Calling the Obama Bluff

Over the weekend Pres. Obama called for an honest debate about his health care plan, a call about as genuine, I’m sure, as Attorney General Eric Holder’s call for a dialogue about race.

Obama said the overhaul would not cover illegal immigrants nor use taxpayer dollars to pay for abortions, and he does not intend a government takeover of health care — as critics have claimed at contentious town hall-style meetings with members of Congress.

He also took a swipe at "death panels," an idea former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin introduced on her Facebook page.

"As every credible person who has looked into it has said, there are no so-called death panels — an offensive notion to me and to the American people," Obama said. "These are phony claims meant to divide us."

First of all, Sarah Palin didn’t “introduce” the idea of death panels in her August 7, 2009 Facebook post. Betsy McCaughey was all over this in February, warning about the health-care rationing controls hidden in the President’s stimulus bill.

Then, Rep. Michele Bachmann gave a speech warning about this on the floor of the House of Representatives on July 31st., quoting directly from the mouths of Obama’s own health-care advisers on their theories of limiting health care for the less promising cases.

All Sarah Palin did was mention how this elephant in the room was threatening her own child, Trig.

But some people just can’t handle Sarah Palin, so here are some other “credible” persons who’ve looked into it and seen the equivalent of life-denying rationing:

Ann Althouse: "I have found myself saying, in conversation, 'I'm afraid Obama is going to kill me.'"

Nat Hentoff: "President Obama's desired health care reform intends that a federal board . . .decides whether your quality of life, regardless of your political party, merits government-controlled funds to keep you alive. Watch for that life-decider in the final bill. It's already in the stimulus bill signed into law."

Liberal Washington Post reporter Charles Lane: "[A]s I read it, Section 1233 is not totally innocuous. . . . [because it] addresses compassionate goals in disconcerting proximity to fiscal ones. Supporters protest that they're just trying to facilitate choice -- even if patients opt for expensive life-prolonging care. I think they protest too much: If it's all about obviating suffering, emotional or physical, what's it doing in a measure to 'bend the curve' on health-care costs?"

Good question. Oh, and I consider myself credible, at least in my own mind. I have looked into this, and I've got no doubts these people have every intention of establishing government control over end-of-life decisions for the sake of what they consider a higher good.

But Obama doesn't really want you to look into it for yourself. He wants you to trust him that all the really credible people agree with him that everything is hunky-dory with this plan.

Now do you really want to take Jon Stewart's scornful word for something this important?

When Left and Right Both Smell a Rat

Writer Nat Hentoff is a leftist and an atheist who's always had credibility with me because of his unwavering pro-life stand, and his straight-down-the-line defense of civil liberties (life included).

Hentoff reacted last week to Obama’s health care plans by writing, “I am finally scared of a White House administration.”:

I was not intimidated during J. Edgar Hoover's FBI hunt for reporters like me who criticized him. I railed against the Bush-Cheney war on the Bill of Rights without blinking. But now I am finally scared of a White House administration.
President Obama's desired health care reform intends that a federal board (similar to the British model) — as in the Center for Health Outcomes Research and Evaluation in a current Democratic bill — decides whether your quality of life, regardless of your political party, merits government-controlled funds to keep you alive. Watch for that life-decider in the final bill. It's already in the stimulus bill signed into law.

As blogger, The American Catholic points out, “When Sarah Palin on the Right and Nat Hentoff on the Left both view with alarm the idea of government panels having the final say on medical treatment, it is time for all citizens to take this issue quite seriously.”

Please read Hentoff's entire article here.

Coming This Fall: 'Law & Order--Hate Crimes Unit'

These people even scare each other.

Nat Hentoff, who is a liberal but somehow remains unhypnotized on life issues and free speech, can’t believe that the press and the ACLU aren’t making a peep while Congress and the Obama administration are pushing through hate-crimes legislation that will “make it a federal crime to willfully cause bodily injury (or try to) because of the victim's actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability’”. ("Hentoff: 'Thought crimes' bill advances"):

The extra punishment applies only to these "protected classes." As Denver criminal defense lawyer Robert J Corry Jr. asked (Denver Post April 28): "Isn't every criminal act that harms another person a 'hate crime'? Then, regarding a Colorado "hate crime" law, one of 45 such state laws, Corry wrote: "When a Colorado gang engaged in an initiation ritual of specifically seeking out a "white woman" to rape, the Boulder prosecutor declined to pursue 'hate crime' charges." She was not enough of one of its protected classes.

Corey adds that the state "hate crime" law - like the newly expanded House of Representatives federal bill - "does not apply equally" (as the 14th Amendment requires), essentially instead "criminalizing only politically incorrect thoughts directed against politically incorrect victim categories."

Whether you're a Republican or Democrat, think hard about what Corry adds: "A government powerful enough to pick and choose which thoughts to prosecute is a government too powerful."

But aren’t Conyers, Leahy, and Feinstein already doing this by claiming Department of Justice lawyers have broken the law by forming opinions on the definition of torture that the Democrats don’t like?

By extending an extra layer of legal protections to the specified victim classes, it also leaves the rest of us with lesser protection. I’m old and a person of color (white), so you can beat the hell out of me without it being a hate crime.

I have to wonder why the usual protections for age have been left out of this turkey? Maybe someone figured out they can’t have some cranky geezer who’s being denied Obama’s rationed health care saying he’s a victim of a hate crime. And since willfully causing bodily injury to an unborn or recently-born child because he’s “unwanted”--and a huge inconvenience because of his age-- qualifies as a hate crime, what could that do to the Roe v Wade regime?