Town Hall – 2parse

Updated (November 9, 2009): Welcome to all the visitors from the home of the “Patriotic Resistance” who seem to have just discovered this. Feel free to leave “patriotic” comments about how much America sucks under Obama. I welcome your hatred.

[digg-reddit-me]Chuck Norris has now joined the right-wing campaign to spread lies about health care reform!

Okay, maybe that’s not all that surprising. He endorsed Huckabee in the 2008 campaign in the Republican primary’s best ad. And he’s clearly a conservative. And the guy’s got a regular column at the generally fair-and-balanced* TownHall.com. And Norris’s previous two months of columns involved scaremongering about the government forcing people to get permits to study the Bible, demanding Obama produce his birth certificate, claiming Carter deja vu – you get the idea.

But still, why now, Chuck? We know you’re rich and impervious to pain – but other people need health insurance. And why lie to your fans? Why Chuck?

Anyway, this is what the guy has to say in his missive describing “Dirty secret No. 1 in Obamacare“:

Dirty secret No. 1 in Obamacare is about the government’s coming into homes and usurping parental rights over child care and development.

That sounds serious. He cites a particular page of “the House bill” (page 838 for those reading along at home [pdf.]) If you read that section, you find something that sounds somewhat less sinister: A program that would offer grants to states that have – or wish to start – programs providing “voluntary home visitation for families with young children and families expecting children.” The program is explicitly “voluntary” – as in these trainees would only come if asked; and it would not be run by the federal government, but by the states if they wanted to have such a program. A few pages later, the bill states the program is meant to help communities with high reported incidences of “child maltreatment” and “low-income communities.” Specifically these programs are designed to prevent child abuse (as this Wisconsin program is [pdf.])

Chuck Norris will have none of it. He speculates that any attempt to prevent child abuse amounts to enforcing a:

…secular-progressive and religiously neutered version of parental values and wisdom…

Responding to the point that any programs granted funding by this would need to be explicitly voluntary, Norris responds:

One government rebuttal is that this program would be “voluntary.” Is that right? Does that imply that this agency would just sit back passively until some parent needing parenting skills said, “I don’t think I’ll call my parents, priest or friends or read a plethora of books, but I’ll go down to the local government offices”?

Snap! Chuck’s on a roll. He then points out that this program would focus on grants for communities that have low incomes – which to him means the program is saying that the poor are worse parents. (Of course, you could also say that the poor are more likely to need subsidized help such as this – but why try to think of a rational explanation when you could think of the most offensive one instead.)

Chuck’s anger reaches a crescendo as he asks:

How contrary is Obamacare’s home intrusion and indoctrination family services, in which state agents prioritize houses to enter and enforce their universal values and principles upon the hearts and minds of families across America?

…Government’s real motives and rationale are quite simple, though rarely, if ever, stated. If one wants to control the future ebbs and flows of a country, one must have command over future generations… It is so simple that any socialist can understand it. As Josef Stalin once stated, “Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.”

I mean, whoa. Health care reform is secretly really about “Government” forcing its way into your homes and indoctrinating your children to become socialists!

Death panels, government-mandated abortion, government-sponsored euthanasia, a holocaust of the elderly and disabled – and now “home intrustions” and the secret socialist “indoctrination” of children. The question is – what’s next for Obamacare? Will it take away your guns? Will it force you to be gay? It’s getting harder and harder to distinguish parodies of what opponents of health care are saying and what they are saying…

[Image by ensign beedrill licensed under Creative Commons.]

Stop ObamaCare Before Obama Murders Your Comatose Wife and Infant Daughter!

[digg-reddit-me]I received an email this morning from Townhall.com entitled, “ObamaCare Equals Government Funded Euthanasia” with the above image. I’m sort of curious why they couldn’t have just shown a picture of Obama with a gun to the baby’s head. It would have been more effective at getting their message across. But then again, they might be concerned about losing the white male gun owner vote – ’cause after all, its hard to maintain that Obama is both a liberal pansy (who’s the next Hitler and therefore is going to take away your guns) and that he carries a Glock around so he can take out any infants he sees.

But I take this email to demonstrate that the right is now stepping up its blizzard of lies about the Democratic health care reform bill over the August recess. Here’s some context for the photo:

Everyone knows that nationalized healthcare is a terrible idea but everyday we unearth even more awful details in what is in the proposed government-run plan.

A nation of Terri Schiavos with a National Euthanasia Bill?

In 2005, a COURT ordered the removal of a feeding Tube from Terri Schiavo. It outraged a nation. If the Government takes over health care, bureaucrats will decide who lives and dies in America. In the name of “creating efficiencies,” they will delay – or deny – treatment to critically ill patients because it costs too much.

We will have a NATION of Terri Schiavo’s, with a faceless Federal Bureaucracy pulling the plug instead of a Court.!

Sound crazy? It happens every day in Great Britain.

You can STOP what will in effect be government sponsored euthanasia in America if you ACT NOW.

If you care about the Sanctity of Life, the proposed Government Takeover of Health Care is an attack on your values.

It’s quite interesting that Town Hall would bring up Terri Schiavo – the pinnacle of right-wing overreach that helped alienate libertarians from the Republican camp – and that led the public to near unprecedented levels of agreement over the matter. 62% of Americans favored removing the feeding tube – and 82% of Americans believed that Congress and the President should have stayed out of the matter. Yet Town Hall – speaking only to its base – sees Schiavo as a rallying cry. And not just to their base – they claim that the removal of the feeding tube, “outraged a nation.” I wonder what it accomplishes to lie to your base and tell them that they are the real majority, aside from radicalizing them and alienating them from the American system.

But getting back to the substance of what they are claiming, they bring up a repeated right-wing canard – that:

If the Government takes over health care, bureaucrats will decide who lives and dies in America. In the name of “creating efficiencies,” they will delay – or deny – treatment to critically ill patients because it costs too much.

So many inaccuracies – as, to start, the Democratic health care reform doesn’t lead the government to take over health care. At worst, it would lead to a government-provided health insurance. And any health insurance – private or public – will deny treatment on occasion due to expense. The problem with our status quo is that rationing occurs both by cost – depending on what insurance plan you have and by health insurance company bureacrats whose job it is to deny as many treatments as possible and/or to rescind your policy if they can’t deny the treatments. That sounds a lot less like rationing and more like a war that health insurance companies are waging against the sick of America – a war in which their goal is to maximize their profits regardless of the cost to society or their paying customers.

As to the Democratic health care reforms endorsing government-funded abortion and euthanasia, I truly wonder who actually buys this load of crap. Clearly, it is an attempt by Town Hall to manufacture outrage – but who is stupid enough to believe this? Too many people, I’m sure.

Edit: On reddit, criswell improves the image, writing:

Man, look at his eyes! Obama sure hates that baby!

That pic is all kinds of win…. But it could be better… It may be too subtle for your average American… It needs… something….. Hmmmm….