Obamacare Update

Amazingly, Obamacare took a back burner for a day or so. Oh, that's right...that's because Obama is losing the battle, badly. So, let's revive it. What's going on now?

The Left is so desperate to portray anti-Obamacare folks as crazy lunatics that they've pretty much used up all the insults in the book aside from "you're undermining the country". Check! Anyway, running low on verbal insults, now they've started vandalizing their own offices and blaming the damage on the Right:

Last night, I told you about the fake political hate crime here in Colorado at the Denver Democrat Party headquarters involving one “Maurice Schwenkler.”

This hammer-wielding person has been charged with felony mischief. This person’s accomplice is still on the loose.

Eleven windows were smashed, causing $11,000 in damage.

Schwenkler is a far Left nutball and transgender activist who guys by “Ariel Attack”. As part of Schwenkler’s work for the SEIU-tied 527 group Colorado Citizens Coalition, he/she canvassed for a state Democratic candidate, Mollie Collum.

Schwenkler has a prior criminal history...

When they're not lying about their plan or their opposition, they're out there drumming up 'grass roots' support for Obamacare through rent-a-mobs composed of members of groups like ACORN, AFL-CIO, MoveOn.org, UAW, various abortion groups, La Raza, and Planned Parenthood. Funny how these groups are on board as the hired help when the bill supposedly won't unduly benefit union members, illegal immigrants, or abortion providers, huh?

Anyway, at least one Democrat is now saying there will not be a final bill until after Christmas, and maybe not ever. This is, in all probability, a smokescreen to calm down angry constituents, but it's something worth reporting, anyway. Another Democrat has finally stepped up to the plate, pledging to sign up for any Obamacare bill that gets passed. Kudos to Rep. Dan Boren for putting his money where his mouth is! So far, he's the only one I've heard of doing that.

Here's another little-publicized pill in Obamacare that will be hard to swallow:

Under current law, taxpayers who lose an argument with the IRS can generally avoid penalties by showing they tried in good faith to comply with the tax law. In a broad range of circumstances, the health-care bill would change the law to impose strict liability penalties for income-tax underpayments, meaning that taxpayers will no longer have the luxury of making an honest mistake. The ability of even the IRS to waive penalties in sympathetic cases would be sharply curtailed.

Last June, the Small Business Council of America sent some compelling tales of woe to Congress, including one in which a 72-year-old owner of a coin operated car wash set up retirement plans for his seven employees and got socked for his good deed with a $900,000 penalty for not reporting the plans properly. The company and its owner are now headed for bankruptcy. In another case, a penalty of $100,000 each was imposed on the six minor children of an owner of a small business in Utah for not filing the right tax forms.

However, Congress should not be surprised by these stories. The IRS was only enforcing the law exactly as Congress wrote it.

It's interesting to note some new poll results on who knows Obamacare:

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 51% of voters rate their understanding of the health care plan as good or excellent. Only 21% say their understanding of it is poor.

By contrast, just 22% say Congress has a good or excellent understanding of the plan. Thirty-five percent (35%) say Congress’ knowledge of the proposal is poor.

Voters give the president more credit than that. Forty-seven percent (47%) say Obama’s understanding of his own plan is good or excellent, while 27% rate his knowledge of it as poor.

A closer look at the numbers reveals that just 11% of voters believe that Congress understands the health care legislation better than they do. Forty-six percent (46%) hold the opposite view and think they understand the bill better than Congress does. Nearly as many (43%) rate their understanding of the legislation as equal to Congress'.

Remember all those town halls where angry voters school their elected reps? Yeah, that's because those elected reps don't know half of what the voters know about this bill, and yet they're going to force it onto voters and exempt themselves. Thus, the anger. Once again, the American people know what they are talking about far better than their elected 'leaders'.

Once again, Obamacare isn't about health care, or about insurance, or about helping children. It's about liberal control. If the federal government controls what treatments you receive, they control you, do they not? If they achieve that kind of control, is there any limit to the things they'll impose on you 'for your own good'? Let me give you a couple examples that are happening without Obamacare to prove how ridiculously dangerous this is.

Forced schooling

A Christian homeschool girl in New Hampshire has been ordered into government-run public school for having "sincerely held" religious beliefs.

An attorney working with the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) has filed motions with a New Hampshire court, asking it to reconsider its order to send the 10-year-old homeschooled girl into public school.

According to ADF allied attorney John Anthony Simmons, the court acknowledges that the girl in question is doing well socially and academically, but he adds that the court went too far when they determined that the girl's Christian faith was a "bit to0 sincerely held and must be sifted, tested by, and mixed among other worldviews."

Simmons contends that parents have a "fundamental right to make educational choices for their children." However the girl's parents divorced in 1999, and she is now living with her mother who has been homeschooling the child since first grade. As part of the schooling, the young girl has been attending supplemental public school classes.

As part of parental custody hearings, a court-appointed guardian stated that the child reflected her mother's "rigidity" on questions of faith and added that girl's best interest would be served by exposure to a public school setting.

That little Constitutional right to freedom of religion? Forget about it. Freedom to educate one's children as that child's parent? Forget about it. The STATE believes it knows better, and will force that child to attend its preferred state-run school...for the child's own good, of course.

Forced circumcision

The advocates of ObamaCare insist that medical decisions will remain between doctors and patients and not involve mandates from government. However, the same people also cheer the idea of government “coaching” doctors to adopt practices, and to back up those choices with pressure from payment schedules, which will result in de facto diktats, especially when it evolves into a single-payer system. If they succeed, expect to see a campaign to push new parents into circumcising their male children in the name of AIDS prevention — even though the risks are manageable and the effect less than certain:

Public health officials are considering promoting routine circumcision for all baby boys born in the United States to reduce the spread of H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS.

The topic is a delicate one that has already generated controversy, even though a formal draft of the proposed recommendations, due out from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by the end of the year, has yet to be released.

Experts are also considering whether the surgery should be offered to adult heterosexual men whose sexual practices put them at high risk of infection. But they acknowledge that a circumcision drive in the United States would be unlikely to have a drastic impact: the procedure does not seem to protect those at greatest risk here, men who have sex with men. …

It's hard to imagine any decision more personal than that of circumcision, especially for adult men. And yet...here we have the STATE seriously contemplating a campaign to force all male babies and all adult men to undergo this surgery! Never mind that forcing this is literally a gross violation of an individual's body, and never mind that it probably won't help reduce HIV/AIDS...it's for your own good, you know.

Do you see what I mean? If the government is willing to contemplate things like this now, what will they contemplate when they control all medical decisions for all people?

It's all about the control. And this control would be held by a government that can't even run a train.

Obamacare is a rotted, foul sickness that will, if allowed to spread, infect and fester throughout America, and no one will be safe from its tentacles. That's why it must be stopped.

There's my two cents.