New Surgeon General?
NBC has reported: “President Barack Obama has chosen Alabama family physician, Dr. Regina Benjamin, to be the next surgeon general, White House sources have confirmed to NBC News.”
I’m familiar with Dr. Benjamin and her clinic over in Bayou La Batre on the Alabama Gulf Coast, and it’s story of rising from Katrina, to be struck down by fire, and then being rebuilt. I admire her dedication to her patients.
The Times-Picayune fleshes out the bare announcement: a BS from Xavier in New Orleans, MD from the University of Alabama, Birmingham, and an MBA from Tulane.
While most reports mention her recent award of a MacArthur Fellowship and the Nelson Mandela Award in 1998, the T-P notes that Pope Benedict awarded her a distinguished service medal Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice and a commenter mentioned the Mother Teresa National Caring Award.
A better choice than CNN’s “medical talking head”, unless you support choice. I don’t claim to know for certain what Dr. Benjamin’s views are on “family planning”, but a medal from Pope Benedict, and this announcement following a meeting between the Pope and the President don’t exactly point towards support from the doctor for empowering women. I hope I’m wrong.
Update: DonoWho’s Catholic League calls this “an excellent choice”.
6 comments
I was willing to reserve judgment until DonoWho’s announcement. What is Obama up to, anyway?
She’s a GP, so can’t perform any abortion procedures legally in Alabama, so I can’t be sure of her position, but I doubt she would be getting all of these awards and support from the conservative side of the Catholic Church if there was any record of support for choice.
Obama continues to suck up to the crowd that will never compromise with him, support him, or assist him. He takes support from the left for granted, and that has to stop if anything approaching real change is to occur.
His support dropped to 57%, but it will have to sink lower before they understand that the support of the left is no longer to be assumed.
doesn’t look too horrible, the miami herald reports:
.-= ´s last blog ..fizzickz lab =-.
Without a date/time stamp it is rather meaningless to talk about Obama’s “position” on anything.
I’ll stay with “I don’t know.”
It seems to me that Obama is trying hard to be a consummate ‘middle-of-the-road’ guy. Everything he has done lately has been very much middle-ground. It seems to me he is trying to please everyone, and we all know that’s doomed to massive failure. It never works. In the runup to President, I thought he was a very intelligent man. Now I’m truly not so sure. Clever perhaps, and as my Mother would have said “too clever by half”. I guess that was to be expected really, He’s a product of the Illinois political machine. *shrug*
He said one thing to get the nomination, a second thing when running, and something else when he won. There was no need for the shift. People wanted real change from what had gone on for 8 years, and we are still seeing all of the illegal, illogical claims regarding executive power and many other policy that made people extremely angry at Bush, and caused the rest of the world to distrust the US.
More of the same, is not change anyone can believe in.
Of course, the real problem may be that he doesn’t actually believe in anything.