Just Throw Grandma From the Train
By John Amato Saturday Aug 08, 2009 10:00amThe health-care deniers are out in full force now since the feckless members of Congress decided to pack it in until September and these lying liars are scaring the elderly as much as they can. I wonder how many heart attacks these cretins are causing with their fearmongering tactics. But it's not surprising at all since we've seen this same flick over and over again. The Religious Right/Right-to-Life/Conservatives make this crap up all the time. They failed during the Terri Schiavo fiasco, but they are like ants. They always come back and find the cat food dish.
I'm a little bit surprised that everyone's so gobsmacked about the right wing's ability to spread the alarm about Obama's alleged intention to turn all the old people into Soylent Green. How it became such an article of faith on the right is no mystery: it's a fundamental part of the Right To Life agenda and it's been going on for a long time.
Here's the NRLC in 2007:
How Medicare Was Saved from Rationing — And Why It’s Now in Danger
By Burke J. Balch
Editor’s note: Since its inception, the National Right to Life Committee has been equally concerned with protecting older people and people with disabilities from euthanasia as with protecting the unborn from abortion. We have recognized that involuntary denial of lifesaving medical treatment is a form of involuntary euthanasia, and therefore have opposed government rationing of health care. In 1997 and 2003, NRLC successfully fought to amend Medicare by allowing older people the right to use their own money to obtain unrationed care; shockingly, under the new leadership of Congress that right is now at risk. Here’s the background:
Most people are aware that Medicare—the government program that provides health insurance to older people in the United States—faces grave fiscal problems as the baby boom generation ages.
Medicare is financed by payroll taxes, which means that those now working are paying for the health care of those now retired. As the baby boom generation moves from middle into old age, the proportion of the retired population will increase, while the proportion of the working population will decrease. The consequence is that the amount of money available for each Medicare beneficiary, when adjusted for health care inflation, will shrink.
Three alternatives exist. In theory, taxes could be increased dramatically to make up the shortfall. Few knowledgeable observers consider this likely, regardless of which party is in power in Washington.
The second alternative—to put it bluntly but accurately—is rationing. Less money available per senior citizen would mean less treatment, including less of the treatments necessary to prevent death. For want of treatment, many people whose lives could have been saved by medical treatment will perish against their will.
The third alternative is that, as the government contribution decreases, the shortfall is made up by payments from older people themselves, so that their Medicare health insurance premium is financed partly by the government and partly from their own income and savings.
It goes on to promote that last as the best way to insure that the elderly will not be euthanized. Here's their earlier argument when Bush was pushing his prescription drug plan in 2003:
The news has been full of the Republican proposal to add a prescription drug benefit to Medicare. What Americans might not realize is that the bill as currently drafted could lead to involuntary euthanasia through the rationing of
health care...read on
Read the whole piece, because she links up more sickness that's actually making me want to euthanize myself right now.
UPDATE: Pat Buchanan brings us more Nazi analogies with article entitled, "Time To Go, Grampa." There is a separate place in Hell for the Buchanans of the world.
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..for Buchannan or the other Repugs..just the dark oblivion they deserve and seem intent on enforcing on the rest of the country & the world.
When the Bush administration failed our injured soldiers with the pathetic conditions at Walter Reed Medical Center? And HOW many soldiers have committed and attempted to commit suicide due in large part because they were ignored by the Bush system?
It was also the Bush administration that stepped in on behalf of US Drug Companies to stop people (like my elderly mother) from purchasing the drugs cheaper from Canada.
.......love, hard love, for the $$$$$changers, you WALLSTREETBANKSTERS!!!!!!
I made a commentary video about health care that makes the case that if you are pro life you should be pro government run health care. It is really a no brainer. Who do you trust more to ration your health care? A bureaucracy that is sworn to protect investors or a bureaucracy that is sworn to protect the citizens lives by mandate of the US constitution? Duh. . .
Please feel free to use it in any way you feel is appropriate.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ju82qX1DzoM
It can also be found at my blog:
http://mediacrashers.blogspot.com/
Here is a transcript:
Every Month 1,666 people die because they have either no insurance or bad insurance.
Repeat After Me:
If you're pro life, you should be pro government healthcare because only the government is sworn to protect people's lives. The same government provides police protection, fire protection, rescue protection and makes sure no piece of military hardware is to expensive to keep us safe.
"I solemnly swear to protect the American people's lives. . . . " that's the government!
Who is Blue Cross sworn to protect?
Repeat After Me:
If you're pro life. . .
The concern over abortion is a completely fair concern but there's a whole lot more life on the table right now than just that category.
Police protection, fire protection. . .
If you neighbor's house is on fire, your house might burn down too. If your neighbor's kid is sick and they can't afford to go see a doctor, your kid might get sick too!
Rescue protection. . . .
What really is the difference between military protection and health protection except that the enemy is. . . smaller? It's still invading isn't it?
Repeat After Me:
Private insurance companies don't swear to protect the people's lives.
Repeat After Me:
To a private insurance company, our health is a resource. It's either an asset which they exploit or it's a liability which they terminate. . . .
Repeat After Me:
To the government, we ARE the thing they're supposed to protect.
If you're pro life, then you should be pro government run healthcare:
Medicare, Medicade, Veterans Administration, DOD, the government employees insurance plan. . .
Repeat After Me:
Even the people who don't like government have to agree that the one thing we give the government a lot of power to do is to protect our lives and our well being.
Repeat After Me:
Given the choice between someone who legally sees you as a resource and someone who legally sees you as their responsibility, which one would you trust to make sure that your treatment won't be terminated because it's too expensive?
Repeat After Me:
You should be pro government run healthcare.
This is life we are talking about. This is life!
Why wouldn't you be pro government run healthcare?
Because only the government is obligated by law to protect our lives!
Repeat After Me:
Police protection, fire protection, rescue protection, Coast Guard. . No piece of military hardware is too expensive to keep us safe right?
If you're pro life, you should be pro government healthcare.
Please. . pass it on.
Here is one of those well placed lies. Ann Coulter claims that only 1% of Americans dislike their health care.
Here is the clip.
http://progressnotcongress.org/?p=2440
I just can't watch it.
But, you're right, "all it takes is a couple of well-placed lies." Just plant the seed, it will grow and not go away.
People on goverment healthcare against people having government healthcare.
Only in America!
fixtit
The right wingers, like Palin and Bachmann, are using some quotes from Ezekiel Emmanuel, Rahm's brother. Ezekiel is a medical Bioethicist who in 1996 did write a controversial report. He also is an advisor to the White House on health care issues.
In that report, he did say some things about not guaranteeing medical care to those who might "irreversibly" be unable to be functioning citizens.
I don't necessarily agree with this, but it does apply to situations like the Terri Schiavo case. While I thought it was wrong to prolong her life, especially since her husband did not want to do so, I still think that if he felt the other way, he therefore should have been able to keep her on life support.
I don't know what context Ezekiel's statement was in, but he is also a leading opponent of state-assisted suicide, which seems to some extent to be in direct contrast with his statements. I am quiet sure these right to lifers are dead set against those who might want to end their own lives because of some horrible illness which doesn't allow them to live with any joy.
these are the SAME assholes who couldn't WAIT to bomb the fuck out of 2 sovereign countries because of of criminal acts caused by No One from Either Country.
All for spending billions on murder, graft and corruption, and now they are trying to scare the shit out of people so we don't spend a nickel on health care reform or get single payer now (Single payer, BTW, would eliminate the need for separate and often inadequate veterans' health care system, the veterans these assholes insisted we create).
And they're in the minority now, and were in the minority then.
Tell me, why do they have the power?
Its true that many of the people screaming at town hall meetings are elderly, but they aren't screaming because they've been scared by the GOP. They're screaming because most old people are conservatives and are enraged by the idea of a public healthcare option.
who don't want to be thought to be taking the same benefits as those inferior, "undeserving" colored, poor, gay or immigrant people.
The issue is at its deepest, racial.
Obama's ethnicity is driving a lot of older white people off the deep end.
I'm one of the 'older', white, set. Maybe if you were politically aware/awake in the 60's you'd know that most of the 60's was this same class war.
only a simple person would gloss over the paragraph about how to pay for it and not say, uhhh, hey lets remove the ceiling on SSA contributions above 90K or wherever it is, ohh, lets exact a miniscule percentage increase for the very wealthiest Americans, who won't even feel it, and viola
But its not falsehoods upon which these guys work, its misdirection. State as a fact something that isn't, but do it early, like burying a card in a deck for later use, and see how long it takes for your words to be judged critically and the faulty reasoning found. By then they are on to another talking point.
I say we get Howard Dean in a room with Frank Luntz. Dean don't play.
Those on Social security now receiving Medicare already pay monthly for their Medicare. This Burke J. Balch says: "Medicare is financed by payroll taxes, which means that those now working are paying for the health care of those now retired. As the baby boom generation moves from middle into old age, the proportion of the retired population will increase, while the proportion of the working population will decrease. The consequence is that the amount of money available for each Medicare beneficiary, when adjusted for health care inflation, will shrink." That is a lie. A total fabrication. All seniors pay over $1000.00 per year plus co-pays. Most also buy supplemental insurance. Add to that the Medicare Part D that they also buy, and it adds up to a substantial amount. They are not freeloading. They pay. They contribute. This really pisses me off. And the retirement age has been raised to 66. WTF?
for Medicare. Big whoop. That is $1.45 for every $100 that you make. And that insures all of the seniors in your family and that you know, including, someday, you. Who would begrudge anyone that safety?
It will take me a while, I haven't read Dante's "Inferno" for a long time, but I will find out which ring of hell Buchanan and his ilk will end up in. These fucking people actually have my very own parents afraid they are going to be "left behind".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxBMAZpwMoU&fe...
Murder Most Horrid By Dawn French
sarah palin's a granny.
I always thought the movie Throw Mama From the Train should've been released for Mother's Day.
Funny thing
If repug's grannies had separate political interests
They'd throw her beneath the bus.
as a "mental illness".
I've been reading all the reports about the "Palinazi's" (good one, eh?) out there screaming that a "relative" progressive such as Obama should be labeled a "Nazi" or "Hitler" or "Fascist" by these groups who appear to be deathly afraid of the U.S. "eventually" instituting a health care system in this country similar to that of France, England, Germany, Israel, New Zealand, Canada, Cuba, Sweden, The Netherlands, Denmark etc. where "everyone is in and nobody is out", where ALL health care is provided from cradle to grave, where the paper work is standardized and simplified (allowing doctors and nurses to be doctors and nurses), where ALL profit is eliminated from the health care equation and where the paper work is generated toward one centralized system ("Single-Payer").
We've already been warned by pretty much the entire Congress (including Republicans!) AND the Obama Administration that health care costs are spiraling out of control in the U.S. and that is WITHOUT fifty million Americans having any coverage at all. That if not checked in the future these costs may end up bankrupting our country...and STILL the fifty million would be without health care!
It dawned on me that these far right wing wacko "Palinazi's" who are out at meetings shouting people down, carrying signs labeling Obama "Hitler" etc. are most likely mentally ill!!!
They are exhibiting a classic "defense mechanism" called "PROJECTION".
Simply explained, this is when an individual....let's say a guy, is cheating on his wife and the guilt is wracking him. So rather than come clean to ease the guilt, what does he do? He accuses HER OF CHEATING!!!
Here is a more complex definition:
http://nosubject.com/Projection
Let's face it. These individuals (and most, if not all of us have interacted with them from time to time), only listen to the right wing media Gods such as Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, O'Reilly, Beck and Co.
They don't do any serious analysis or research outside of that realm. Essentially they have been brain-washed by these corporate clowns and are in a sense like good little brown-shirted foot soldiers.
Because they are intellectually challenged they are almost behaving in a thoughtless, brain-washed, hypnotic state. The "PROJECTION" their "Gods" are guilty of is carried on by the foot soldiers. What it is that they are accusing "health care reformists/Obama" of being is actually what they are guilty of themselves!! THEY are the Nazi's! THEY are the Fascists! THEY are the Brown Shirts!
If any rational person could sit down and have a "one on one" with some of these people (do an "intervention"??), and try to explain the facts of life to them, I think the spell could be broken. These people are being used to tear this country apart. They are corporate tools.
Anyhow, I'm just trying to take this whole mess a few steps deeper. I'd be interested in everyone's comments on my analysis. Especially any psychiatrists/psychoanalysts out there in blogospere land.
Thanks,
Abbybwood, R.N.
I wouldn't waste the time. I'm sorry Congress is wasting the time trying to achieve "bipartisanship" with more than the handful of Republicans who still retain their intelligence and common sense.
I think some more vociferous tactics ought to be used on these Blue Dogs who have been bought and paid for by the health care industry, and if any of them are in a caucus they don't belong in, kick them out and keep them out.
I agree.
It seems there ought to be a law against what they are doing at these meetings.
If you could trace these people back to their corporate masters who sent them out to "disrupt, rattle and to instigate violence" etc., I think we'd have a "criminal conspiracy" on our hands.
"Blue dog Democrat/right wing wacko Republican Congress member tells lobbyist to form "group" (Patients for Health Reform) that is really a front for "Palinazis" who do NOT want health care reform and the insurance corporation reps get involved. Robo calls are made with "objectives" on the website and the sites of various Democratic Congress members meetings and the rest is history." You get the idea.
If the above were proven to be true and violence/mayhem/injuries/arrests occurred, and the wheels of democracy were ground to a halt as a result, it would be a classic "conspiracy" to create an environment where the opposition has ZERO chance of succeeding.
An offense punishable by death.
..being taken by the Blue Dogs. There isn't nearly enough coverage of that on MSM. ROTFLMAO - MSM fails their audience yet again! All that LIBRUL MEDIA!
Good explanation of projections. I'm also a crusader to inform the people of the USofBLOODYISRAEL that the coup de etate of 2000 was and still is FASCIST!!! These are re-incarnated NAZI's no doubt.
My mother was an RN in the 50's and I grew up on health care becoming a doctor myself.
Not by just their employers. Limbo sounds like an advertisement for the insurance companies. There is more to this than we realize.
Due to the penchant for projection (which is their basic MO in my opinion) by what passes for the conservative block in this country nowadays. Every time they blame something on the libs, you can bet your ass that same thing is what they (the conservatives) are firmly engaged on doing.
I can't help but be frightened by these accusations, because it points to the fact that extermination of the "unfit and unprofitable" seems to be one of their objectives. And if you look at how the system has evolved, with the implementation of all these savage social darwinism approaches during the years... that is exactly what they want.
Of course they are too chickenshit to own to it, so now they figure they can accuse the people who stand firmly against those schemes that the right has been shoveling down our throats for the past 4 decades... of the ills their very own savage conservative policies/schemes created.
That's a disturbing and frightening point Tyler, that neocons have always projected what they're doing onto others - the PNAC manifesto being Exhibit A.
On the one hand it does make it very easy to see what they're doing; if they're accusing somebody else of something, there you go. On t'other hand, when you realize just what they're doing...mon dieu! The spine, it shivers!
So I don't have to worry about my 80 something parents anymore? That's great news, I mean they are healthy and get all the medical care they need but sometimes they get a little fussy. What a relief. Maybe they will stop demanding that I move out of their basement, once they are dead.
Here's a simple plan: let's start by euthanizing all lobbyists, health insurance company personnel and elected officials who've accepted their money. Then do the same for the
defensewar industry, drug industry, banking and investment industry, etc.In 2003, under G.W. Bush, the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality published a report recommending Advance Care Planning, with detailed guidelines for practitioners. Nobody called that euthanasia.
Advance Care Planning is legal in almost every state; the bill in question merely allows health care providers to be paid by Medicare for counseling patients on this matter, should the patient request this service - it would not be mandatory.
See:
http://notionscapital.wordpress.com/2009/08/0...
Say it ain't so! (snark)
During the 1960s Ronald Reagan was the key participant in an American Medical Association (AMA) sponsored campaign to prevent the enactment of Medicare. Reagan had actually recorded a speech against Medicare, that was turned into an LP-record by the AMA and distributed around the country:
"Write those letters now. Call your friends, and tell them to write them. If you don't, this program I promise you will pass just as surely as the sun will come up tomorrow. And behind it will come other federal programs that will invade every area of freedom as we have known it in this country, until, one day . . . we will awake to find that we have socialism. And if you don't do this, and if I don't do it, one of these days, you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children, and our children's children, what it once was like in America when men were free. - Ronald Reagan, from Ronald Regan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine
more: http://www.larrydewitt.net/Essays/Reagan.htm
without health care , if we dont get a real change , then in say 5 yrs i see 100m without health care , why , our mfg has been shipped overseas , many of us old timers are retiring and dying off . How can you force someone to buy health ins , while they are eating out of a dumpster .
Those living on the street ( i might be of them next month ) will be more prone to illness and will flood the ER's and welfare dept's , way to go corp's and repukes , you have almost reduced this country to the point of civil war and people jumping off the train .
Right? Maybe we should take all of their arguments to the absolute extreme and publicize them?
if it was up to me , i would dig up st ronnie and give his bones to rabid dogs and then shoot every one of them .
No we need the guillotne in public , as i have said before im to the left of che guevara .
It is time for forward thinking , such as taking care of the young and old , helping those that need it , but then im a socialist who can not stand the stench of the " all for me crowd " , R's or D's so little difference for the most part bought and paid for just empty suits , perhaps this country needs a lot of Thomas Jefferson in your face action .
The title of Pat Robimson's column says it all. ""Time To Go, Grampa" Yes Pat, it is indeed time to go home. You have been making millions with you message of hate and intolerance for long enough.
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