So, yeah. We all know that Obama is trying to push major health care changes through the US Congress and it is, predictably, proving somewhat controversial and moving a bit slowly. I consider this to be a good thing, as I believe that the Founding Fathers deliberately engineered the American federal government to move slowly and actually do very little, if anything, unless it has overwhelming popular support¹.

All-too-predictably, this is leading to a wave of political grandstanding, mis- or dis-information, and loonies coming out of the woodwork (on both sides).

A couple days ago, I ran across a passing reference to claims that "Obama's plan" included a provision requiring senior citizens to go in every five years and have a government official try to talk them into being euthanized. The truth of the matter was far less sinister, of course: One of the current proposals in Congress includes coverage for end-of-life counseling - writing up living wills, that kind of thing - with a limit of no more than one counseling session per five years. No mandatory visits. No attempts to push euthanasia on the elderly.

It made me wonder who could be so imbecilic as to actually believe that anyone would propose a law aimed at trying to talk people into committing suicide. Such a proposal could never possibly pass. If it were to actually pass, there would be so much well-justified public outrage that merely voting in favor of it (never mind sponsoring it) would be... well... political suicide.

Today, I got my answer. Who could believe such a thing?

Further commentary on this:
http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_treatment/archive/2009/08/08/have-you-no-decency.aspx
http://egan.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/palins-poison/

¹ ...and then political parties formed, created power blocs large enough to make things happen more easily, and screwed the whole thing up, but that's another rant.