Oregon Denied Cancer Treatment to Dying Woman Offered Death Instead

Here’s a real life example of what President Obama wants to do nation-wide!

State denies cancer treatment, offers suicide instead
'To say, we'll pay for you to die, but not pay for you to live, it's cruel'

State officials have offered a lung cancer patient the option of having the Oregon Health Plan, set up in 1994 to ration health care, pay for an assisted suicide but not for the chemotherapy prescribed by her physician.

The story appears to be a happy ending for Barbara Wagner, who has been notified by a drug manufacturer that it will provide the expensive medication, estimated to cost $4,000 a month, for the first year and then allow her to apply for further treatment, according to a report in the Eugene Register-Guard.

But the word from the state was coverage for palliative care, which would include the state's assisted suicide program, would be allowed but not coverage for the cancer treatment drugs.

"To say to someone, we'll pay for you to die, but not pay for you to live, it's cruel," Wagner told the newspaper. "I get angry. Who do they think they are?"

She said she was devastated when the state health program refused coverage for Tarceva, the drug her doctor ordered for treatment of her lung cancer.

The refusal came in an unsigned letter from LIPA, the company that runs the state program in that part of Oregon.
"We had no intent to upset her, but we do need to point out the options available to her under the Oregon Health Plan," Dr. John Sattenspiel, senior medical director for LIPA, told the newspaper.

"I understand the way it was interpreted. I'm not sure how we can lift that. The reality is, at some level (doctor-assisted suicide) could be considered as a palliative or comfort care measure."

The 64-year-old Wagner lives in a low-income apartment in Springfield with her dog, the newspaper said.

State officials say the Oregon Health Plan prioritizes treatments, with diagnoses and ailments deemed the most important, such as pregnancy, childbirth and preventive care for children at the top of the list. Other treatments rank below, officials said.

"We can't cover everything for everyone," Dr. Walter Shaffer, a spokesman for the state Division of Medical Assistance Programs, told the paper. "Taxpayer dollars are limited for publicly funded programs. We try to come up with policies that provide the most good for the most people."

He said many cancer treatments are a high priority, but others reflect the "desire on the part of the framers of this list to not cover treatments that are futile."

Wagner, however, is ending up with the treatment needed when her lung cancer, in remission for two years, returned.

She reported a representative for the pharmaceutical company called and notified her the drug would be provided for at least the first year.

"We have been warning for years that this was a possibility in Oregon," said the "Bioethics Pundit" on the Bioethics blog. "Medicaid is rationed, meaning that some treatments are not covered. But assisted suicide is always covered."
"This isn't the first time this has happened either," the blogger wrote. "A few years ago a patient who needed a double organ transplant was denied the treatment but would have been eligible for state-financed assisted suicide. But not to worry. Just keep repeating the mantra: There are no abuses with Oregon's assisted suicide law. There are no abuses.

WorldNet Daily, 6/19/08

Bam Aide, Axelrod, Pocketing Millions of "Special Intersts" Ads

CORPORATE SHILLS FOR 'CHANGE'

MONEY from pharmaceutical firms and health-care companies is evil and corrupting -- except when key members of Team Obama are pocketing it.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs derides grassroots opponents of socialized health care as industry-funded lackeys with questionable motives and conflicts of interest. But what about the corporate shills at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.?

Two weeks ago, the White House embraced $150 million in drug-industry ads supporting ObamaCare. This week, Bloomberg News reported that White House senior adviser and chief campaign strategist David Axelrod's former public-relations firm, AKPD Message and Media, has raked in some $24 million in ad contracts supporting ObamaCare -- along with another PR firm, GMMB, run by other Obama strategists.

The ads are funded by Big Pharma, the AARP, AMA and the Service Employees International Union. In trademark Axelrod style, the special-interest coalition adopted faux-grassroots names -- first under the banner of "Healthy Economy Now" and more recently as "Americans for Stable Quality Care."

Because, well, "Corporate Shills for Hope and Change" doesn't have quite the same ring of authenticity.

Axelrod was president and sole shareholder of AKPD from 1985 until last December, when he resigned to take his White House position. His son, Michael, works there. So does former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe.

Axelrod is prominently featured on AKPD's Web site. AKPD still consults with Axelrod on "strategy and research" for the Democratic National Committee. The firm owes him $2 million.

That Axelrod and his old firm benefit mutually from their roles selling ObamaCare should be gobsmackingly obvious. Axelrod pushes the White House plan on TV news shows. AKPD derives mega-income from ad contracts selling the White House-endorsed plan. The windfall allows AKPD to settle its debts with Axelrod, whose name, face and high-powered ties are critical to future wheel-greasing for AKPD -- and future salary-earning for Axelrod's son and close associates.

White House flack Gibbs called any suggestion that Axelrod benefits from the relationship "ridiculous." Retorted Gibbs: "David has left his firm to join public service." So when Republicans trade power and access, Team Obama calls that being "in cahoots" with business. But when noble servants like Axelrod do it, it's called "public service."

What else is Axelrod keeping from full public view? AKPD is just one of his influence-peddling operations. Housed in the same office as AKPD is Axelrod's secretive former PR shop, ASK Public Strategies. That firm also owes Axelrod money from a buy-out deal -- five annual installments of $200,000 each.

Axelrod has remained notoriously tight-lipped about ASK's corporate business. One client that came to light: utility company Commonwealth Edison in Chicago.

Axelrod ran a fear-mongering campaign in Illinois for ComEd in support of a huge utility-rate hike -- and failed to disclose that his bogus grassroots ads (under the guise of public-interest group "Consumers Organized for Reliable Electricity") were funded by the utility. ComEd employees also donated nearly $182,000 to the Obama presidential campaign -- more than any other company in the state, according to Business Week.

What other corporate clients have hired ASK and may be benefiting from their ties to Axelrod right now?

It's time for Obama's corporate-funded hypocrites to pay more than lip service to transparency. But as the sanctimonious Axelrod lectures on AKPD's Web site: "Change is never easy."

Michelle Malkin, NY Post, 8/21/09

Obama’s True God: Sal Alinsky

Obama once said that if you want to know what he thinks about an issue, he would point you to the men and women that surround him. He called them his “associations.” Well, Obama has a particularly strong affinity for the original community organizer, Saul Alinsky.

Saul Alinsky believed in any avenue that would achieve ultimate and unflinching power for the individual. The only enduring rule for the individual seeking power is to put their immediate needs before all else: people, principles, groups, promises, political parties, etc. The Radical must maximize his power (and agenda) at every turn, no matter the dismay of other people or entities. In any given circumstance the Radical should spare no means to assume the most powerful position in that moment. Because, in short, power allows the Radical to achieve whatever whim he wants.
Though Obama never met the great Saul Alinsky, he follows Alinsky’s principles like that of a living mentor. He studied Alinsky in Chicago. He taught Alinsky at the junior college. He lived Alinsky’s principles in Chicago as a community organizer. That allegiance carried him to the Illinois Senate, where he began campaigning for the U.S. Senate. It carried him to Washington, where he began campaigning for President. Alinsky brought Obama to the White House. You may be asking, what’s the big deal? Well, show me a man’s friends, and I’ll show you the man. Below is Mr. Alinsky’s great doctrine, “Rules for Radicals.” This is Obama’s playbook, and after studying it, you can begin to clearly understand why Obama makes the decisions he does. At every turn, he does what he thinks will aggrandize his power position. He isn’t serving you or me or anyone but himself, his big-money “connections,” and his agenda.
Sal Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals”

RULE 1: “Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.” Power is derived from 2 main sources – money and people. “Have-Nots” must build power from flesh and blood. (These are two things of which there is a plentiful supply. Government and corporations always have a difficult time appealing to people, and usually do so almost exclusively with economic arguments.)

RULE 2: “Never go outside the expertise of your people.” It results in confusion, fear and retreat. Feeling secure adds to the backbone of anyone. (Organizations under attack wonder why radicals don’t address the “real” issues. This is why. They avoid things with which they have no knowledge.)

RULE 3: “Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.” Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty. (This happens all the time. Watch how many organizations under attack are blind-sided by seemingly irrelevant arguments that they are then forced to address.)

RULE 4: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” If the rule is that every letter gets a reply, send 30,000 letters. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules. (This is a serious rule. The besieged entity’s very credibility and reputation is at stake, because if activists catch it lying or not living up to its commitments, they can continue to chip away at the damage.)

RULE 5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” There is no defense. It’s irrational. It’s infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions. (Pretty crude, rude and mean, huh? They want to create anger and fear.)

RULE 6: “A good tactic is one your people enjoy.” They’ll keep doing it without urging and come back to do more. They’re doing their thing, and will even suggest better ones. (Radical activists, in this sense, are no different than any other human being. We all avoid “un-fun” activities, but we revel at and enjoy the ones that work and bring results.)

RULE 7: “A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.” Don’t become old news. (Even radical activists get bored. So to keep them excited and involved, organizers are constantly coming up with new tactics.)

RULE 8: “Keep the pressure on. Never let up.” Keep trying new things to keep the opposition off balance. As the opposition masters one approach, hit them from the flank with something new. (Attack, attack, attack from all sides, never giving the reeling organization a chance to rest, regroup, recover and re-strategize.)

RULE 9: “The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.” Imagination and ego can dream up many more consequences than any activist. (Perception is reality. Large organizations always prepare a worst-case scenario, something that may be furthest from the activists’ minds. The upshot is that the organization will expend enormous time and energy, creating in its own collective mind the direst of conclusions. The possibilities can easily poison the mind and result in demoralization.)

RULE 10: “If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive.” Violence from the other side can win the public to your side because the public sympathizes with the underdog. (Unions used this tactic. Peaceful [albeit loud] demonstrations during the heyday of unions in the early to mid-20th Century incurred management’s wrath, often in the form of violence that eventually brought public sympathy to their side.)

RULE 11: “The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.” Never let the enemy score points because you’re caught without a solution to the problem. (Old saw: If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. Activist organizations have an agenda, and their strategy is to hold a place at the table, to be given a forum to wield their power. So, they have to have a compromise solution.)

RULE 12: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)

K.A. Phinney, Break Down of America, 8/20/09

Prez Confidant David Axelrod Reaping Big Bucks on Health Care Debate

Barack Obama's chief White House adviser is collecting millions of dollars from his former public relations firms as they sign lucrative contracts with coalitions recently created to push the president's agenda.

After arriving at the White House as top political guru, David Axelrod filed a required financial disclosure form that shows he will receive $3 million in installments over the next five years in a buyout with AKP&D Message and Media, and Ask Public Strategies.

The bottom line: Axelrod is essentially on his old firms' payrolls as he sits in the Oval Office as the closest confidant to the president. Advocacy groups know that when they are hiring AKP or Ask Public they are helping those companies stay profitable and make good on the $3 million.

AKP, which shares Chicago office space with Ask, is now getting contracts from major groups assembled to push Obama's massive health care agenda. They include Healthy Economy Now and Americans for Stable Quality Care. Their million-dollar media blitz is financed in part by the giant pharmaceutical industry which has a big stake in how the White House -- and Axelrod -- craft a final health care bill.

Press reports say pro-Obama groups will spend $150 million on media ads. AKP's website does not list those groups on its client's list, which includes trial lawyers, the largest single contributor to the Democratic Party.

The White House press office did not respond to several emails from HUMAN EVENTS. The mainstream liberal press generally has ignored the Axelrod buyout.

But Republicans have taken notice. The Republican House Conference, led by Rep. Mike Pence, put out a release headlined, "Big Pharma and David Axelrod: $2 Million of Change You Can Believe In?" The $2 million refers to his buyout deal with AKP, where his son still works.

The release notes that the White House negotiated an agreement with the drug lobby (the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America) to get its political support.

"Has David Axelrod recused himself from the [drug lobby deals] or will he work to defend an agreement with an industry that is directly funding his son's work, and indirectly funding his own $2 million severance package?" the statement said.

It added, "As the pharmaceutical industry spends hundreds of millions supporting a government takeover of health care -- one which the drug companies obviously believe will increase their profits, even as it raises Medicare premiums for seniors -- some may wonder whether White House senior advisors earning millions of dollars paid for in part by the pharmaceutical industry represent the kind of change Americans can believe in."

Axelrod founded AKP and turned it into a successful public relations and political management firm for liberal candidates and causes. His Ask Public Strategies became a master at setting up what appeared to be grass-roots pressure groups -- the practice is called "astroturfing" -- to pressure governments or industry to do their bidding.

AKP has helped to keep the Democratic Party machine in power in Chicago by running its campaigns.

Ask's website is bare-bone. It does not list clients, nor its address.

By channeling money to Axelrod's old firms, the pro-Obama groups are helping to insure that he will ultimately received all his buyout money since it virtually guarantees the companies will stay in business without their founder.

Axelrod may have physically left the Chicago-based firms. But his name lives on. His son works at AKP&D as an executive. And the words of the founder are still prominently displayed on its website.

At the top of one page is this: "Change is something you have to fight for. Change is never easy. We are going to have to work for every vote. The change we need is worth the struggle; it's worth the fight. David Axelrod, Founder."

The site also features a picture of Axelrod with Obama and David Plouffe, an AKP adviser who served as the president's 2008 campaign manager. And it profiles Axelrod as the campaign's chief strategist.

Bloomberg news reported that Axelrod still talks to one of his former partners, Larry Grisolano, about AKP's work for another client, the Democratic National Committee.

Axelrod's buy-out deal calls for five annual installments of $200,000 from Ask. AKP will pay installments of $350,000, $650,000, $400,000 and $600,000.

The White House was asked about the buyout at Tuesday's press briefing. Spokesman Robert Gibbs dismissed the issue:

Q: Have you seen this charge from Republicans on the Hill that they're asking is he profiting from a payment he's getting from his firm, his firm involved in the PhRMA advertising deal?

Gibbs: That's ridiculous. David has left his firm to join public service.

Q: They say he's about to get -- million-dollar payout.

Gibbs: An agreement I think that was made because David started and owned the firm. He left the firm and, if I'm not mistaken, is being paid for the fact that he created it and sold it, which I think is somewhat based on the free market.

Regardless, Axelrod is, in essence, on his old firm's payroll for the next five years. As such, he benefits from any business they receive as do other people on the payroll.

Rowan Scarborough, Human Events, 8/20/09

Socialist Party Cozying Up With Obama White House

Was a far-left think tank partnered with the community activist group ACORN and founded with input from President Obama instrumental in securing the appointment of controversial White House "environmental czar" Van Jones?
A key member of the think tank reportedly was also a founder of a socialist party that, evidence indicates, included Obama among its members.

In March, Jones was named the special adviser for green jobs, enterprise and innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

His appointment drew criticism after a WND report exposing that Jones was as an admitted radical communist and black nationalist leader. The Fox News Channel's Glenn Beck hammered away at Jones' communist ties.

Months before Obama took office, however, Jones was recommended for the environmental pick in a report by business scholar Chuck Collins, an associate of philanthropist George Soros and a longtime leftist activist linked to some socialist causes.

Collins is director of the Tax Program for Shared Prosperity at Demos, a far-left think tank that has partnered with ACORN and its ally, Project Vote, on several projects. Demos personalities were among ACORN's top defenders when the organization was accused of rampant voter fraud in 2008.
According to Demos' own website, while Obama was a state senator in 1999, he served on the working group that founded Demos.

Collins penned a piece that listed his top picks for the Obama administration, including Jones, at the radical Institute for Policy Studies.

Through a socialist party, Obama may be more closely linked to Collins, who recommended Jones.

Researcher Trevor Loudon of the New Zeal blog dug up official newspapers of the socialist-oriented New Party that list Collins as among the party's founding builders in its fall 1994 edition. Collins is listed with approximately 100 other activists in an article entitled, "Who's Building the New Party?"

Obama belonged to socialist party

In a controversy never fully addressed by Obama, WND previously reported evidence showing Obama was a member of the New Party, which sought to elect members to public office with the aim of moving the Democratic Party far leftward to ultimately form a new political party with a socialist agenda.

While running for the Illinois state Senate in 1996 as a Democrat, Obama actively sought and received the endorsement of the New Party, according to confirmed reports during last year's presidential campaign.

The New Party, formed by members of the Democratic Socialists of America and leaders of an offshoot of the Community Party USA, was an electoral alliance that worked alongside the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. The New Party's aim was to help elect politicians to office who espouse its policies.
Among New Party members was linguist and radical activist Noam Chomsky.

Obama's campaign last year denied the then-presidential candidate was ever an actual member of the New Party.
But the New Zeal blog dug up print copies of the New Party News, the party's official newspaper, which show Obama posing with New Party leaders, listing him as a New Party member and printing quotes from him as a member.

The party's spring 1996 newspaper boasted: "New Party members won three other primaries this Spring in Chicago: Barack Obama (State Senate), Michael Chandler (Democratic Party Committee) and Patricia Martin (Cook County Judiciary). The paper quoted Obama saying "these victories prove that small 'd' democracy can work."

The newspaper lists other politicians it endorsed who were not members but specifies Obama as a New Party member.
New Ground, the newsletter of Chicago's Democratic Socialists of America, reported in its July/August 1996 edition that Obama attended a New Party membership meeting April 11, 1996, in which he expressed his gratitude for the group's support and "encouraged NPers (New Party members) to join in his task forces on Voter Education and Voter Registration."

Becoming a New Party member requires some effort by the politician. Candidates must be approved by the party's political committee and, once approved, must sign a contract mandating they will have a "visible and active relationship" with the party.

The New Party, established in 1992, took advantage of what was known as electoral "fusion," which enabled candidates to run on two tickets simultaneously, attracting voters from both parties. But the New Party went defunct in 1998, one year after fusion was halted by the Supreme Court.
Following the initial reports of Obama's purported membership in the New Party, Obama associate and former Chicago New Party activist Carl Davidson posted a statement on several blogs claiming his former party was not socialist, but he admitted it worked with ACORN.

"[The New Party] was a pragmatic party of 'small d democracy' mainly promoting economic reforms like the living wage and testing the fusion tactic, common in many countries but only operational in New York in the U.S. The main trend within it was ACORN, an Alinskyist outfit, which is hardly Marxist," wrote Davidson.

But the socialist goals of the New Party were enumerated on its old website.

Among the New Party's stated objectives were "full employment, a shorter work week, and a guaranteed minimum income for all adults; a universal 'social wage' to include such basic benefits as health care, child care, vacation time, and lifelong access to education and training; a systematic phase-in of comparable worth and like programs to ensure gender equity."

The New Party stated it also sought "the democratization of our banking and financial system – including popular election of those charged with public stewardship of our banking system, worker-owner control over their pension assets, community-controlled alternative financial institutions."

Many of the New Party's founding members were Democratic Socialists of America leaders and members of Committees of Correspondence, a breakaway of the Communist Party USA. Obama attended several DSA events and meetings, including a DSA-sponsored town hall meeting Feb. 25, 1996, entitled "Employment and Survival in Urban America." He sought and received an endorsement from the DSA.
According to DSA documents, the New Party worked with ACORN to promote its candidates. ACORN, convicted in massive, nationwide voter fraud cases, has been a point of controversy for Obama over the presidential candidate's ties to the group.

In 1995, the DSA's New Ground newsletter stated, "In Chicago, the New Party's biggest asset and biggest liability is ACORN.

"Like most organizations, ACORN is a mixed bag. On one hand, in Chicago, ACORN is a group that attempts to organize some of the most depressed communities in the city. Chicago organizers for ACORN and organizers for SEIU Local 880 have been given modest monthly recruitment quotas for new New Party members. On the other hand, like most groups that depend on canvassing for fundraising, it's easy enough to find burned out and disgruntled former employees. And ACORN has not had the reputation for being interested in coalition politics – until recently and, happily, not just within the New Party."

Aaron Klein, WorldNet Daily, 8/20/09

OBAMACARE'S BAIT & SWITCH

PRESIDENT Obama has stopped talking about "health-care reform." The new poll-tested phrase of the day is "health-insurance reform."

Specifically the president says he wants to protect people with "pre-existing conditions." He would require insurance companies to accept anyone who applies for coverage, regardless of their current health (a rule known as "guaranteed issue") and prohibit them from charging higher premiums to people who are sick (called "community rating").

But if that's what the president wants, he could already have a bill through Congress, with significant Republican support. In fact, even the insurance companies have agreed to it.

But the 1,017-page bill making its way through the House devotes all of six pages to insurance reform -- 30 pages, if you count all the definitions and supporting provisions, still less than 3 percent of the bill.

So why the bait and switch?

Well, one reason might be that Obama realizes that these insurance reforms aren't all they are cracked up to be.

After all, prohibiting insurers from charging more to older and sicker customers amounts to a tax on the young and healthy who must pay higher premiums to subsidize their less-healthy counterparts. And letting people buy insurance after they get sick means healthy people have little incentive to buy insurance.

Put the two together and, as the Congressional Budget Office has warned, the young and healthy are much more likely to simply do without insurance.

As the healthy leave the insurance pool, the proportion of sick in the pool grows ever greater, leading to higher premiums -- which in turn causes the healthiest remaining individuals to leave in what amounts to an insurance death spiral.

That's exactly what happened when New York adopted community rating and guaranteed issue in 1993. In the first year under the new law, an average healthy 55-year-old man in New York saw his health-insurance premiums fall by $415 -- while an average healthy 25-year-old was hit with a premium hike of more than $500.

As a result, more than 500,000 mostly young and healthy people dropped their health insurance in the first year. As the pool grew sicker and the death spiral escalated, premiums began to rise even for those older New Yorkers who initially had their premiums cut. In the end, ev eryone ended up paying more.

Today, only six states have guaranteed issue: New York, New Jersey, Maine, Massachusetts and Vermont. New Hampshire and Kentucky tried it, then repealed their statutes. Just nine states, including New York and New Jersey, have strict forms of community rating.

These two "reforms" are two big reasons why health insurance costs much more in New York and New Jersey than in states without those requirements. Perhaps that clear record of failure is why insurance reform is such a tiny part of the health-care-reform bill.

Or maybe lawmakers realize there are better ways to deal with the problem of pre-existing conditions, such as direct subsidies, high-risk pools or a new product called health-status insurance.

Or maybe -- just maybe -- it's not really about insurance reform after all.

Michael D. Tanner is a Cato Institute, NY Post, 8/20/09

Democrat Blame Game, What Else is New?

BAM'S BLAME GAME
IT'S A LOSING 'REFORM' STRATEGY

TO listen to the White House and its supporters in and out of the media, you'd think that opposition to "ObamaCare" is the hobgoblin of a few small minds on the right. Racists, fascists, Neanderthals, the whole "Star Wars" cantina of bogeymen and cranks stand opposed to much-needed reform.

Left out of this fairly naked effort to demonize many with the actions of a few is the simple fact that ObamaCare -- however defined -- has been tanking in the polls for weeks. President Obama's handling of health care is unpopular with a majority of Americans and a majority of self-proclaimed independents.

Focusing on the town halls has its merits, but if you actually wanted ObamaCare to pass, casting a majority of Americans as the stooges of racist goons may not be the best way to go.

Imagine if George W. Bush, in his effort to partially privatize Social Security, had insisted that the "time for talking is over." Picture, if you will, the Bush White House asking Americans to turn in their e-mails in the pursuit of "fishy" dissent.

Conjure a scenario under which then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott derided critics as "evil-mongers" the way Harry Reid recently described town-hall protesters. Or if then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert and then-Majority Whip Tom DeLay had called critics "un-American" the way Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer did last week, or if White House strategist Karl Rove had been Sir Spam-a-lot instead of David Axelrod.

Now, I'm not asking you, dear reader, to do this so that you might be able to see through the glare of Obama's halo or the outlines of the media's staggering double standard when it comes to covering this White House. Rather, it is to grasp that the Obama administration has been astoundingly incompetent.

Lashing out at the town-hall protesters, playing the race card, whining about angry white men and whispering ominously about right-wing militias is almost always a sign of liberalism's weakness -- a failure of imagination.

The left has been attacking conservative talk radio and all it allegedly represents for the better part of 20 years now. When Bill Clinton needed a convenient villain, he attacked Rush Limbaugh. When Bush emerged victorious from the Florida recount, liberals concluded that what they really needed was their own version of Limbaugh. In March, at the first sign of resistance from Republicans, Obama complained that the GOP was Limbaugh's lap dog, and the White House and much of the press corps went into anti-Limbaugh campaign mode.

Funny how these supposed champions of the Enlightenment can't grasp that people can disagree with them for honest reasons. Instead, we simply must be Rush's automatons, which is to say racist, fascist thugs.

In addition to the slander, such complaints are monumentally, incandescently lame coming from a party that controls Washington. Liberals themselves say these evil-mongers are a tiny minority, a bunch of "AstroTurf" frauds -- so why not ignore them and get on with the work you were elected to do?

Well, because they can't -- or won't.

One reason the term "ObamaCare" has become a journalistic convention is that there is no bill. You can't talk about Obama's actual health-care plan because there isn't one. There are a bunch of competing bills, proposals, ideas swirling around Congress.

As even Robert Reich, Clinton's Labor secretary, conceded, the failure to put forward a concrete proposal lets opponents pick from a menu of scary ideas and possibilities, all of which can be labeled ObamaCare.

Obama's determination to steamroll to victory only reinforces suspicion of bad motives. Indeed, Dem dudgeon that the town-hall protesters don't want civil debate is hysterical, given that Obama wanted this over before the August recess.

No wonder the president who thought the time for talk was over long ago now doesn't like the talk he's getting.

Some might say the real story is to be found in the eroding support from independents and Blue Dog Democratic congressmen. Or in the panic among seniors that Obama will raid Medicare. Or in his inability to get progressive Dems to agree to a bipartisan approach. Or maybe the real story is Obama's manifest inability to sell a program he's invested his presidency in.

But no. Obama wants the debate to be about angry white men. And, as lame as that is, that's what's happening. It won't make ObamaCare a reality, but it will shift the blame from where it rightly belongs.

Jonah Goldberg, NY Post, 8.19.2009