Re: America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 - The USCHO debates
To call them "death committees" is accurate... these will be the boards that decide that your life is too expensive to maintain and deny access to treatment X. The Public Option will become supreme because that's what the dems need it to be so there'll be very little option other than the gov't so denied access will likely be denied access.
The worry about her little child is that, like you, the child is not a senior citizen YET. There will be open talk about the pragmatism of weighing the "quality of life" and I'm sure one of those will be the quality of life of the mentally handicapped. We've already seen it argued that such children are a burden on society. WE'VE ALREADY SEEN IT ARGUED THAT THIS SPECIFIC CHILD IS A DE FACTO BURDEN ON SOCIETY. The fact is old people are a financial burden but its one we accept right now because of own desires and our morals system. Government is often much colder than this dependent on the "just doing my orders" mentality or owing to specific cold realities or ideological pronouncements.
Of course they won't be called "death panels" nobody would call it that and nobody would want to call themselves that... Britain has NICE boards and the US legistlation also calls the program NICE but the words specifically means different things. To reign in costs those "tough decisions" will be made whether people like them or not. Those "tough decisions" will be made by the government. Similarly, there's items in the bill which stress DNRs and other matters.... what happens if its in the gov'ts interest to not generate costs and one manner of cutting costs is to insist on DNRs for those over a certain age as the numbers tell them the costs are not worth it.
Pay attention to what they say because they've been talking in these terms for years. The difference is that they're OK with this system and terminology because they've decided its morally ethical to the state and to their fellow man. After all, they're the knowledgeable pragmatists that are trying to save us.
Are you really this stupid or do you just play a character on the message board?
Regardess, I'll let a fellow conservative answer you:
The reckless Right courts violence
Hysterical talk from TV and radio hosts may be a cynical marketing exercise. But it's getting too dangerous to ignore.
THE BULLPEN•Thursday, August 13, 2009Comment Print Email
David Frum
David Frum
A man bearing a sidearm appears outside President Obama's Aug. 11 town hall meeting in Portsmouth, N.H., under a sign proclaiming, "It is time to water the tree of liberty."
That phrase of course references a famous statement of Thomas Jefferson's, from a 1787 letter: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants."
Earlier that same day, another man is arrested inside the school building in which the president will speak. Police found a loaded handgun in his parked car.
At an event held by Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona last week, police were called after one attendee dropped a gun.
Nobody has been hurt so far. We can all hope that nobody will be. But firearms and politics never mix well. They mix especially badly with a third ingredient: the increasingly angry tone of incitement being heard from right-of-center broadcasters.
The Nazi comparisons from Rush Limbaugh; broadcaster Mark Levin asserting that President Obama is "literally at war with the American people"; former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin claiming that the president was planning "death panels" to extirpate the aged and disabled; the charges that the president is a fascist, a socialist, a Marxist, an illegitimate Kenyan fraud, that he "harbors a deep resentment of America," that he feels a "deep-seated hatred of white people," that his government is preparing concentration camps, that it is operating snitch lines, that it is planning to wipe away American liberties": All this hysterical and provocative talk invites, incites, and prepares a prefabricated justification for violence.
And indeed some conservative broadcasters are lovingly anticipating just such an outcome.
Here's Fox News' Glenn Beck clucking sympathetically that white males are being driven into murderous rage by "political correctness."
Here again is Beck chuckling as he play-acts the poisoning of Nancy Pelosi.
Just yesterday, the radio host Sean Hannity openly contemplated violence—and primly tut-tutted that if it occurs, the president will have only himself to blame.
Hyperbolic accusation and fantasy murder may well serve a talk-radio industry facing a collapse in advertising revenues—down 30–40 percent over the past two years, reports NewMajority.com's Tim Mak.
As revenues dwindle, hosts feel compelled to intensify the talk-radio experience, hoping to win larger audience share with more extreme talk. It's like the early days of the pornography industry: At first a naked woman is thrilling enough, but soon a jaded audience is demanding more and more, wilder and wilder.
For the radio hosts, it's all mostly a cynical marketing exercise. But the audience? Not all of them know better.
In April, the Department of Homeland Security released a report warning of the danger of right-wing political violence in the United States, and mainstream conservatives erupted in offense.
National Review's Jonah Goldberg wrote: My real objection to this report is that its source material amounts to "everybody knows." Everybody knows the right is full of whack-jobs, hatemongers, and killers, and if we don't remain vigilant, bad things will happen.
Michelle Malkin asked in her syndicated column: What and who exactly are President Obama's Homeland Security officials afraid of these days? If you are a member of an active conservative group that opposes abortion, favors strict immigration enforcement, lobbies to protect Second Amendment rights, protests big government, advocates federalism or represents veterans who believe in any of the above, the answer is: You.
Newt Gingrich tweeted: "The person who drafted the outrageous homeland security memo smearing veterans and conservatives should be fired."
I don't think the former speaker could tweet such a thing today in good conscience. The person who drafted that homeland security memo has gained very good reason to be worried. The guns are coming out. The risks are real.
It's not enough for conservatives to repudiate violence, as some are belatedly beginning to do. We have to tone down the militant and accusatory rhetoric. If Barack Obama really were a fascist, really were a Nazi, really did plan death panels to kill the old and infirm, really did contemplate overthrowing the American constitutional republic—if he were those things, somebody should shoot him.
But he is not. He is an ambitious, liberal president who is spending too much money and emitting too much debt. His health-care ideas are too ambitious and his climate plans are too interventionist. The president can be met and bested on the field of reason—but only by people who are themselves reasonable.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
