America’s Healthy Future Act of 2009

The Senate Finance Committee published the full legislative text of America’s Healthy Future Act of 2009 (PDF >1.8MB) on their website. Everyone can now stop with all the rhetoric. Now we can all easily reference the exact Section of the Act with which we agree or oppose. So instead of hyperbole, we can instead read the actual terms of the Act and make our own assessment of what effect they truly have.

So please post a Comment and tell us which Section is your favorite and why. Or tell us which Section you oppose and why. Just be sure to cite the actual Act so we can read what it says.

I'll start to give you an example. On page 78, lines 15 through 21, the Act says:

Each qualified individual shall have the choice to enroll or to not enroll in a qualified health benefits plan offered through an exchange that is established under this title, that covers the State in which the individual resides, and that covers qualified health benefits plans in the individual market.

Am I missing something or don't we already have such exchanges? I believe we call them the marketplace. And look how poorly distributed health care is now with a market exchange.

I apologize that my comment on the Act isn't all emotional. Excuse me for keeping it devoid of hyperbole. But at least I cited the actual text for you to reference and make up your own mind on what it says.

Promoting family values: bigotry, hatred, and intolerance

In spite of all the chaos in the GOP, some of the Christian Right have managed to galvanize under a cause: to discredit and criticize America's first African-American President using whatever lies, fallacies, and deceit serve their purpose. Reading these screeds, there's a conspicuous undercurrent of racism and misguided religious condemnation. The latest example of this was an email from one Sally Opper that I read today:

Subject: National Day of Prayer for WHAT??????

If this isn’t an eye opener, then I don’t what is….

National Day of Prayer for WHAT??????

In 1952 President Truman established one day a year as a National Day of Prayer.

In 1988, President Reagan designated the first Thursday in May of each year as the National Day of Prayer.

This year however, President Obama, decided to cancel the ceremony at the White House not wanting to offend anyone.

Presidential candidate Barack Obama declared the USA was no longer a Christian nation. Now see if you can wrap your brain around this: On September 25, 2009 from 4am until 7pm, a National Day of Prayer for the Muslim religion will be held on Capitol Hill, beside the White House. They are expecting over 50,000 muslims that day in DC.

The website (yes, there is a very informative website) is: www.islamoncapitolhill.com. Pay particular attention to the very bottom of the page: "OUR TIME HAS COME". Could it be that the REAL agenda of the President is becoming more plain????

It's a short and sweet email but it's replete with classic examples of deceitful attacks on the President. I wonder if Sally Opper is intentionally distorting this to get people up in arms against Obama on a fabricated accusation or if she simply lacks the logic and critical thinking skills required to recognize the fallacies and logic flaws in what she's provoking.

First of all, Opper should be pleased that the Islamic community is calling for a day of unity. The Islamic community's right to worship on Capitol Hill is the same right that Opper has to openly worship Christ and it's a right that would one day protect her were Obama to do that what Opper seems to fear: turn the USA into an Islamic theocracy. If anything, Opper should be critical of Christian leadership for not organizing a similar event for Christians if she thinks what the Islamic community organized is so important.

But to try and somehow blame Obama for this event is just intellectually dishonest. Neither Obama nor his administration nor our legislature had anything to do with it. It was organized by Hassen Abdellah, a lawyer and president of the Dar-ul-Islam Mosque in Elizabeth, N.J. And to call out the "Our Time Has Come" tagline to the notice of the event as Obama's agenda absent any kind of evidence other than that it will be "held on Capitol Hill, beside the White House" (which is public property where people of all faiths have the right to gather and pray) is simply a flat-out lie.

I don't know anything about Truman or Reagan establishing a National Day of Prayer and, since Opper cited no sources on it, I can't respond specifically. However, I do know two things about it:

1. Neither president could enact any such law without congress first passing it, and the current congress has brought no such bill to Obama's desk.
   
2. If they did, it would be unconstitutional, so neither Truman nor Reagan should have signed such a bill if it were brought to their desk.

Nor can I speak to Obama cancelling some non-specific (Christian?) ceremony at the White House since Opper has again left out any citation. But to then state that "Barack Obama declared the USA was no longer a Christian nation," conveniently leaving out the operative word Obama used -- "just" a Christian nation -- (as if to say Obama is trying to establish a Muslim nation) is simply deceitful, particularly considering that Obama is a devout Christian and has never been a believer in Islam.

These kinds of lies and deceit are a very unChristian thing to do and, were I Christian, I'd be a lot more concerned with the hatred, bigotry, and intolerance Opper is trying to provoke in the name of Christ than I would be with this Muslim event. This kind of deceit and unwarranted criticism of the president -- who people of all faiths and people of no faith must deal with as our chief executive for at least three more years -- advances no one's cause, least of all Opper's. All it does is create more divisiveness and ignorance in America (at least among those who fall for her dirty tricks) and fractures America along religious and racial lines.

Obama targets schoolchildren with his socialist agenda

President Barack Obama has stirred the ire of the GOP and the Right by declaring his intent to give a speech to American schoolchildren. Less than a week ago, the chairman of Florida's Republican Party, Jim Greer, released a statement about Obama's upcoming speech, saying "I am absolutely appalled that taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama's socialist ideology." Some parents oppose Obama's speech to students so much that they are pressuring their school districts to allow their children to opt out of the speech, citing concern about Obama indoctrinating their children with his "socialist" agenda.

Today President Barack Obama released the transcript of the remarks he will give for the back-to-school event tomorrow. It is staggering the lengths Obama goes to in this speech to inculcate American schoolchildren with socialist doctrine. Every American parent should read this speech for him or herself. This is just the sort of message to which conservative parents would not want to expose their children.

Jim Greer read a copy of the transcript today. Regarding Obama's speech to students, the Florida GOP chair said "It's a good speech, I'll let my kids watch." Wait! What?

Labor Day

The "secret process" for economic recovery

The Associated Press released a 'news story' in which it claims that a "secret process" benefits pet projects. Yet when you scrutinize the story closer, you'll find that it's not so much 'news' as it is a distortion clearly biased against the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (13.4 MB PDF) (the Act).

The story claims that "a process that is both secretive and susceptible to political influence" is being used for allocating economic stimulus funds. It gives examples of certain border checkpoints getting funds before other checkpoints of a higher priority for improvements do. However, if you read the article with a critical eye, you discover that it concedes there was justification for the order of allocation which was not so secretive after all. A simple Google search shows that there are millions of pages published about how "shovel-ready projects" would get the highest priority. This was a condition established in the Act that was widely publicized long before it was passed.

The story fails to report that there are numerous factors that must be considered when allocating funds to federal projects besides the single five-year-old report (which pre-dated the Act by years) the author cherry-picked to ground her distortion. While the author concedes that federal officials could similarly justify every decision they've made, she clouds her concession with the provocative and deceitful comment that, "they would not provide those justifications to the AP," as if the Feds were intentionally withholding the information from her. The Feds obviously could not give a laundry list of their justifications for every one of their countless projects to a random journalist. Yet her article makes it clear that they did provide her with information on every project she specifically inquired about.

The author is probably one of those poeple who claim that the economic stimulus funds are not getting into the economy quickly enough. Yet she decries the Administration spending stimulus funds on shovel-ready projects first. She's probably also one of those people who complains that the Act didn't result in economic recovery without acknowledging that it was enacted only six months ago and that the bulk of the $787-billion remains to be disbursed into the economy. Like most critics of the Act, she wants to have it both ways.

As far as the "secret process" is concerned, a visit to Recovery.gov shows that there is more transparency over spending under the Act than there has ever been for any other bill. But that's a fact that the AP apparently doesn't want you to know.

Shocking news!

Tom Ridge is releasing a book in which the ex-DHS chief links politics to terror alerts. His book is expected to claim that the White House asked him to raise the official threat level just before the 2004 election, purportedly to swing voters to Bush. Ridge will claim in his book that, although he objected to it, he succumbed to the pressure of former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and then-Attorney General John Ashcroft.

This revelation is not the surprising part of this story. What surprises me is that the media is all over it as if Ridge's revelation is some kind of shocking news story. The fact is that over four years ago I was writing about how the Terrorist in Chief was trying to manipulate the election by terrorizing the American people with his Homeland Security Advisory System. And the talk all over the street at the time, from everyday people like me, was the same.

If we laypeople could see what the Wizard of Shock and Awes was really up to behind his curtain, why did it take journalists -- whom you would think were insiders in DC -- more than four years to tell what was going on?

Death Panel

What is this "Death Panel" we've all been hearing about lately? Don't take my word for it. Don't let other people tell you what it says. Read the actual text of America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 for yourself.

The Act is 1,018 pages long, so give the 1.7 MB Portable Document format (PDF) file a couple of minutes to download. Then go straight to SEC. 1233. ADVANCE CARE PLANNING CONSULTATION starting on page 424. This is the section that addresses the issue that somehow came to be known as the "Death Panel." It's about seven pages long but it's double-spaced with big letters and wide margins, so it won't take long to read.

When you're done, please post a comment and tell America the specific page number and lines of the Act which trouble you. It's simple; every page and line is numbered for easy citation. Be sure and explain how those lines legislate anything like what the Act's opponents say the "Death Panel" is. The first one to comment gets to show off how well informed they are, so hurry up.