posted December 03, 2009 01:30 PM            

Former Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin has come under fire for her Facebook post accusing President Obama and the Democrats of including a "death panel" provision the health care bill. The Associated Press recently ran a ‘Fact Check' article rebutting Palin's claim.

AP argues that the bill's end-of-life counseling provision has been mistaken as a promotion of euthanasia and thus the death panel assertion by Palin and many other conservatives is false and misleading.

The New York Times has joined in the death panel bashing. Jim Rutenburg and Jackie Calmes assert the following:

There is nothing in any of the legislative proposals that would call for the creation of death panels or any other governmental body that would cut off care for the critically ill as a cost-cutting measure.

The AP is technically correct in stating that end-of-life counseling is not the same as a death panel. The New York Times is also correct to point out that the health care bill contains no provision setting up such a panel.

What both outlets fail to point out is that the panel already exists.

H.R. 1 (more commonly known as the Recovery and Reinvestment Act, even more commonly known as the Stimulus Bill and aptly dubbed the Porkulus Bill) contains a whopping $1.1 billion to fund the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research. The Council is the brain child of former Health and Human Services Secretary Nominee Tom Daschle. Before the Porkulus Bill passed, Betsy McCaughey, former Lieutenant governor of New York, wrote in detail about the Council's purpose.

Daschle's stated purpose (and therefore President Obama's purpose) for creating the Council is to empower an unelected bureaucracy to make the hard decisions about health care rationing that elected politicians are politically unable to make. The end result is to slow costly medical advancement and consumption. Daschle argues that Americans ought to be more like Europeans who passively accept "hopeless diagnoses."

McCaughey goes on to explain:

Daschle says health-care reform "will not be pain free." Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them.

Who is on the Council? One of its most prominent members is none other than Dr. Death himself Ezekiel Emanuel. Dr. Emanuel's views on care of the elderly should frighten anyone who is or ever plans on being old. He explains the logic behind his discriminatory views on elderly care as follows:

Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination; every person lives through different life stages rather than being a single age. Even if 25-year-olds receive priority over 65-year-olds, everyone who is 65 years now was previously 25 years.

On average 25-year-olds require very few medical services. If they are to get the lion's share of the treatment, then those 65 and over can expect very little care. Dr. Emanuel's views on saving money on medical care are simple: don't provide any medical care. The loosely worded provisions in H.R 1 give him and his Council increasing power to push such recommendations.

Similarly hazy language will no doubt be used in the health care bill. What may pass as a 1,000 page health care law will explode into perhaps many thousands of pages of regulatory codes. The deliberate vagueness will give regulators tremendous leverage to interpret its provisions. Thus Obama's Regulatory Czar Cass Sunstein will play a major role in defining the government's role in controlling medical care.

How does Sunstein approach end of life care? In 2003 he wrote a paper for the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies arguing that human life varies in value. Specifically he champions statistical methods that give preference to what the government rates as "quality-adjusted life years." Meaning, the government decides whether a person's life is worth living. If the government decides the life is not worth living, it is the individual's duty to die to free up welfare payments for the young and productive.

Ultimately it was Obama himself, in answer to a question on his ABC News infomercial, who said that payment determination cannot be influenced by a person's spirit and "that at least we (the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research) can let doctors know and your mom know that...this isn't going to help. Maybe you're better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller."

posted December 03, 2009 06:38 PM            

The "Death Panel" was legislated, passed and funded to the tune of 1.1Billion dollars in the Stimulus Bill....which was passed.

Both the House Health Care Bill and the Senate Health Care Bill contain language laying out the "authority" of the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research as well as 32 or more sub panels to be spread around the United States.

Waste of time attempting any rational discussion with those who cannot read.

What is it you don't understand about this simple declarative sentence?...

posted December 23, 2009 08:14 AM            

Perhaps this is clear up the mental fog for you.

Midnight Votes, Backroom Deals, and a Death Panel
Sarah Palin's Notes

Last weekend while you were preparing for the holidays with your family, Harry Reid’s Senate was making shady backroom deals to ram through the Democrat health care take-over. The Senate ended debate on this bill without even reading it. That and midnight weekend votes seem to be standard operating procedures in D.C. No one is certain of what’s in the bill, but Senator Jim DeMint spotted one shocking revelation regarding the section in the bill describing the Independent Medicare Advisory Board (now called the Independent Payment Advisory Board), which is a panel of bureaucrats charged with cutting health care costs on the backs of patients – also known as rationing. Apparently Reid and friends have changed the rules of the Senate so that the section of the bill dealing with this board can’t be repealed or amended without a 2/3 supermajority vote. Senator DeMint said:

“This is a rule change. It’s a pretty big deal. We will be passing a new law and at the same time creating a senate rule that makes it out of order to amend or even repeal the law. I’m not even sure that it’s constitutional, but if it is, it most certainly is a senate rule. I don’t see why the majority party wouldn’t put this in every bill. If you like your law, you most certainly would want it to have force for future senates. I mean, we want to bind future congresses. This goes to the fundamental purpose of senate rules: to prevent a tyrannical majority from trampling the rights of the minority or of future congresses.”

In other words, Democrats are protecting this rationing “death panel” from future change with a procedural hurdle. You have to ask why they’re so concerned about protecting this particular provision. Could it be because bureaucratic rationing is one important way Democrats want to “bend the cost curve” and keep health care spending down?

The Congressional Budget Office seems to think that such rationing has something to do with cost. In a letter to Harry Reid last week, CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf noted (with a number of caveats) that the bill’s calculations call for a reduction in Medicare’s spending rate by about 2 percent in the next two decades, but then he writes the kicker:

“It is unclear whether such a reduction in the growth rate could be achieved, and if so, whether it would be accomplished through greater efficiencies in the delivery of health care or would reduce access to care or diminish the quality of care.”

Though Nancy Pelosi and friends have tried to call “death panels” the “lie of the year,” this type of rationing – what the CBO calls “reduc[ed] access to care” and “diminish[ed] quality of care” – is precisely what I meant when I used that metaphor.

This health care bill is one of the most far-reaching and expensive expansions of the role of government into our lives. We’re talking about putting one-seventh of our economy under the government’s thumb. We’re also talking about something as intimate to our personal well-being as medical care.

This bill is so unpopular that people on the right and the left hate it. So why go through with it? The Senate is planning to vote on this on Christmas Eve. Why the rush? Though we will begin paying for this bill immediately, we will see no benefits for years. (That’s the trick that allowed the CBO to state that the bill won’t grow the deficit for the next ten years.)

The administration’s promises of transparency and bipartisanship have been broken one by one. This entire process has been defined by midnight votes on weekends, closed-door meetings with industry lobbyists, and payoffs to politicians willing to sell their principles for sweetheart deals. Is it any wonder that Americans are so disillusioned with their leaders in Washington?

This is about politics, not health care. Americans don’t want this bill. Americans don’t like this bill. Washington has stopped listening to us. But we’re paying attention, and 2010 is coming.

posted December 23, 2009 02:35 PM              

"Witch hunts go in stages. First frenzy, when everybody damns the souls of people they don’t know. Then confusion, as the first wave of contradictory facts comes in. Then deafening silence, as everybody studiously ignores the vicious slanders they uttered during the moment of maximum hysteria."

posted January 11, 2010 09:50 PM            

It was only a matter of time [and contracts, and money]

before Fixed News
hack
cough
cough

sorry, hair ball

posted January 11, 2010 10:58 PM            

I think it's hilarious that someone who in practically every interview derided the press and media. Now she will have a mic. The ratings will spike like a big dog...much like rubbernecking a traffic accident.

Colbert / Stewart et all wont have to write material...just hit replay

posted January 28, 2010 11:47 PM            

I actually watched O'Bomber's State of the Union Speech...which was really nothing more than another campaign speech. Then, I took some anti-acid.

It's clear the radical Marxist O'Bomber and the most far left radical Congress in American history intend to continue governing against the wishes and interests of the American majority....until November 2, 2010 that is.

The Credibility Gap
Today at 2:17pm

While I don’t wish to speak too harshly about President Obama’s state of the union address, we live in challenging times that call for candor. I call them as I see them, and I hope my frank assessment will be taken as an honest effort to move this conversation forward.

Last night, the president spoke of the “credibility gap” between the public’s expectations of their leaders and what those leaders actually deliver. “Credibility gap” is a good way to describe the chasm between rhetoric and reality in the president’s address. The contradictions seemed endless.

He called for Democrats and Republicans to “work through our differences,” but last year he dismissed any notion of bipartisanship when he smugly told Republicans, “I won.”

He talked like a Washington “outsider,” but he runs Washington! He’s had everything any president could ask for – an overwhelming majority in Congress and a fawning press corps that feels tingles every time he speaks. There was nothing preventing him from pursuing “common sense” solutions all along. He didn’t pursue them because they weren’t his priorities, and he spent his speech blaming Republicans for the problems caused by his own policies.

He dared us to “let him know” if we have a better health care plan, but he refused to allow Republicans in on the negotiations or consider any ideas for real free market and patient-centered reforms. We’ve been “letting him know” our ideas for months from the town halls to the tea parties, but he isn’t interested in listening. Instead he keeps making the nonsensical claim that his massive trillion-dollar health care bill won’t increase the deficit.

Americans are suffering from job losses and lower wages, yet the president practically demanded applause when he mentioned tax cuts, as if allowing people to keep more of their own hard-earned money is an act of noblesse oblige. He claims that he cut taxes, but I must have missed that. I see his policies as paving the way for massive tax increases and inflation, which is the “hidden tax” that most hurts the poor and the elderly living on fixed incomes.

He condemned lobbyists, but his White House is filled with former lobbyists, and this has been a banner year for K Street with his stimulus bill, aka the Lobbyist’s Full Employment Act. He talked about a “deficit of trust” and the need to “do our work in the open,” but he chased away the C-SPAN cameras and cut deals with insurance industry lobbyists behind closed doors.

He spoke of doing what’s best for the next generation and not leaving our children with a “mountain of debt,” but under his watch this year, government spending is up by 22%, and his budget will triple our national debt.

He spoke of a spending freeze, but doesn’t he realize that each new program he’s proposing comes with a new price tag? A spending freeze is a nice idea, but it doesn’t address the root cause of the problem. We need a comprehensive examination of the role of government spending. The president’s deficit commission is little more than a bipartisan tax hike committee, lending political cover to raise taxes without seriously addressing the problem of spending.

He condemned bailouts, but he voted for them and then expanded and extended them. He praised the House’s financial reform bill, but where was Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae in that bill? He still hasn’t told us when we’ll be getting out of the auto and the mortgage industries. He praised small businesses, but he’s spent the past year as a friend to big corporations and their lobbyists, who always find a way to make government regulations work in their favor at the expense of their mom & pop competitors.

He praised the effectiveness of his stimulus bill, but then he called for another one – this time cleverly renamed a “jobs bill.” The first stimulus was sold to us as a jobs bill that would keep unemployment under 8%. We now have double digit unemployment with no end in sight. Why should we trust this new “jobs bill”?

He talked about “making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development,” but apparently it’s still too tough for his Interior Secretary to move ahead with Virginia’s offshore oil and gas leases. If they’re dragging their feet on leases, how long will it take them to build “safe, clean nuclear power plants”? Meanwhile, he continued to emphasize “green jobs,” which require massive government subsidies for inefficient technologies that can’t survive on their own in the real world of the free market.

He spoke of supporting young girls in Afghanistan who want to go to school and young women in Iran who courageously protest in the streets, but where were his words of encouragement to the young girls of Afghanistan in his West Point speech? And where was his support for the young women of Iran when they were being gunned down in the streets of Tehran?

Despite speaking for over an hour, the president only spent 10% of his speech on foreign policy, and he left us with many unanswered questions. Does he still think trying the 9/11 terrorists in New York is a good idea? Does he still think closing Gitmo is a good idea? Does he still believe in Mirandizing terrorists after the Christmas bomber fiasco? Does he believe we’re in a war against terrorists, or does he think this is just a global crime spree? Does he understand that the first priority of our government is to keep our country safe?

In his address last night, the president once again revealed that there’s a fundamental disconnect between what the American people expect from their government, and what he wants to deliver. He’s still proposing failed top-down big government solutions to our problems. Instead of smaller, smarter government, he’s taken a government that was already too big and supersized it.

Real private sector jobs are created when taxes are low, investment is high, and people are free to go about their business without the heavy hand of government. The president thinks innovation comes from government subsidies. Common sense conservatives know innovation comes from unleashing the creative energy of American entrepreneurs.

Everything seems to be “unexpected” to this administration: unexpected job losses; unexpected housing numbers; unexpected political losses in Massachusetts, Virginia, and New Jersey. True leaders lead best when confronted with the unexpected. But instead of leading us, the president lectured us. He lectured Wall Street; he lectured Main Street; he lectured Congress; he even lectured our Supreme Court Justices.

He criticized politicians who “wage a perpetual campaign,” but he gave a campaign speech instead of a state of the union address. The campaign is over, and President Obama now has something that candidate Obama never had: an actual track record in office. We now can see the failed policies behind the flowery words. If Americans feel as cynical as the president suggests, perhaps it’s because the audacity of his recycled rhetoric no longer inspires hope.

Real leadership requires results. Real hope lies in the ingenuity, generosity, and boundless courage of the American people whose voices are still not being heard in Washington.

- Sarah Palin

posted February 14, 2010 07:44 AM            

Again, O'Bomber SAYS energy independence is desirable but then throws up every roadblock possible to prevent action on energy independence. O'Bomber and his Marxist Socialist buds in Congress are liars...plain and simple.

So, if O'Bomber is the most soaring intellect ever to occupy the Oval Office and Sarah Palin is so stupid she needs help to tie her own shoes....well then, why is that Sarah Palin has gotten it all along and O'Bomber still doesn't realize the United States has more energy reserves than most of the rest of the world combined?

The answer is simple. O'Bomber is far from a soaring intellect, has an unfocused mind which can't function without his teleprompter to prop him up and is in a job way, way, way over his head intellectually.

O'Bomber is the ultimate example of the "Peter Principle" in action.

Drillgate
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 5:09pm
Sarah Palin

Many of us appreciated the President mentioning in his State of the Union address that “tough decisions” had to be made regarding offshore drilling. People have had doubts about his seriousness in regards to domestic energy policy because our Department of the Interior is dragging its feet on Virginia’s offshore oil and gas leases. Still, we’ve held out hope that America’s voice will be heard on energy.

And now Vince Haley at Big Government reports this shocker:

"In April of 2009, during a discussion about offshore exploration in San Francisco, Salazar said that President Obama directed him to “to make sure that we have an open and transparent government” and that “these are not decisions that are going to be made behind closed doors.” Salazar went on to say that President Obama wanted to make sure that DOI was “maximizing the opportunity for the public to give us guidance on what it is that they want to do.”

Yet, more than four months after the comment period ended, the Department of the Interior has failed to make any public announcement about the results, even though sources have told American Solutions for months the comments show a 2-1 advantage in support of offshore drilling.

It took American Solutions almost four months and the power of the Freedom of Information Act to finally uncover indirect confirmation that, out of over 530,000 comments submitted, pro-drilling comments outnumbered anti-drilling comments by a 2-1 margin.

In an email dated October 27, 2009, Liz Birnbaum, director of the Minerals Management Service, informs other Interior officials that a preliminary tabulation of the results of the comment period had not yet gone to Secretary Salazar, adding “[s]o the Secretary can honestly say in response to any questions that he’s [SIC] has not yet seen the analysis of the comments – staff is still working on it. I did, however, confirm to him the 2-1 split that these guys [at American Solutions] are emphasizing.”

When a public employee is on record condoning purposeful deception of the American people, the taxpayer should no longer have to fund his or her job. Secretary Salazar should immediately fire Liz Birnbaum for purposefully deceiving him, and in turn, the American people. It’s not possible for the Secretary to honor pledges of openness, honestly, and transparency in government if his staff is going to deliberately undermine such pledges.

Public opinion polls already measure near 70% support for offshore drilling, so the results from a public comment period that reflect the same public sentiment should not be surprising. But after all this talk of wanting the public’s input, Secretary Salazar and his team must find it a real stumbling block to have to explain all their anti-energy development actions in light of the comment period results to which they previously attached such great importance."

As Haley notes in his article, it’s astonishing that the Obama administration is dragging its feet on offshore drilling at a time when we’re so desperate for economic recovery and jobs. It’s no surprise that an overwhelming majority of Americans support offshore drilling: it will provide millions of good jobs and billions in revenue, and it will make us more secure by reducing our dependence on foreign oil.

Mr. President, we appreciate you asking for our input. We’ve provided it, so thank you for accepting it. With no time to waste, it’s time to listen to the American people – finally – and drill, baby, drill!

posted February 14, 2010 05:50 PM              

of course palin wants them to drill. more money for alaska.

however the american people did not vote for palin, they voted for obama and his recognition of the fact that we can't keep polluting the earth like we have been and still LIVE on it. does she want to be president of a country of dead people?

he said "hard choices" aout clean coal, oil and nuclear energy. VERY hard choices since those things are ALL OXYMORONS.

when will you and ms palin stop flogging a dead horse and imagining that you speak for "the people"?

posted February 14, 2010 06:14 PM            

I've asked you before to post Tesla's plans for a new...never before discovered energy source. You took a hike on the subject...because it's a pipe dream which never materialized.

posted March 26, 2010 04:19 PM            

This quiz is guaranteed to have you braying and spraying...or my name is not Nathan Arizona!

K...I lost you there didn't I? Really obscure reference.

quote:

---

You answered 8 items out of 10 correctly.

Your score is 80%. You are an expert on all things Sarah Palin. You, too, can see Russia from your house.

---

posted March 27, 2010 05:21 PM            

which of the following is true:

She charged taxpayers a per diem totaling nearly $17,000 for 312 nights spent in her own home

She required sexual assault victims to pay for their rape kits

She offered cash payments of $150 to hunters who turn in legs of freshly killed wolves gunned down from airplanes

She attended 5 colleges in 6 years before receiving her undergraduate degree

All of the above

posted March 27, 2010 05:38 PM              

TRUE. and this is the "real deal" the republicans want to push into office? not if they have any brains left...

posted April 12, 2010 09:45 AM            

He keeps taking on Sarah Palin and the result is the same every time. He gets his leftist butt kicked.

He started out...in the campaign..with a press release when Palin was chosen for McCain's VP running mate. His press release called Palin the Mayor of a small town in Alaska. Palin was Governor of Alaska at the time.

Palin drew the comparison between a small town Mayor and a "community organizer"...saying:

I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a "community organizer," except that you have actual responsibilities. I might add that in small towns, we don't quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren't listening.

We tend to prefer candidates who don't talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco.

Palin all but blew up O'BomberCare when she mentioned "Death Panels" in regard to an unelected body of bureaucrats who would make life and death decisions about health care for seniors, the critically ill...including the very young...based on O'Bomber's very own Doctor Death's Josef Mengele theory of the "Complete Lives" medical treatment.

It took an extraordinary series of bribes, pork and arm twisting to get O'BomberCare passed. As a result, it's very likely many of those who voted for O'BomberCare will lose their House and Senate seats in November...and, Nancy Pee-Lousy will most likely not be Speaker of the House and Harry Reid will not be re-elected in November.

Palin took on O'Bomber over US energy policy. As a result, 72% support offshore drilling with 59% favoring drilling off California and New England...areas which O'Bomber closed.

O'Bomber just keeps sticking his foot in his mouth when it comes to Sarah Palin. His latest glaring error was to take Sarah Palin on over US Nuclear Weapons policy. O'Bomber made the mistake of saying Palin doesn't know anything about nuclear weapons.

Palin responded by citing O'Bomber's vast nuclear experience acquired as a "community organizer".

Now, O'Bomber and the rest of the O'Bomber administration are in total disaray, backing off and trying to explain themselves over their "plan" to take nuclear weapons off the table...even if US cities were attacked with chemical and/or biological weapons.

Moose Hunter Bags Community Organizer… Obama Retreats on Nuke Plan
Sunday, April 11, 2010, 10:28 AM
Jim Hoft

On Wednesday, Sarah Palin said Barack Obama’s new nuclear policy was like, “A kid on the playground saying punch me in the face and I’m not going to retaliate.” This upset the the president who later lashed out at the former Alaska Governor on her nuclear experience on Thursday.

Which led to this–***play video
http://gatewaypundit.firstthings.com/2010/04/palin-takes-down-co mmunity-organizer-obama-retreats-on-nuke-plan/

Sarah Palin clobbered Barack Obama Friday in her speech at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference. The former Alaska Governer responded to the “community organizer’s” attack on her nuclear experience.

She questioned what in Obama’s community organizing background led him to believe he was an expert on nuclear policy.

There are some here who continue to question Palin's brilliance.

For those:

How do you explain...the President with the highest IQ ever to be elected President in the US getting his leftist butt kicked over and over and over and...every time he tangles with...a dummy like Sarah Palin.