The most shameless ad I have seen so far in the health care debate comes to us courtesy of Pat Boone’s 60 Plus Association:
Across the top of their website is “KILL THE DEATH TAX,” and the rest of it is little more than garden variety wingnuttery and links to the Moonie Times.
El Cid
I am FIRMLY OPPOSED to Obama’s plans to KILL OUR ELDERLY CITIZENS by REPLACING THEIR MEDICAL CARE WITH FOLGER’S CRYSTALS.
One of my neighbors survived D-day and he didn’t do it so that a KENYAN PRETENDER would one day INJECT COFFEE INTO HIS VEINS just to save money so DEMOCRATS COULD GIVE $$$ TO MANDATORY SEX CHANGE OPERATIONS.
JGabriel
Unfortunately, despite the lies and smears, that could be pretty effective if it gets much airplay on shows that seniors watch, like Bill O’Reilly.
I hope the Dems can put together something just as excoriating, but honest, about the current system or Republican health care “options”.
Denying the GOP and insurance lobby smears will just reinforce the message. They need to get out adds that do things like show how reform will make Medicare better, and help their families, and how being anti-reform just allies you with George Bush, Mitch McConnell, and the Do-Nothing Republicans.
.
Joshua Norton
Manipulating the conversation wording to seize control of it is a very old wingut go-to move. But, I don’t see how they really get the nerve to think they can manipulate the actual reality which proves them wrong the minute the words leave their mouths.
There’s brand new psychoses developing right before our very eyes.
gex
@El Cid: Aren’t you frightened with how well you can channel that sort of crazy? How badly did your head hurt after? Or did you have to take a hammer to your head just to generate that output?
Zifnab25
So it’s a shouting match you want, eh? Well game on Quohog!
adamwestscream.ytmnd.com/
beltane
I feel like we are under siege from an zombie army of geriatric, Fox news robots. I mean this literally.
JK
Pat Boone should go on tour with Andy McCarthy’s favorite band balloon-juice.com/?p=25171
Cat Lady
Can someone please euthanize Pat Boone? kthxbai.
Nellcote
How about some ads from the AARP? I thought they were pro-reform.
asiangrrlMN
I cannot do it. I simply cannot click on the video. So, can someone please give me a shorter crazymuthafucker Pat Boone, pleez?
Stooleo
I was unaware of this.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_Directives_Act
Will the irony ever cease?
Ash Can
Pat Boone is an asshole, and his music sucks too. Also.
Linkmeister
Somebody named Stroszek at KOS has a good speech to Republicans. It’s full of concessions, such as “We will not euthanize your grandmother.”
kay
@Nellcote:
The AARP ads go up Monday.
The cuts are to providers, not recipients, and it’s 200 billion, not 500, because 300 goes back in, in preventative care.
The 60 plus ad’s a flat-out lie.
eric
Logic Warning: Were I a Dem, I would look at the present insanity and stop worrying about the GOP and the voters and pass the reform. The GOP has so rasied the expectations of failure for reform, the no bill passed by the Dems could fail that badly, or even close to that badly.
In fact, it is likely that the worst result will be the status quo and the best result will be cognizable improvements for the middle class. When people start hearing stories about people losing their jobs and NOT losing health care, they are going to start liking reform.
eric
Geronimo
Not enough time to waste watching Pat tell lies. Maybe, maybe not, Chief of Staff Rahm will work up sufficient anger to say something nasty to the Repugs. At some point he has to realize that this BS bipartisan stuff is phony as Confederate money. But perhaps he thinks Alabama is just a Palin wink away from voting Democratic and does not want to tell the old timers that all those bills they’ve squirreled away are worthless.
Mr. Poppinfresh
Ugh, this headline = bad timing. I had to put my poor little kitten to sleep this morning after a sudden onset of a rare feline disease called FIP, and was hopping onto BJ to try and distract myself…
I guess there are more important issues in the world and all, but life sucks sometimes.
eric
@eric: Follow up to my own post:
I can see the ads now: Democratic Rep has middle class guy talking over video of his family laughingn and playing and then some text about a plant closing or job loss and the guy explaining that his chiled got sick after he lost hos job and were it not for Reform, they would have lost everything. And he would thank the dem for following the courage of his/her convictions in the face of strident and dishonest opposition. “Leadership and change we can all believe in.”
eric
kay
That’s 200 billion over ten years. 20 billion a year.
Medicare cost 453 billion this year.
Ron Beasley
Any senoirs who believe this should go before Death Panels. They are obviously to stupid to survive. Except my mother of course.
Ash Can
@Mr. Poppinfresh: So sorry to hear that. Sympathies to you and yours at this difficult time.
srv
Sign up for your death panel membership here:
seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/7062
Just Some Fuckhead
What is AARP’s position on euthanizing old people? Seems like they have the most to lose from this and I haven’t heard them coming out against it.
Ann B. Nonymous
I had an evil thought. Ever since La Palin joined the bandwagon, I’ve been pretty sure that the Soylent birther crowd will be a swift boat to FAIL. After all, she caused McCain to nosedive in polls, which is pretty impressive work for a vice-presidential candidate. The only reason she looks even slightly sane is because Orly Taitz has been on our TV sets, lowering the bar.
This means our Muslim Communist overlords could pack all the gay abortion euthanasia time bombs into the legislation they want, because who’s going to listen to crazy people about to be rounded up for the FEMA camps anyway?
They won’t, because we have a slightly boring centrist who still believes in the political process as our president, and a bunch of milquetoast Rotarians in our Senate. But they *could*.
mai naem
First I haven’t seen many Dem ads. The only four I can think of is the one which I think is a Union one with the “reform now about time” kind of one which BTW I vaguely remember. The other two are the Ben Nelson one and the one discussed by MSM about the Republican mobs. And then ofcourse the redo Harry and Loiuse which I find pathetic. Personally I find the Nelson one the most effective but it’s pretty much aimed at Nelson alone. I am completely and totally amazed by the lack of preparedness of the whole left. WTF did you expect? Hell, Emanuel is a veteran of Hillarycare and it does not appear that he remembered anything. Where’s John Podesta’s American Progress on this? The Businessweek piece earlier just said that United Healthcare was feeding info the info starved congressional staffs. Huh? Are you kidding me? Where the fuck is the WH on the research? This was supposed to be Obama’s signature legislation and they didn’t even have research out there? What about the Dem. staffs in the Senate and the House?
After all this sinks in my thought is that its all set up to fail intentionally and everybody is just playing their parts. Reid is to blame Baucus. Baucus is to delay delay delay to failure because he just won reelction and Montanans will have forgotten by the time he’s up for reelection. The House passes a somewhat watered down bill which the BlueDogs can say they won major concessions and the country will indeed not being going socialist anytime soon. The progressives blame the Senate and the bluedogs and how they need “more and better” Dems. And the WH decries the partisan divide in D.C. All nicely wrapped up to screw the average American and enrich the insurance cos.
eric
@Just Some Fuckhead: well, if your AARP card got you excluded from the Senior Death Camps, then I smell profit!
eric
Demo Woman
Is this an internet ad? Surely CNN would not air it since we know they have strict rules on what ads to air.
Martin
@Stooleo:
It was discussed over at GOS during the Schiavo mess. Notable that had Schiavo been in a hospital in Texas, they would have pulled the plug months prior, regardless of the wishes of her parents or husband, and from a bill that Dubya signed.
Another day, another hypocrisy.
John Cole
@Demo Woman: I saw it on Discovery while Mythbusters was playing in the background.
burnspbesq
The delicious irony in all of this is that the Senator who has done the most to protect funding for hospice care and end-of-life counseling IS AN IDIOT WINGNUT, Isaakson of Georgia.
Heard that on talk radio or seen it on any wingnut blogs?
Didn’t think so.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@Mr. Poppinfresh: Auuuuggghhh. Brother, that sucks like a regiment of Hoovers. My condolences.
Jack T.
Pat Boone can turn anything to shit. Is no one aware of what he did to Tutti Frutti?
JMG
I saw the same commercial on the Weather Channel, another old folks cable sanctuary.
John called this three weeks ago. No bill of any kind will pass. The Democrats really cannot govern. They really don’t want to. It won’t be long before some Rapturist GOP type is back in the White House. That should be fun.
burnspbesq
Speaking of the estate tax, the story of how that got reframed, and how the most zealous advocates of its repeal are people who won’t ever have to pay it (while the people who really benefit from repeal hide in the shadows) is a classic in the annals of Republican strategery.
steve s
We should have fun with the stupidity. Make up emails about how Obama’s health care reform authorizes ACORN beaurocrats to punch your momma in the face. Send them to all those retard relatives you have who sent you similar emails in the past.
JGabriel
Well, while we’ve got the wingers calling union headquarters with death threats, maybe it’s time to revive this union ad:
.
Beauzeaux
Pat Boone was much more sane back in the days when he allowed himself to be photographed with his genitals protruding from the inside of a cardboard box.
JGabriel
Beauzeaux:
It’s not nice to make fun of someone’s religious rituals.
.
You Don't Say
I can’t find this funny any more. I am livid about all this bullshit.
Mike in NC
So sorry to hear that. We’ve been there and done that, too.
mai naem
I am just trying to figure out what country I can move to with my skills. I have reached a point where I just cannot deal with the retards in this country. All I want is a country where the main language is English, welcomes immigrants and is not some authoritarian theocracy.
WereBear
Ash Can
@Mr. Poppinfresh: that’s really a rotten thing to happen. My sympathies.
jl
One weird thing about the health debate is that the facts are there to refute all the right wing garbage. For twenty years medical progress in terms of growing life expectancy for 65 year olds in the US sucked compared to countries with universal care. In the last five years, for elderly women, the US has managed the heroic feat of barely beating the average of other high income countries.
This is not Europe worship, either. This includes Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan (where men smoke like chimneys) and even freaking Mexico (Mexico!).
If a Martian came down and looked at the numbers, Martin would conclude that the US was the one killing off the old people.
You won’t see this in the NY Times or the Post of course, they are too busy printing gossip and asinine opinion pieces written by ignorant or dishonest jackasses. And as Atrios says, writing advice columns and sob stories for the ‘not quite rich enough.’
Go the OECD and you can download the excel sheets and see for yourself.
OECD Health Data 2009 – Frequently Requested Data
oecd.org/document/16/0,3343,en_2649_34631_2085200_1_1_1_1,00.html
And they do it for 1/3 or more less in cost.
Dayam. I was never as conservative as Cole, but in my youth I came close at times to being a glibertarian. Several shocks since then have radicalized me. The truly hideous attitude of a substantial portion of our corporations, the GOP and the Blue Dogs on the health debates has radicalized me once again.
To the barricades! Where’s my Public Enemy olden goldies CD? I need a dose right now.
JGabriel
mai naem:
I hear New Zealand is becoming very popular for that purpose.
.
jl
New Zealand is an interesting place. More socialist than us in some ways, more free market in others. What the heck, I was thinking about New Zealand too, if the wingnuts win and wreck this place. I never liked the idea of threatening to move out of the country as a protest or some kind of threat. But I was thinking the other day how crappy health care could become in this country if the corporate flunkies and the crazies get their way. I’m not getting any younger, and suddenly thought about brushing up on them furrin languages I larned in skool, and what English language country might be a good place for a oldster.
Another remark on the cold hard data on population health. The NY times prints all these fancy interactive graphics on house prices in regional housing bubbles, on stock prices, on calories in average meals, on all sorts of issues. I have not found one on health care facts comparing the US to other countries. Anyone know of one, tell me.
But if the country saw the data, I think the health care debate would take a very different tone. It might be OVAH, once people saw how sucky the US was on some of the very issues the wingnuts are making a big fuss about.
Mark S.
@jl:
And these other countries cover everyone and do it much cheaper! If this were a sane country, the debate would be over which kind of national health care system to adopt, not whether
to have one or not.
Tsulagi
Have to say that could be an effective ad. Dems should start having and raising funds for real senior orgs like AARP, which I believe currently supports reform, run ads hopefully as well made and effective.
Must be a bad person as I saw black humor in this ad. Okay, grandpa, you survived the Great Depression, D-Day at Normandy and the Cold War, but now you’re fucked. The Democrats and the scary black dude pulling their strings are gonna do you in. And grandma too; you’re all gonna die.
This whole euthanizing meme is absurd theater. But it does make sense in the Tao of the Wingnut. Birthers and Deathers. Wingnut synergy. Balance.
BeccaM
…and in the next breath they scream “No government-run healthcare! Don’t you dare touch my Medicare!”
The stupid has passed beyond mere burning and has become a white-hot singularity of compressed stupidity on the verge of a Big Bang explosion of blind-hate ignorance which, after an inflationary period of exponentially increasing idiocy, creates an entire new universe of rabid dumb, with a mandated “you must have fewer than these many functioning neurons to board this ride” rule.
In this new universe of stupid, “You’re dumber than a bag of hammers” will be a compliment.
Trinity
@Mr. Poppinfresh: I am so sorry. My sincere condolences.
jl
@Mark S.: Switzerland has done very well, and I think that looks like US reform with a strong public option of the poor. They just make the private all insurers play by the same rules. And it aint health habits either. Anyone been to Switzerland knows they smoker a lot more than we do, and diet is… well, pretty damn good if you like lots of meat and fat. They really eat all the weird Swiss food from what I say. From the supermarkets, it looks like they live on fondue and sausage (not that there is anything wrong with that). And them little sandwiches in the delis with salami and butter. Yum yum yum.
A Mom Anon
@Mark S.:
That’s the thing that totally bums me out. For a country that’s supposed to be so sooperdeedooper bestest ever,we seem to have alot of miserable,nasty,mean damned people running around. All they want to do is yell and break stuff. Why is that? What the hell?
El Cid
I have heard that in Great Britain they not only have government paying for health care but the government employs the doctors and own the hospitals.
My question is, how many old people are left in Great Britain? Have they killed off all of the elderly? Or do they just let the royal family escape their soci_alist DEATH PANELS ?
And what about the disabled — did they kill them all off decades ago when their government health care began or do they let them be born first and then kill them?
Mumphrey
So, do they not know that Congress right now has better health coverage than a lot of the ignernt boobs screaming at these constituents’ meetings and sending death threats to congressmen?
jl
Thing that scares me is that care of elderly in the US has been less sucky that for those younger. So more evidence that being consistently covered improves health.
Mobilizing the oldsters could be a powerful tactic by reform opponents. They are the only group whose health on average has been improving at all: only bad to mediocre compared to other countries, as opposed to grotesquely bad and dead in the water or getting worse.
So, these vile lies about ‘death panels’ need to be countered. Unfortunately, our sane leaders are by nature inside baseball dealmakers. Rahm wants a deal so he can puch a ticket, he doesn’t care what it is exactly. He thinks whatever junk comes out can be ticked off as another ‘win’ for PR cred with our corrupt press. He forgets that ordinary people will know from their daily experience whether the deal was BS or not.
Mumphrey
And another thing I’ve been wondering about lately: how many of these boobs really, really deep down believe all the shit about putting old people to death?
I guess it’s never a good plan to assume any kind of brains at all to your everyday screaming, ranting rioting wingnut, but how many can really be dumb enough to believe this? I think there’s something else at work here. I know it sounds convoluted, but I wonder if some of these people who are racists, which I’m guessing is a good chunk of them, feel some subtle shame at their racism, and maybe have latched on to this nutty tale as a way to justify their racist feelings: “See? It’s all right to hate the [black guy]! He wants to kill harmless old grannies!”
Does anybody else here think there might be something to this?
dmsilev
@beltane:
Impossible. As counter-evidence, I note that above all, zombies desire brains.
QED.
-dms
jl
Also. Poor breast cancer survival rates in UK, until recently, were due to their decision to only screen women starting at age 50. Women were diagnosed with more advanced cancer. They changed to screening earlier as in US and other countries, and their survival rates are now around 80% like ours. Their approach to diagnosis is more reliable and efficient than in the US, so their rapid improvement starting around 2000 is not surprising.
So, thing is, that screening policy, like many other healthcare decisioins, is a social decision that has to be made in any country. There was a big flap about best age to begin regular screening in the US. We moved, as did some other European countries, to earlier screening before UK did. The UK made much better decisions on diabetes and asthma care than the US did, and they have better treatment than we do.
Every country has to make a social decision about medical practice. Might call it ‘benefit package’ or ‘medical standard of care’ or ‘medical association consensus statement’ or ‘rationing’ or something. Every country makes a few bad calls and a few good calls. Only question is how much influence do you want the corporate money suits to control it. the US says they should control almost all of it, and we see what has happened.
(BTW, I would not want a UK system for the US)
Don’t listen to cherry picked BS. 90% of the wingnut, GOP and Corporate, er, Blue Dog stuff is BS. Sad and infuriating to live in such a corrupt and ignorant country as the current USA.
El Cid
We need to ask — did a government health care bureaucrat DEATH PANEL kill the otherwise perfectly healthy and vivacious Strom Thurmond?
ellie
Mr. Poppinfresh: I am sorry to hear about your kitty. Poor kitty.
Jason Bylinowski
@Mark S.: “And these other countries cover everyone and do it much cheaper! If this were a sane country, the debate would be over which kind of national health care system to adopt, not whether
to have one or not.”
I hear this, and of course I agree. But then that little annoying devil walks out on my shoulder (he looks a lot like Ben Stein) and whispers “350 million people, dude…….how the hell could it possibly ever work? How could it ever scale properly and not turn out like the DMV?”
Sometimes I just feel that as a nation, we bit off a little more than we could chew with regards to manifest destiny, and all that expansionist BS. Not that I dislike California or Oregon, but we have the problem of being both geographically spread out, as well as being fairly populous. Not saying that it couldn’t work, but I can see the skepticism inherent in such a proposition.
I don’t know. I wish someone could get a handle on all these arguments and do a better job of explaining the options than these idiot conservatives, because as much as it pains me to say, Bill Maher is right that America can be talked into and out of anything (in fact, I think that his quote from last week will be the one he is remembered for). Mr. Obama had a pretty good presser up until that lady mentioned Gatesgate, but I do wonder why Obama has not been even more vocal about this, notwithstanding the ostensible reason he always relies upon (i.e. that his job is executive, theirs are legislative and he wants to keep his distance). Oh well, it’s his legacy to capture or lose as he sees fit.
ploeg
@dmsilev: Wins the thread.
Of Bugs and Books
@jl: Your question is apparently worded just right. Paste “health care facts comparing the US to other countries” into google (advanced search), box for “all these words”, and the first page (out of 4 1/2 million hits) shows several I’ve seen cited regularly – Kaiser, WHO, Canadian links, etc. I look for sites that put the whole picture in one place, considering that the outreach is to people that think a ‘FEARnet’ chain mail nightmare is explaining anything. Not that I believe that’s their conscious intention.
kay
They’re a group of people who have adopted “read the bill!” as their slogan, yet none of them have read the bill.
We’ve had a lot of stupid faux-debates in my lifetime, but this is a whole new level.
jl
@Jason Bylinowski: sorry I don’t buy the American exceptionalism argument, that says we are different so everything has to suck here.
Australia is spread out (even accounting for most of population on its east coast). New Zealand has about 14% indigenous population with similar problems to ours. Switzerland has three major language groups. Belgium has Germanic and French regions that don’t like each other much.
Diversity is subjective. Sweden looks all homogeneous to us, but they don’t see it that way. The ‘Danish’ Sweden it its southwest doesn’t see it that way -one of the reasons they regionalized their health service.
So, I disagree. When things get as dysfunctional and expensive as the US healthcare system, everything must be examined, or we fall into danger of just making excuses for junk that we put up with.
jl
@Of Bugs and Books: thanks, I will do that search. I have tried some searches, but don’t remember trying what I typed in that comment. I will add NYTimes and look to see if maybe they have bothered to inform the debate (I have found nada so far -but they have lots of Oprah style personal interest stories. And tips and tales of the travails for the poor side of the Hamptons set.
kay
AARP will do an ad blitz with accurate numbers, the media will report it like this “AARP says….” and then “60 Plus says….” (which, let’s face it, is basically reciting the text of two competing ads) and tell viewers to “decide”, with round-table punditry follow-up on the ads.
My question is this: do we really need an elaborate, lavishly paid television staff to recite the text of two ads?
They could just run ads, and skip the filler. I don’t really need a pundit to explain an ad, and I certainly don’t need a reporter to read me the text.
Indylib
@Mumphrey: I think that it is very large part of this. It’s a way of screaming that they don’t want a black man in the White House without getting called out for racism. The older demographic in this country polls highest for racist attitudes.
steve s
If US healthcare became like the DMV it would be a drastic improvement.
jrosen
I just saw this on Discovery Channel and I saw red. I always hated Pat Boone anyway.
KCinDC
@Jason Bylinowski, can you explain why you think that something that works for 60 million or 80 million or 100 million people can’t work for 300 million? Where is the magic line above which population suddenly becomes too big for universal health care? We have more people, so naturally we’ll also have more doctors and nurses and tax money and, yes, bureaucrats. It’s not like we’re expecting the system to be the same size as other countries, so that each health care worker would be handling 4 or 5 times as many patients. What’s not to scale?
Crusty Dem
as I sit in the ICU watching the consequences of exactly these types of decisions play out, i have a quick note to these slugs. It’s based on careful experience, borne from failed and successful attempts to properly decide how best to manage end of life care. And it is this: Go choke on a box of dicks!
In the real world, we grownups have to make decisions on how best to care for the sick and the dying, when it is time to give up, when it is time to say “thanks, but no thanks” to more expensive, often painful treatment. It must be nice to sit, healthy and comfortable, on the sidelines and feel superior telling others what to do. Useless motherfuckers can go to hell.
PanAmerican
The problem in rabble rousing the over 65 set is the “Silent Generation” represents a demographic valley. Just not enough votes. It’s one of the reasons in 1992 we jumped 24 years in Presidential age.
Zuzu's Petals
I can’t believe they’re still using that smarmy tone in voiceovers for “senior” ads. They really think seniors are stupid.
Well okay, plenty are. But not because they’re seniors.
Plus, D-Day was 65 years ago, and anyone who was old enough to fight then or raise their kids during the ’50s is well into their 80s.
I’m 59, and my siblings and friends in their 60s and 70s would laugh at having their intelligence insulted this way.
Seems like they’re aiming for a pretty small slice of that senior pie.
El Cid
@Zuzu’s Petals: The fellow I know who’s a D-day vet is pretty damned pissed at having to hear this manipulative nonsense. In fact he remembers the ‘bastards’ who called FDR communist.
WereBear
If I had waste in my kitchen the way our present health care system works, I could feed the whole apartment building.
Billions and billions of profits for the insurance companies. The overhead for doctors and hospitals to fulfill every deliberately niggling part of the paperwork is another. The truly staggering numbers of people who can’t afford care, even with insurance, and only seek medical help when it’s both life-threatening and expensive.
These are the three legs our present sucky system rests on. While the bills are still being juggled, they are attacking all three problems.
kay
@PanAmerican:
It’s the only demographic McCain carried. One, and now they’re back, and madder than when we last left them.
I saw Hillary on another topic, and she was great, as usual, on health care. Well-informed, determined, but weary of the lies. I am to the point where I admire the hell out of her on this. That’s tenacity. Good Lord. How she can calmly refute this same bullshit twice in one working lifetime is beyond me.
Everything she predicted in 1993 came true, and yet she’s forced to engage these lies on a “he said-she said” basis. One side was right and the other was wrong, actually, and she was on the right side. Maddening.
kay
@WereBear:
It’s not just that. It is, repeat after me, cruel, to perform procedures and testing and invasive operations that don’t prolong life, or ignore quality of life, because we CAN and because they’re profitable, and because the vast majority of people don’t know enough (including me) to ask if they’re necessary or even helpful.
That’s stupid, cruel and nation-bustingly expensive. A trifecta of misery.
jharp
The lowest piece of fucking slime on the planet.
Frightening our seniors.
Fuck off Pat Boone. And while pretending to be a Christian at the same time?
You are vile scum.
Jason Bylinowski
@KCinDC: “can you explain why you think that something that works for 60 million or 80 million or 100 million people can’t work for 300 million?”
I can’t really tell you that, no, as it’s not my field; however, as a more-or-less professional devil’s advocate I can tell you that this is not the sort of argument that you can just pass over by citing Bill O’Reilly’s stupid comment about the Canadian life expectancy. I mean, YES I want Universal Healthcare – I currently do not have health insurance both due to pre-existing condition nonsense and due to lack of funds. But I still have this worry that we’re just not prepared for what is going to be required to turn this into a long-term workable arrangement. For instance, the only way this has any chance of survival at all in the long term is if we significantly scale back our defense budget. God knows I’m all for that!, but I don’t know how in hell the Dems or anyone else is going to get it done unless they are prepared to back it up with force. & I mean force as in warfare, because that would be the last fucking straw for some conservatives that I know personally.
Anyway, morally I’m on the right side of the issue here. I need this healthcare thing to happen just so I can get in the system, but I’m a realist and I frankly just don’t have a great deal of hope for this or any other bill that isn’t a complete joke. Which isn’t to say I’m such a pessimist about it either, I just honestly think we got screwed with this terrible economy, and them’s the breaks.
wasabi gasp
Boone conveniently omits the part about geezers not needing Medicare anymore because Obama found the Fountain of Youth and he’s gonna turn ’em back into pimple-faced teenagers again.
You know, if it’s bullshit they want then, hey, what the fuck?
But, depending on the crowd, you might have to leave out the part about how the Fountain of Youth turns you black.
kommrade reproductive vigor
And by Congress, they mean CMS, which has been warning of a 21.5% pay cut to physicians since at least 2007.
HRA
firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/08/09/2024721.aspx
Chuck Todd on President Obama’s town hall meeting in NH on Tuesday. Plus a letter/notice from an organizer for a protest on that day.
anonevent
The fallacy in your argument there is that we spend more per person on healthcare than countries with smaller defense budgets. If we spent twice what the French spent on health care per person, we could actually increase the size of defense, FSM forbid. Yes, it would take some more money initially, but it would ultimately pay for itself.
kay
@jharp:
I’m going to talk to “my seniors” ( the people I know or encounter regularly) myself.
I’ve now read enough to answer questions.
Each one teach one, or whatever. There’s a lot of us, but there’s a lot of them. I figure I can reach around 30 to 50 personally, just in the course of my job.
I found out today that both a local county prosecutor and a judge believe Obama tracks combinations of search words on the internet, and identifies the specific searcher. I was freaking crushed. A new wackjob theory. Neither one of them ever appeared to be drooling idiots, just average GOP’ers, but they go the same church, and they “got an email from pastor”.
It was too discouraging to refute. I have to just let them descend into madness, or something, or I’ll drown with them.
Jason Bylinowski
Well.
I guess in a way I should feel pretty good that some of my arguments have been so easily refuted here (although believe me I do have more, most of my friends are conservative so i hear this crap all day) but frankly I don’t feel better about it at all. Rationality has just never been ascendant here in the Land of Tall Tales, which is a grand thing in certain times and a damn shame in uncertain ones.
WereBear
@kay:
I completely agree.
The whole Death Committee BS was prompted by a Republican wanting end-of-life issues, if discussed between patient and physician, to be paid by Medicare.
And I think it’s vital, for both economic and humanitarian reasons, that this becomes the subject of better discussion. People do not realize the hell that can be unleashed upon them; yet so many won’t even think about it.
And for all the fundies claim they “can’t wait to be with Jesus,” they are some of the worst at not facing this issue.
Sometimes, I swear, they are fans of the Rapture because they think it means they won’t have to face Death.
White House Department of Law (fmrly Jim-Bob)
Pat Boone once lived in my town, Leonia, NJ. Leonia also is famous for having–or having had–the most Nobel laureates per square mile of any town in the US. Pat Boone did not receive a Nobel, at least not as of 9:40 pm, EDT on this date.
Sammy Davis, Jr. once called Leonia home. Also.
White House Department of Law (fmrly Jim-Bob)
Pat Boone appears to hold sacred the Nine Commandments. Good for him.
jl
@Jason Bylinowski: I didn’t mean to write off your concerns completely, just wanted to point out that other countries have their own problems (some that have parallels here in the US) that they had to overcome, and your concerns have already been distorted into standard issue boiler plate used by hacks who oppose ever making any changes at all.
I think regional variations in medical practice and cost are bigger issues in the US than other countries, and that is one of the reasons some Congresscritters fear extending medicare rates to everything: their region will get hosed if we do that. But I don’t think the unique problems in US are insurmountable.
I think racism and the obsession with no good threatening ‘others’ getting all the goodies is another big problem in the US. Why poor whites who have crushed almost as much as any one else would be obsessed with that is a mystery, unless some bad people have perhaps misinformed them? That couldn’t be, could it?
Michael
“The Elect” (in C Street parlance) aren’t bound by objectivity and truth. If you are unaccountable to any person and have only to ask Jesus for forgiveness for transgressions, any lie you tell in order to serve the ideology of the elect is OK.
Thus they can justify David being an asshole, Abraham betraying reality to serve the Deity’s whim and the entry of Paul into their group.
This is one of the reasons why I’m referring to my own (now former) faith as a “bronze age semiliterate goatherd apocalyptic death cult”. I suppose I have all those internet Christians to thank for repeatedly telling me that if I don’t accept some of their more strident and unreasonable pronunciations, then I’m “not really a Christian”. It caused me to cast a really critical eye on the whole enterprise.
I really hate them for that.
asiangrrlMN
@Mr. Poppinfresh: Aw, I’m sorry to hear about that. May your little kitten run safely to the other side. My condolences to you and your family.
Steeplejack
@Mr. Poppinfresh:
My condolences as well. It’s hard to lose them at any time, doubly so when it’s sudden and unexpected.
Mr. Poppinfresh
Thanks to everyone. It’s funny how something so small as a kitten can worm its way into your heart. She was small and grey and had beautiful green eyes, and every time I think about my wife holding her little head while they put her to sleep it breaks my heart.
Time for bed I guess, I should stop derailing threads about real people getting sick, as opposed to my cat.
Jason Bylinowski
@jl: @<a
No problem from my end of things. The message game is really king in this country, and I just wish Democrats were better at it than they are. I thought Obama was gonna teach the Dems how it’s done, but he has been surprisingly lackluster on messaging now that he’s done campaigning, and frankly it reminds me of Clinton’s laziness after his own election after an incredibly impressive candidacy. But then again, this thing ain’t over yet, so we’ll see what might happen at the eleventh hour.
Jason Bylinowski
Er, disregard the hyperlink to nowhere on that last comment. Not sure what happened there. (“Edit function”, he says for the millionth time)
Anon
Watching this with the sound off is pretty funny.
“Seniors have sacrificed…Great Depression…D-Day…Strong families”
Yeah, if only we could set up some DeathPanels for the grandkids, amirite?
Glidwrith
I’m sure it didn’t do one damn bit of good, but when that bleeping commerical showed up on my TV (Discovery Channel), I ran to my computer and told them off. Somewhat cathartic, but obviously wouldn’t do any good.
As an aside is this Pat Boone the same joker that did the Swift Boat ads then claimed he’s all for renewable energy as long as he gets to be king?
Comrade Kevin
@Mr. Poppinfresh:
I really don’t think that is something you should worry about.
hamletta
@Glidwrith: No, dear, that would be T. Boone Pickens, no relation.
Pat Boone is a crappy singer who bastardized “race records” in the ’50s.
Darkrose
@Mr. Poppinfresh:
I’m sorry. *hugs*
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
In setting up his Death Panel (TM) (not to be confused with the Death Star (TM) ), President Obama is obviously setting up the youth of America against their grandparents. With seniors spending all kinds of money on frivolous things like health care and food, an economy crapping out, with inflation and unemployment on the rise, inheritances on the line and President Obama is smart in appealing to the greed of the youth in our country in his nefarious plot to kill old white people.
How else are the youthful white socia1ists going to get the money they need to pay homage to the New Obama World Order (NOWO)?
/wingnut
Mnemosyne
Anyone else notice that the only two members of Congress pictured in the ad were Nancy Pelosi and Charles Rangel?
Yeah, no dogwhistles there.
Mnemosyne
@Mr. Poppinfresh:
Ouch! I had a kitten die from that almost 20 years ago, and just hearing FIP made me shudder again. My sympathies.
Ruckus
@Crusty Dem:
Had to make the decision for my dad with Alzheimer’s. Hospice so he could pass without pain or watch him suffer. Longer. It was not easy but I didn’t have to ponder it, talk to some religious buffoon, an ethics board or anyone else. And others in the same hospital were making the same decisions about their families as well. It goes on all the time all over the world. It’s part of being human and reaching an advanced (well not that advanced!) age. Those around us die.
I keep wondering what it would be like to actually get to the end of life having lived healthier. Been able to see a Dr. when you should, not when you have to. I had a sister who might still be here if she had proper health care. She got great help from some amazing folks for her cancer, but too late because she didn’t have insurance. She got great end of life care as well. That made it easier, but the inability to get timely health care still sucks.
The system we have just sucks. If you don’t have insurance you’re very most likely SOL. If you have insurance you MAY be SOL. Unless you’re in congress.
White House Department of Law (fmrly Jim-Bob)
My parents SOUGHT end-of-life counseling nearly fifteen years ago, when they both were in their late fifties. Part of their plan was to get living wills, and long-term-care insurance. Fast forward to 2009: Dad’s no longer in the picture (long story), and ma’s is in an assisted living home, with suspected pre-Alzheimer’s dementia.
I am so glad they took the effort to consider “what if” with the advice of experts. Otherwise, what’s already a difficult situation might have been an unbearable burden.
Surely, this particular aspect of “Senior Euthenasia Oh Noes!” could get some airplay among the Villagers whose parents are in their golden years. Right? Hellooo?
Tongue of Groucho Marx
How dare these RINOs defend the Socialist enterprise of Medicare!