anne Doig says patients are getting less than optimal care and she adds that physicians from across the country – who will gather in Saskatoon on Sunday for their annual meeting – recognize that changes must be made.

“We all agree that the system is imploding, we all agree that things are more precarious than perhaps Canadians realize,” Doing (sic) said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

Given the current debate in the U.S. over health care and private insurance, and the president’s seeming determination to force a state-controlled and ultimately state-run health care regime onto the remaining portion of the system that is still privately run, you would think that the story out of Canada might have attracted the interest of U.S. establishment media outlets. Noel thought that “It’s going to be absolutely delicious to see how this gets reported by Obama-loving media in the next 24 hours.”

Four days later, deliciously proving that “the Obama-loving media” is more than a mere slogan, there has virtually no original source establishment media coverage of what Ms. Doig said, or of anything else relayed in the Graham’s CP report.

The incoming CMA director’s last name made searching for results pretty easy. What I found in a search on “Doig” at the following media sites was the following:

• The New York Times — nothing.
• The Washington Post — zip.
• The Los Angeles Times — nothing relevant.
• The AP, whose search scope is seven days — nada.

A Google News search on “Anne Doig” for August 16-20 came back with a whopping 41 relevant items. Only about 20 of those were from sources within the U.S. The majority of those results were op-ed columns by Mona Charen, Larry Elder, and others, plus think-tank contributions from Heritage and the National Center for Policy Analysis. Original news reports appear to have been limited to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (a four-sentence snippet), the Washington Times (in an editorial), and NewsMax (in the final paragraphs of a related article about health care rationing in the Canadian province of British Columbia).

As Noel also pointed out on Sunday, both the outgoing and incoming CMA presidents are advocates of expanding private medical services up north. While our president and the congressional majority are attempting to move health care decisively in a statist direction, the establishment media has apparently decided that news consumers couldn’t possibly benefit from learning that there is significant sentiment in Canada’s medical community for going the opposite way.

I mean, really, how silly of a thought is that? (/sarcasm)

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Here’s what August looks like thus far (from August 19, 2009 and August 20, 2008 Daily Treasury Statements):

Same old, same old — except that this time, we’re beginning the second year of consecutive monthly declines in receipts from economic activity. That’s because we’re now in the 14th full month of the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy, now the POR Recession/”Repression” As Normal People Define It.

The really troubling part of this is the withholdings decline. A lot of that will disappear at the end of the month because August 2009 has five high-receipt Mondays, while August 2008 had four. Since a typical Monday is good for about $17 billion in withholding receipts, August 2009 total collections may ultimately end up roughly equalling August 2008. The figures through August 19, 2009 and August 20, 2008 above each include three Mondays, and thus more accurately reflect the ongoing downward spiral than the month-end report will show.

Don’t be fooled. Besides, September 2008 had five Mondays and September 2009 will only have four, so the September decline in withholding collections will tilt in the other direction, and will thus be a bit higher.

If you were a reporter trying to gauge the credibility of Obama administration’s protests that it is really serious when it says that it will honor patient, doctor, and family treatment wishes in serious illness situations if the government takes an exponentially greater role in health care, you might look into how areas of health care already controlled by the government are dealing with these sensitive matters.

Apparently either no journalist has cared to look, or if anyone has looked, they haven’t found anything they believe is worth reporting.

In today’s Wall Street Journal, Jim Towey, a former director of the Bush White House’s Office of Faith-Based Initiatives and founder of the nonprofit Aging with Dignity, found a troubling, newsworthy, death-encouraging decision that has already been made during Barack Obama’s short term in office.

As Towey chronicles and explains, it’s in the Veterans Administration, and it really is appalling. Here are key excerpts from his column (bolds are mine):

If President Obama wants to better understand why America’s discomfort with end-of-life discussions threatens to derail his health-care reform, he might begin with his own Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). He will quickly discover how government bureaucrats are greasing the slippery slope that can start with cost containment but quickly become a systematic denial of care.

Last year, bureaucrats at the VA’s National Center for Ethics in Health Care advocated a 52-page end-of-life planning document, “Your Life, Your Choices.” It was first published in 1997 and later promoted as the VA’s preferred living will throughout its vast network of hospitals and nursing homes. After the Bush White House took a look at how this document was treating complex health and moral issues, the VA suspended its use. Unfortunately, under President Obama, the VA has now resuscitated “Your Life, Your Choices.”

Who is the primary author of this workbook? Dr. Robert Pearlman, chief of ethics evaluation for the center, a man who in 1996 advocated for physician-assisted suicide in Vacco v. Quill before the U.S. Supreme Court and is known for his support of health-care rationing.

“Your Life, Your Choices” presents end-of-life choices in a way aimed at steering users toward predetermined conclusions, much like a political “push poll.” For example, a worksheet on page 21 lists various scenarios and asks users to then decide whether their own life would be “not worth living.”

The circumstances listed include ones common among the elderly and disabled: living in a nursing home, being in a wheelchair and not being able to “shake the blues.” There is a section which provocatively asks, “Have you ever heard anyone say, ‘If I’m a vegetable, pull the plug’?” There also are guilt-inducing scenarios such as “I can no longer contribute to my family’s well being,” “I am a severe financial burden on my family” and that the vet’s situation “causes severe emotional burden for my family.”

When the government can steer vulnerable individuals to conclude for themselves that life is not worth living, who needs a death panel?

….. only one organization was listed in the new version as a resource on advance directives: the Hemlock Society (now euphemistically known as “Compassion and Choices”).

This hurry-up-and-die message is clear and unconscionable. Worse, a July 2009 VA directive instructs its primary care physicians to raise advance care planning with all VA patients and to refer them to “Your Life, Your Choices.” Not just those of advanced age and debilitated condition—all patients. America’s 24 million veterans deserve better.

Towey wraps by challenging the president “to walk two blocks from the Oval Office and pull the plug on ‘Your Life, Your Choices.’”

Don’t hold your breath, Jim — waiting for the president to make that walk, or waiting for anyone else in the press to note a federally-controlled health care system that is realizing the worst fears of those who believe in the dignity of life.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Yesterday, I heard about the last two-thirds of Sean Hannity’s 164th radio interview with Mitt Romney in the past three years (that’s a guess, and it may be low).

As has frequently been the case in recent months, Hannity was in the midst of giving Romney an open mic to repeatedly fib about the results of state-controlled Commonwealth Care aka RomneyCare in Massachusetts, the state he (Romney) used to govern.

To hear Objectively Unfit Mitt tell it, it’s working out fine, almost everyone is covered, costs are only a little bit higher than expected (even that’s the fault of the rest of the country), and access to care is fine.

Horse manure.

In a March Boston Globe op-ed, Susan L. King, whose conclusions and recommendations I don’t agree with, nonetheless put forth these facts:

• “The state has more than 200,000 without coverage, and the count can only go up with rising unemployment.”
• “Spending for the Commonwealth Care subsidized program has doubled, from $630 million in 2007 to an estimated $1.3 billion for 2009, which is not sustainable.”

As to access, look at how many days you have to wait to see a doctor in Boston (average of cardiology, dermatology, OB/GYN, orthopedic surgery, and family practice at Page 9 of this PDF; cute related vid is here; HT TNR):

In Atlanta, it’s 11 days. To be fair, it was higher in Boston before RomneyCare, but average wait times have nonetheless increased to their current 50-day level. Oh by the way, the linked video also notes that insurance costs are three times higher in Massachusetts than in Georgia.

Things are working out sooooooo well in Massachusetts that people, especially the potentially and actually more productive, are voting with their feet and leaving the Bay State.

The seemingly daily free passes Hannity gives Mitt Romney have been intolerable for quite a while.

It would be one thing if this only had to do with one politician’s career. But defeating statist health care is about saving America as we know it in so many ways and on so many levels, and Hannity is increasing the risk that the resistance to statism will fail.

Mitt Romney, whether he admits it or not, is the architect of the poorly-working model for ObamaCare. By giving Romney free rein to spread his falsehoods, Hannity muddles the opposition message. Sensible conservatives everywhere should be asking “But what about Massachusetts?” every time Obama and his apparatchiks drone on about competition, cost savings, keeping your insurance, access, and all of the other flat-out lies they are selling as they attempt what Mark Steyn has so perfectly described as “the nationalization of your body.”

By allowing Mitt Romney a national platform to constantly claim that the situation in Massachusetts is really not that bad, or is even okay, Hannity is seriously compromising that effort. As far as I’m concerned, he will be partially to blame if any form of ObamaCare becomes law. Romney’s share of the blame will, of course, be much greater.

____________________________________________________________

RELATED: I didn’t get to hear author, broadcaster, and friend Gregg Jackson’s call to Hannity shortly after the Romney interview yesterday.

Here, via e-mail, is Gregg’s take on the call. Once again, Hannity on Romney tried to defend the indefensible –

Sean, on your radio show today, I asked you how you could continue to criticize Obama’s proposed government-run healthcare plan when you in fact endorsed Mitt Romney for president of the United States (whose own quasi-socialist healthcare bill established abortion with a $50 co-pay as a “healthcare benefit” (and the same man you continue to support and promote on your show as you shamelessly did today, in fact, right after you rudely cut me off.)

You had no answer to my very simple and straightforward question and could only claim that RomneyCare didn’t fund abortions, and only a few minutes later, totally contradicting yourself, stating that Romney attempted to veto the abortion provision and that it was “the Democrats in the legislature” who forced him to include it in the bill.

Suffice it to say that you are wrong on both counts, Sean.

First, RomneyCare established $50 co-pay abortions as a “healthcare benefit.” And Romney signed it into law AFTER his phony “pro-life conversion” ….. And by the way, Sean, neither Romney nor any of his people have ever disputed that Romneycare established abortion with a $50 co-pay as a “healthcare benefit.” I noticed how you conveniently omitted RomneyCare’s abortion provision from your discussion with Romney today.

Secondly, although Romney did veto at least 8 other provisions in CommonwealthCare, he never vetoed any provision for government funded abortions. In fact, not only did RomneyCare establish abortion as a “healthcare benefit,” Sean, but Romney also appointed a Planned Parenthood member to a permanent position on his healthcare advisory board with no pro-life member (AFTER his supposed “pro-life conversion.”)

When you combine Hannity’s endless softball Romney interviews with his insufferable, enthusiastic support for statism as he personally plugs the “new, lean, green, strong” General Motors, it’s impossible to avoid the fact that Sean has a serious credibility problem — one that is entirely self-created. Even worse, it’s also impossible to avoid the fact that he is selling out the cause of sensible conservatism (which is, of course, a redundant term).

…. The government isn’t paying its bills, and expects small businesses to be able to wait, and wait, and wait without consequence:

Hundreds of auto dealers in the New York area have withdrawn from the government’s Cash for Clunkers program, citing delays in getting reimbursed by the government, a dealership group said Wednesday.

The Greater New York Automobile Dealers Association, which represents dealerships in the New York metro area, said about half its 425 members have left the program because they cannot afford to offer more rebates. They’re also worried about getting repaid.

If you think this is bad, imagine what it would be like under statist health care.