This poster has started showing up in Los Angeles, and although no one has yet claimed responsibility for the “artwork”, the Liberals are freakin’ out over their Obamessiah, the Chicago-Chosen One, our esteemed Prez Barry Hussein Obama being portrayed as the Joker, Heath Ledger’s brilliant sociopath of a villain from last year’s Batman movie, The Dark Knight. Oh, the shame! Oh, the Horror of besmirching our beloved fearless leader. Here’s the take from our own free rag, the LA Weekly:

Blog posters to such online sites as American Thinker and Tammy Bruce are predictably in the throes of political orgasm.

The poster, which bears a very superficial resemblance to Shepard Fairey’s famous Obama Hope illustration, has been pasted on freeway supports and other public surfaces. It has a bit of everything to appeal to the drunk tank of California conservatism: Obama is in white face, his mouth (like Ledger’s Joker’s) has been grotesquely slit wide open and the word “Socialism” appears below his face. The only thing missing is a noose.

The safe money says the first thing out of the mouths of Fox News bobble-heads is, “Can’t liberals take a joke?”

KTLA TV’s site has more:

Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable President Earl Ofari Hutchinson is calling the depiction, politically mean spirited and dangerous.

Hutchinson is challenging the group or individual that put up the poster to have the courage and decency to publicly identify themselves.

“Depicting the president as demonic and a socialist goes beyond political spoofery,” says Hutchinson, “it is mean-spirited and dangerous.”

Michelle Malkin remembers all the mean-spirited and dangerous violent imagery and assassination fascination on the Progressive Left during Bush’s eight years. Now, that’s scary stuff!

The Anchoress reacts to that racism charge of the Weekly’s writer via the “only thing missing is a noose” comment:

But this is making a clear reference to a known fictional character called The Joker, and there is clearly the word “Socialism” beneath the portrait. This is political commentary; whoever came up with it is using a familiar visual image, and giving us an actual word which delivers a two-point message: he or she thinks the president is a joke, and a socialist.

This -until very recently- used to be called “free speech.” It is protected in this country, and thought very highly of. And protest or dissent, we have been told, is the very highest form of patriotism.

Slublog at Hot Air presents perhaps a more well known image with the word BROKE underneath it.

So, let’s wrap up. Depicting President Obama as the Joker is “mean-spirited”, “dangerous”, and is just this side of being a lynching — and conservatives are all goin’ gaa gaa over this as if in drunken stupors.

Gee, when the liberal rag Vanity Fair’s website showed President Bush in the same manner just over a year ago these same liberals weren’t quite so readily offended. Poor little thin-skinned liberals. Oh, and to answer the LA Weekly’s question, “Can’t liberals take a joke?”

Apparently not . . .

You won’t hear these “talking points” in the We LOVE Obama media outlets (ABC, NBC, CBS, NYT, LAT, WAPO, etc. etc, etc.). Thanks to the Hoover Digest, you will now:

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. {…}

2. Americans have lower cancer mortality rates than Canadians. {…}

3. Americans have better access to treatment for chronic diseases than patients in other developed countries. {…}

4. Americans have better access to preventive cancer screening than Canadians. {…}

5. Lower-income Americans are in better health than comparable Canadians. {…}

6. Americans spend less time waiting for care than patients in Canada and the United Kingdom. {…}

7. People in countries with more government control of health care are highly dissatisfied and believe reform is needed. {…}

8. Americans are more satisfied with the care they receive than Canadians. {…}

9. Americans have better access to important new technologies such as medical imaging than do patients in Canada or Britain. {…}

10. Americans are responsible for the vast majority of all health care innovations.

Lots o’ strong argument within those ellipses — best to just go read it all in total for your own selves!

This is what “Single Payer” inevitably leads to:

Ed Morrissey pegs it:

We knew it would come to this when Oregon insisted on passing its assisted-suicide laws. It doesn’t take much for assisted suicide to go from a humane option to a cost-saving device, especially when the state pays for the medical care. One patient in Oregon got a letter that made this all too clear, when in the same letter rejecting her request for life-extending chemotherapy, Oregon offered her “physician-aid-in-dying”. In other words, Oregon offered their customer a heapin’ helping of death:

Just a little preview of the nightmare that will be Obamacare.

Wow! Goin’ on vacation isn’t what it used to be . . .

Kathleen Sebelius and Arlen Specter don’t fare any better in Philadelphia.

Michelle Malkin warns and challenges:

Prepare to be demonized, of course.

And don’t let up until socialized medicine goes down[.]

Gee, the crowd in Philly wasn’t very “kind” when Specter proclaims that the Congress needs to get this “currently unwritten” legislation passed — FAST!

A commenter on the YouTube page for that last video says it all:

Did I hear this right, Specter said he would “divide up the bill and make judgement very fast” and did’nt Kathleen Sebelius say “The Bill isn’t written”. What the HELL are they voting on? What kind of Idiot would Sign a BLANK Bill and Fill in the rest later?????

Oh, I recon the same kind of idiots that voted on the “unread”, partially “unwritten” Waxman-Markey “Cap & Trade TAX” bill just over a month ago — kinda a pattern happenin’ here, no? But, at least the natives are finally getting restless.

We need a couple thousand of these ‘Just Say NO!” rallies and then maybe those professional politicians would finally remember who they work for! Or, maybe not. Watch this next one and see Obama and other Dems, in their own words, confirm that what they really want is to eliminate all PRIVATE health insurance and implement a SINGLE PAYER plan for all Americans.

Single Payer for all, except for our esteemed leaders, natch. No one’s gonna touch their gold-plated plan — not in this lifetime. They gotta stay real healthy so that they can have enough stamina to keep screwin’ with all the rest of us!

Now really, was 52% enough of a mandate to destroy the finest, most modern, most innovative system of health care the world has ever seen?

In ‘Great’ Briton the NHS (National Health Service) is trying to save a buck pound or two and thinks that denying anti-inflammatory medication to chronic back pain sufferers is a jolly good way to do just that.

Tens of thousands with chronic back pain will be forced to live in agony after a decision to slash the number of painkilling injections issued on the NHS, doctors have warned.

The Government’s drug rationing watchdog says “therapeutic” injections of steroids, such as cortisone, which are used to reduce inflammation, should no longer be offered to patients suffering from persistent lower back pain when the cause is not known.

Instead the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) is ordering doctors to offer patients remedies like acupuncture and osteopathy.

Specialists fear tens of thousands of people, mainly the elderly and frail, will be left to suffer excruciating levels of pain or pay as much as £500 each for private treatment.

The NHS currently issues more than 60,000 treatments of steroid injections every year. NICE said in its guidance it wants to cut this to just 3,000 treatments a year, a move which would save the NHS £33 million.

Gee, sorry about that you 57,000 that will have to live in constant pain, or go out of pocket for the £500 worth of “private” treatment. At least the British system allows for “Private” treatment — something that the Canadian system does NOT. Wonder which one our Prez Barry H.O. feels would work out best on this side of the pond? But really, saving the cost of those 57,000 treatments is the only thing involved, right? Well, maybe not . . .

Dr Jonathan Richardson, a consultant pain specialist from Bradford Hospitals Trust, is among more than 50 medics who have written to NICE urging the body to reconsider its decision, which was taken in May.

He said: “The consequences of the NICE decision will be devastating for thousands of patients. It will mean more people on opiates, which are addictive, and kill 2,000 a year. It will mean more people having spinal surgery, which is incredibly risky, and has a 50 per cent failure rate.”

One in three people are estimated to suffer from lower back pain every year, while one in 15 consult their GP about it. Specialists say therapeutic injections using steroids to reduce inflammation and other injections which can deaden nerve endings, can provide months or even years of respite from pain.

Experts said that if funding was stopped for the injections, many clinics would also struggle to offer other vital services, such as pain management programmes and psychotherapy which is used to manage chronic pain.

Folks, this is what you get when a faceless, blameless, government-run bureaucracy manages your health care. At least when a private insurer start messin’ with your coverage you can sue ‘em. Lord knows that Congress, in their “infinite” wisdom, isn’t going to allow any of that for the proposed health-benefits-planning board that HAS to be a part of any “public” option. Take a number, you cipher! Iris Watkins must be feeling very cipherish about now.

Iris Watkins, 80 from Appleton, in Cheshire said her life had been “transformed” by the use of therapeutic injections every two years. The pensioner began to suffer back pain in her 70s. Four years ago, despite physiotherapy treatment and the use of medication, she had reached a stage where she could barely walk.

“It was horrendous, I was spending hours lying on the sofa, or in bed, I couldn’t spend a whole evening out. I was referred to a specialist, who decided to give me a set of injections. The difference was tremendous”,

Within days, she was able to return to her old life, gardening, caring for her husband Herbert, and enjoying social occasions.

“I just felt fabulous – almost immediately, there was not a twinge. I only had an injection every two years, but it really has transformed my life; if I couldn’t have them I would be in despair”.

Barack Obama’s health care plan would look at an American Iris Watkins and determine that at over 70-years-old she really doesn’t contribute to the collective in any appreciable manner — so the collective WE can’t possibly “appreciate” her enough to spend the money for her pain meds. Gee darlin’, rat poison or a bullet is so much cheaper — do us all a favor and STFU and either live with the pain or die already.

Wow — Isn’t HOPE and CHANGE a barrel of laughs?

Andrew C. McCarthy at National Review is asking some pertinent questions about why the State of Hawaii and President Barack Hussein Obama will not release the “primary” document that details our Commander-in-Chief’s entry into this world — and no, it’s not because he, McCarthy, or I, your obedient Okie, believe that BHO is not a natural-born citizen of the United States of America — it’s potentially something much worse. Regarding our Prez, the phrase lyin’ sack o’ you-know-what comes readily to mind . . .

And why would Obama not welcome Hawaii’s release of any record in its possession about the facts and circumstances of his birth? Isn’t that kind of weird? It would, after all, make the whole issue go away and, if there’s nothing there, make those who’ve obsessed over it look like fools. Why should I need any better reason to be curious than Obama’s odd resistance to so obvious a resolution?

There’s speculation out there from the former CIA officer Larry Johnson — who is no right-winger and is convinced the president was born in Hawaii — that the full state records would probably show Obama was adopted by the Indonesian Muslim Lolo Soetoro and became formally known as “Barry Soetoro.” Obama may have wanted that suppressed for a host of reasons: issues about his citizenship, questions about his name (it’s been claimed that Obama represented in his application to the Illinois bar that he had never been known by any name other than Barack Obama), and the undermining of his (false) claim of remoteness from Islam. Is that true? I don’t know and neither do you.

But we should know. The point has little to do with whether Obama was born in Hawaii. I’m quite confident that he was. The issue is: What is the true personal history of the man who has been sold to us based on nothing but his personal history? On that issue, Obama has demonstrated himself to be an unreliable source and, sadly, we can’t trust the media to get to the bottom of it. What’s wrong with saying, to a president who promised unprecedented “transparency”: Give us all the raw data and we’ll figure it out for ourselves?

The press is far too willing to carry water for this guy. It’s frightening how fast everything is coming unraveled. But, it’s been like this many times before in the history of man — both real, and imagined.

The Quest stands upon the edge of a knife. Stray but a little, and it will fail, to the ruin of all. Yet hope remains while the Company is true.

That’s the kind of HOPE the rest of us are wishing for . . .