Health Care Reform - What's Really in the Bill?

As liberals rush ObamaCare through Congress, let's review the disparity between promises and text. Joe Wilson's declaration "You lie!" is ringing truer with each passing day.

Barack Obama promised "transparency" and giving the public five days to read the bill, but Senator Jim Bunning's (R-KY) amendment to require the bill, along with a final Congressional Budget Office score, to be posted online 72 hours before the vote, was defeated. Rep. Brian Baird (D-WA) and Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR) have been trying to get the House to agree to post the bill 72 hours before the vote, but while most Republicans have signed on, the Nancy Pelosi leadership is unwilling.

The Democrats still hope to rush the bill through unread. The 1,100-page Stimulus bill was posted online only 13 hours before the vote, and the 1,200-page Cap and Trade bill was posted only 15 hours before the vote.

Obama promised that the health-care bill would not cover illegal aliens, but Senator Chuck Grassley's (R-IA) amendment to require immigrants to prove their identity with a photo I.D. was rejected.

Obama promised that if you like your current health insurance you won't have to change it, but Senator John Cornyn's (R-TX) amendment to assure present insurance owners that they won't have to change their coverage, and that they can keep the coverage they have with their current employer without government driving up cost, was defeated.

Obama's appointment of 34 czars includes a Health Care Czar, but Senator John Ensign's (R-NV) amendment to require any health care czar to be subject to the constitutional Senate confirmation process was defeated. Obama's new Regulatory Czar, Cass Sunstein, defends removing organs from terminally ill patients and from deceased persons even though they did not consent to be organ donors.

Obama promised that "under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions," and his Press Secretary Robert Gibbs tried to divert attention from this bold lie by obfuscating the Hyde Amendment. But the Hyde Amendment is not a law; it's a one-year-at-a-time rider that applies only to current Medicaid programs, and would not apply to the health-care law.

The Democrats five times (twice in Senate committees, three times in House committees) defeated amendments to prohibit the health-care plan from spending federal money or requiring health insurance plans to cover abortions. They also defeated Senator Orrin Hatch's (R-UT) amendment to respect the conscience rights of health-care workers who do not want to perform abortions because of moral or religious objections.

One amendment that did pass was Senator Maria Cantwell's (D-WA) amendment that gives the Secretary of Health and Human Services the power to define cost-effective care for each medical condition and to punish doctors who treat high-cost patients with complex conditions. That has been Obama's goal from the beginning and will inevitably lead to the "death panels" Sarah Palin warned about.

Former Senator Tom Daschle, who was scheduled to be Health and Human Services Secretary or Health Care Czar until he had to bow out, said that the law should be written in generalities so the bureaucrats can fill in the details. Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and a key Obama health care adviser, may be behind the Stimulus legislation that will send "embedded clinical-decision support" to doctors via computer to warn them about what is "appropriate" and "cost-effective," backed up by the threat to impose financial penalties on doctors who are not "meaningful users."

The Democrats' health-care "reform" carries a trillion-dollar price tag, will vastly increase the national debt hanging over our children and grandchildren, impose socialist control over one-sixth of our economy, and force us to obey totalitarian dictates. The mandate on employers to provide health insurance will result in lower wages and fewer jobs.

The mandate on individuals to buy health insurance or pay a penalty, even threatening jail for those who fail to conform, amounts to a massive tax increase on individuals and families whose health insurance may lack all the new federally specified requirements.

Obama's "spread the wealth around" policy is evident in the big expansion of Medicaid combined with large cuts in Medicare. Former Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt says that the combination of mandates to buy insurance, guaranteed issue, and community rating amounts to massive income distribution that is hidden from public view and not even debated.

Finally, we are subject to the deviousness of what House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) calls the 70 phantom amendments that were added in secret after the bill was voted out by the committee.

Did Obama swing his own Nobel?

Napoleon famously crowned himself Emperor of France and its conquered European empire, which he was trying to spread to Russia, Britain and Egypt, in its brief moment of grandeur. I'm wondering if Obama also crowned himself Nobel Laureate right after the US election. That would fit his vainglorious persona and his famished ego, always hungry for more and more applause. Just wait till we see his Nobel PC Address being televised around the world. America is too little for Zero.


Obama obviously thinks of himself as a Man of Destiny, like Napoleon and quite a few other Saviors on Horseback. Men of Destiny don't wait for the world to recognize their superhuman virtues. They know it from the start, and by gum, the rest of the world better catch up quick. As Nicolas Sarkozy has said, Obama is "utterly immature... arrogant ... empty of all content." This is the Prez of France, who lives in a Heavenly Palace near the Avenue of the Heavenly Fields -- the Champs-Élysées. He's an expert on the swelled head, since every president of France is required to have one.


The latest rumor is that three of the five Norwegian political hacks on the PC Committee were against giving the golden bauble to Our Messiah (Peace Be Upon Him!) -- until something made them change their minds. The two members of the ruling party apparently talked the other three into making it "unanimous." Now they're all getting big flak and scurrying for cover.


According to Alexander Downer, former Foreign Minister of Australia, "Electing President Barack Obama for the Peace Prize was a political decision of gross stupidity."


Writes Mr. Downer,


"There are five Norwegian MPs on the committee, three from the left and two from the right. There is a woman called Sissel Ronbeck, who is a Labour MP. In her earlier years she was the chairman of the Norwegian Workers Youth League. Then there is Ms. Agot Valle, of the Socialist Left Party. There is a Conservative and a member of the libertarian Progress Party. And then there's the chairman, the most important of all the members of the committee. He is a man called Thorbjorn Jagland.



... He is a member of the Norwegian Labour Party."


So three socialists, one Libertarian, and one Conservative (by Norwegian standards) were finally talked into giving the first International Prize for Trying Really Hard.


Norway has only 4.5 million people -- fewer than Cook County, IL -- and it's hard to keep a secret. This is an international embarrassment, and half of Norway must be asking questions behind the scenes. How the hell did this happen? It's the biggest embarrassment since Vidkund Quisling.


So my question is: How did Rahm Emanuel talk the Oslo Labour Party into arm-twisting the three No votes on the Committee? You can bet that Hillary wasn't handling it. Hillary could never be trusted to swing a Nobel for the Big O. It had to be the White House, and they could promise favors or threaten punishment for the ruling party in Norway. That's how Rahm usually gets it done, as he made clear during his infamous table-stabbing speech in the Clinton years.


Remember, this sleazy award made the whole Nobel PC Prize look idiotic, even to the brainwashed masses. They sacrificed whatever credibility they had left after the Al Gore fiasco. But even the BBC just confessed that global warming doesn't exist, and John Tierney, the Only Honest Man at the New York Times, is even beginning to bring a smidgen of sanity to that madhouse. The Nobel establishment must be wondering whether Algore is going down in flames -- which he will very soon. When that becomes obvious, they can kiss their Nobel PC Prize goodbye. It'll be a global farce, just like the UN "Human Rights" Commission, which gladly welcomes genociders to its ranks.


So the three skeptical committee members might have realized that their credibility was on the line. After the Obama Preemptive PC Prize no sane person will ever believe that it has any integrity, that it hasn't been utterly politicized -- the way the Left politicizes everything.


After all, the Feminist Left even politicized motherhood. All the traditional loyalties are just shotgun targets for Leftist takedown: Free speech, academic freedom, a genuinely free press, God, scientific integrity, the individual, the sanctity of life, private contracts, private property, the U.S. Constitution, the free web, hard work and sacrifice, love of country, family loyalty, marriage, babies, fatherhood, motherhood -- and now with Obama's "Safe Schools" Commissar Kevin Jennings, even childhood is no longer sacred.


That's why Jennings wrote his piece for Queering Elementary Education -- Advancing the Dialogue about Sexualities and Schooling (Curriculum, Schooling, and (Homo) Sexualities. That must be why he is now the de facto Gay Commissar in Obama's Education Department. He came to power in the LGBT world for Queering the Elementary School. It's on the public record, and his heroic stance on expanding the sexuality of little kids obviously didn't hurt his political career in LGBT -- which is why he is now in charge of "safe schools" for Obama.


Jennings built a political career out of his publicly stated ambition to meddle with the sexual development of elementary school kids, and ended up gracing Obama's White House. Look it up on Amazon if you doubt it.


I used to wonder why Dante needed so many circles in his Hell to punish evildoers. I thought he was some kind of madman. Now I think Dante was right. There really are degrees of more and more evil. Where do you think Dante would have put Kevin Jennings? Or all those who enable the Jenningses in politics? Beat poet Allen Ginsburg, another celebrated sexual predator of the Left, is quoted as yelling "We will get you through your children." Well, Obama seems determined to fulfill that promise.


We used to throw childhood predators in jail, but now we give them big jobs in the White House. On top of that Obama just promised to allow Gay politics to be publicly celebrated in the military. We have seen where that leads. This is not a matter of Gay rights but Gay aggression --- unless somebody would like to put on an annual Heterosexual Parade in the military just for balance. But no, that would be persecution of a designated victim group. It's heads I win, tails you lose.


Compared to all those swamps of corruption the Nobel Peace Prize means nothing. The world can live without it. Saving just a single kid from the clutches of Kevin Jennings' Brave New Elementary School is worth all the Nobels in the world. The Nobel PC Prizes have sometimes been pretty dubious, and over time they have become a mark of Cain. It's like the Imperial Deutschmark. Or the dollar. Even the most valued symbols can turn sour.


For the Left there is no integrity, no honesty, no truth and no morality outside of its lust for power. Three of the five Committee members apparently understood the big gamble they were taking. But they still gave in to the two pols from the Labour Party.


Why?


I don't know the answer.


But it's important to pay attention, because this is another indication that we are slipping toward a corruptocracy to rival Chicago in the days of Al Capone's Mob.


It looks like Obama is Hizzoner Da Mare and da Dems are da Machine

By James Lewis

Conservatives vs. Liberals

If a conservative doesn’t like guns, they don’t buy one.
If a liberal doesn’t like guns, then no one should have one.

If a conservative is a vegetarian, they don’t eat meat.
If a liberal is a vegetarian, they want to ban all meat products for everyone.

If a conservative sees a foreign threat, he thinks about how to defeat his enemy.
A liberal wonders how to surrender gracefully and still look good.

If a conservative is homosexual, they quietly enjoy their life.
If a liberal is homosexual, they loudly demand legislated respect.

If a black man or Hispanic is conservative, they see themselves as independently successful.

Their liberal counterparts see themselves as victims in need of government protection.

If a conservative is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation.
A liberal wonders who is going to take care of him.

If a conservative doesn’t like a talk show host, he switches channels.
Liberals demand that those they don’t like be shut down.

If a conservative is a non-believer, he doesn’t go to church.
A liberal wants any mention of God or religion silenced.

If a conservative decides he needs health care, he goes about shopping for it, or may choose a job that provides it.

A liberal demands that his neighbors pay for his.

Obama Poised to Cede US Sovereignty

At [the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in] Copenhagen, this December, weeks away, a treaty will be signed. President Obama will sign it. Most of the third world countries will sign it, because they think they’re going to get money out of it. Most of the left-wing regimes from the European Union will rubber stamp it. Virtually everybody will sign it.

I read that treaty. And what it says is this, that a world government is going to be created. The word “government” actually appears as the first of three purposes of the new entity. The second purpose is the transfer of wealth from the countries of the West to third world countries, in satisfaction of what is called, coyly, “climate debt” – because we’ve been burning carbon and producing CO2 and they haven’t. We’ve been screwing up the climate and they haven’t. And the third purpose of this new entity, this government, is enforcement.

How many of you think that the word “election” or “democracy” or “vote” or “ballot” occurs anywhere in the 200 pages of that treaty? Quite right, it doesn’t appear once. So, at last, the communists who piled out of the Berlin Wall and into the environmental movement, who took over Greenpeace so that my friends who funded it left within a year, because [the communists] captured it – Now the apotheosis as at hand. They are about to impose a communist world government on the world. President Obama who has very strong sympathies with that point of view. He’s going to sign it. He’ll sign anything. He’s a Nobel Peace Prize winner; of course he’ll sign it.

And the trouble is this; if that treaty is signed and if your Constitution says that it takes precedence, and you can’t resign from that treaty unless you get agreement from all the other state parties – And because you’ll be the biggest paying country, they’re not going to let you out of it.

So, thank you, America. You were the beacon of freedom to the world. It is a privilege merely to stand on this soil of freedom while it is still free. But, in the next few weeks, unless you stop it, President Obama will sign your freedom, your democracy, and your prosperity away forever. And neither you nor any subsequent government you may elect will have any power whatsoever to take it back. That is how serious it is. I’ve read the treaty. I’ve seen this stuff about [world] government and climate debt and enforcement. They are going to do this to you whether you like it or not.

But I think it is here, here in your great nation, which I so love and I so admire – it is here that perhaps, at this eleventh hour, at the fifty-ninth minute and fifty-ninth second, you will rise up and you will stop your president from signing that dreadful treaty, that purposeless treaty. For there is no problem with climate and, even if there were, an economic treaty does nothing to help it.

So I end by saying to you the words that Winston Churchill addressed to your president in the darkest hour before the dawn of freedom in the Second World War. He quoted from your great poet Longfellow:

Sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!

---Lord Monckton

Obama Fails to Win Nobel Economics Prize

Surprise! Surprise! In a decision as shocking as Friday's surprise peace prize win, President Obama failed to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences Monday.
While few observers think Obama has done anything for world peace in the nearly nine months he's been in office, the same clearly can't be said for economics.
The president has worked tirelessly since even before his inauguration to wrest control of the U.S. economy from failed free markets, and the evil CEOs who profit from them, and to turn it over to wise, fair and benevolent bureaucrats.
From his $787 billion stimulus package, to the cap and tax bill, to the seizures of General Motors and Chrysler, to the un-dead healthcare "reform" act, Obama has dominated the U.S., and therefore the global, economy as few figures have in recent years.
Yet the Nobel panel chose instead to award the prize to two obscure academics, -- Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson -- one noted for her work on managing collective resources, and the other for his work on transaction costs.
Obama is a major disappointment. The President has sold America and Americans down the river. Frankly how anyone can believe in anything he proposes to be anything other than the continued marginalization of American Freedoms, Progress, and economic independence through misguided policies that reward the few at the expense of everyone else is beyond me. Obama works for the interests of the elite at the expense of the people. The only prize he deserves is Political Shill of the year--an award he may qualify for again and again.

You Lie!

Radicals Wrote Stimulus Bill

No congressman read and perhaps no congressman even had a hand in writing the much-criticized stimulus bill. It’s largely the creation of a coalition of leftwing organizations called the Apollo Alliance, whose primary interests are the earth and environmental justice and redistributing wealth. They are not friends of job-creating capitalism.

On Apollo's Web site, Sen. Reid, whose state also leads in foreclosures, is quoted praising the group of which former green czar Van Jones was a board member.
"We've talked about moving forward on these ideas for decades," Reid is quoted as saying. "The Apollo Alliance has been an important factor in helping us develop and execute a strategy that makes great progress on these goals and in motivating the public to support them."

Jones, the former Oakland, Calif., community organizer and self-avowed communist, was on the board of the Apollo Alliance when he accepted the position in the Obama administration as green jobs czar.

As Phil Kerpen of Americans for Prosperity told Glenn Beck, Jones has "described the Apollo Alliance mission as sort of a grand unified field theory for progressive left causes" that would tie elements of organized labor with community organizers and environmental groups into an outfit that would restructure American society.

Wade Rathke, founder of Acorn, was also on the Apollo board, as is Gerald Hudson, vice president of the Service Employees International Union, which provides the shock troops in the movement to pass government-run health care.

John Podesta, former chief of staff to President Clinton and now president of the leftist Center for American Progress, also sits on the Apollo board. Each day his group sends out talking points to the left side of the blogosphere. Mark Lloyd, diversity czar at the Federal Communications Commission, was a senior fellow at CAP.

According to Kerpen, the Apollo Alliance put together a draft stimulus bill in 2008 that included almost everything in the final $787 billion package. Little did the voters know that the congressmen and senators they would elect would pass a bill written by activist outsiders.

Perhaps the most bizarre aspect of all this is that an even more radical Jeff Jones (no relation) has a relationship with the Apollo Alliance. Jeff Jones was a domestic terrorist in the '60s and a fugitive from justice throughout the '70s who, with Bill Ayers, helped found the Weather Underground in 1969.Ayers, Jones and the Weathermen participated in the violent Days of Rage riots in Chicago and a nationwide anti-government bombing campaign. Like Ayers, Jeff Jones has no regrets, saying: "To this day, we still, lots of us, including me, still think it was the right thing to do."

Today, Jones finds himself director of the Apollo Alliance's New York affiliate and a consultant to the national group. One of his clients is the Workforce Development Institute, a union-controlled organization.As a consultant to WDI, Jones helps write the grant proposals for federal stimulus dollars — funds authorized in the bill that Apollo helped write — all to ensure that taxpayer dollars end up in the hands of groups that share Apollo's political agenda.

Welcome to government of the activist, by the activist and for the activist. Sounds like corruption to me.