Libertarians opposed to new war plans for Afghanistan

The Libertarian Party (LP) today expressed its opposition to the Afghanistan war plans announced by President Barack Obama last night.

Wes Benedict, Executive Director of the LP, said, "Rush Limbaugh should buy Obama a nice cigar. The liberal president has done exactly what the conservative leader wanted: escalate the war."

William Redpath, Chairman of the Libertarian National Committee (LNC), commented, "This is further evidence that the differences between Republicans and Democrats are, at most, rhetorical. This president, whose votes made him the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate, has just announced an escalation of a foreign war. His campaign promise of 'Change' now sounds a lot more hollow."

Redpath continued, "Some congressional Democrats may make a rhetorical show of opposing Obama's decision, but that is all it will be. Obama is guaranteed to get the additional troops and funding that he wants."

Redpath continued, "Instead, Congress should re-assert its authority in matters of war, by passing legislation that terminates the president's authorization to make war in Afghanistan, and that calls for an orderly withdrawal from Afghanistan. If the president vetoes it, Congress should override the veto."

In September 2008, the LNC adopted a resolution calling for a military withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Benedict commented further, "One problem with the president's strategy is that it demonstrates a hyperinflated fear of terrorists. When we act worried and threatened, we make the terrorists feel like they're having their intended effect, which encourages them to keep doing what they're doing."

Redpath continued, "According to the Cato Institute, 'the U.S. military's counterinsurgency doctrine says that stabilizing a country the size of Afghanistan would require far more troops than the most wild-eyed hawk has proposed: about 600,000 troops.' President Obama is proposing to put a total of about 100,000 troops in Afghanistan, which won't come close to accomplishing anything."

Redpath concluded, "The president's speech was surprisingly content-free. The speech was nearly all platitudes, which is typical for politicians, particularly presidents. Will someone please restore substance to American political discourse?"

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Bauer Says Voters' Feeling 'Buyers Remorse'

/PRNewswire/ -- Former presidential candidate Gary Bauer said Tuesday night as election results revealed major shifts in the electorate since 2008 that voters are experiencing "buyers' remorse" and clearly want more "conservative change they can believe in."

Bauer, chairman of the Campaign for Working Families, made the following statement after Virginia voters chose Republicans for the top three seats with double digits margins:

"Barack Obama in 2008 carried Virginia, carried New Jersey and won the 23rd House District in New York. His party now has massively lost Virginia and is fighting for its life in strongly Democratic New Jersey and in New York. Clearly voters are feeling buyers' remorse and are returning to their right of center political viewpoint.

"This should be a wake-up call to the Congress. Democratic members are getting ready to force another big government budget-busting bill misnamed health care 'reform' on the American people. This comes on the heels of failed bailouts that didn't protect jobs and proposed food and energy taxes that will bust family budgets. With 2010 around the corner, Democrats may find themselves unemployed like their fellow Americans if they continue their support for such gluttonous, big-government proposals."

Bauer, chairman of the Campaign for Working Families, was one of the first conservatives to endorse Doug Hoffman in his bid to take the New York house seat. Bauer's Campaign for Working Families committed tens of thousands of dollars in contributions and independent expenditures in Virginia and New York to promote conservative candidates and mobilize conservative voters. The Campaign is one of the largest pro-family, pro-life political action committees in America.

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Stealth Rationing of Medical Care Sneaks Into the 'Stimulus' Bill, Says the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS)

/PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Unwanted "change" is coming to senior citizens and all those needing medical care if the stealth rationing in the "stimulus" bill becomes law. Rationing of medical care has nothing to do with stimulating the economy, but it was inserted into the bill before the public realized it.

As the disgraced Tom Daschle planned, the government will gain control over medical care incrementally. The stimulus bill seeks to lay the foundation for rationing and denying care to the elderly and the infirm by setting up the infrastructure for monitoring the treatment of all Americans. Doctors who are not "meaningful users" of the system will be punished by fee cuts.

Americans do not want to imitate Canada and England, where patients are told they are too old to receive a necessary operation or must sit on a long waiting list. It can take over a year in those countries before someone sees a doctor for treatment of a life-threatening condition, such as cancer.

But under the rationing inserted into the stimulus bill, Medicare will no longer pay for safe and effective care. Instead, it would apply a standard of cost-effectiveness in order to ration or deny care to the elderly and those who are sickest.

The stealth provisions of this bill create a massive new bureaucracy for controlling medicine, giving this new bureaucracy more money than the stimulus bill provides to all of our armed forces combined.

The lynchpin of this government takeover is to start building a national electronic database of medical records. Patient privacy will be impossible, and mistakes in medical records will be nearly impossible to delete.

This plan will lead to enormous new costs for doctors' offices and patients, but insurance companies are determined to have full access to patients' medical records, and the stimulus bill will enable that. Employers also want access to private medical records to prove fitness for work.

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Dose of Reality for Voters Expectations of Change? Dems Realize Fix is Not Easy After All

Democrats Try to Lower Expectations

By Naftail Bendavid

Even as they depict a massive stimulus package as indispensable to turning the economy around, U.S. Democratic leaders are aggressively lowering expectations that the package will yield dramatic accomplishments quickly..... More

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