Back Home, Back Home!

Back home where I belong!

(and I'm going to bet that all you Army folks out there are now humming that cadence under your breath.)

Yes, I'm back at home once again. Sleeping in my own bed is a marvelous thing.

An honor student is scared for life because she converted to Christianity

Obama has Death Panels for Veterans at the VA

JIM TOWEY at WSJ reports Ex-soldiers don't need to be told they're a burden to society.

If President Obama wants to better understand why America's discomfort with end-of-life discussions threatens to derail his health-care reform, he might begin with his own Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). He will quickly discover how government bureaucrats are greasing the slippery slope that can start with cost containment but quickly become a systematic denial of care.

Last year, bureaucrats at the VA's National Center for Ethics in Health Care advocated a 52-page end-of-life planning document, "Your Life, Your Choices." It was first published in 1997 and later promoted as the VA's preferred living will throughout its vast network of hospitals and nursing homes. After the Bush White House took a look at how this document was treating complex health and moral issues, the VA suspended its use. Unfortunately, under President Obama, the VA has now resuscitated "Your Life, Your Choices."

Who is the primary author of this workbook? Dr. Robert Pearlman, chief of ethics evaluation for the center, a man who in 1996 advocated for physician-assisted suicide in Vacco v. Quill before the U.S. Supreme Court and is known for his support of health-care rationing.

"Your Life, Your Choices" presents end-of-life choices in a way aimed at steering users toward predetermined conclusions, much like a political "push poll." For example, a worksheet on page 21 lists various scenarios and asks users to then decide whether their own life would be "not worth living."

The circumstances listed include ones common among the elderly and disabled: living in a nursing home, being in a wheelchair and not being able to "shake the blues." There is a section which provocatively asks, "Have you ever heard anyone say, 'If I'm a vegetable, pull the plug'?" There also are guilt-inducing scenarios such as "I can no longer contribute to my family's well being," "I am a severe financial burden on my family" and that the vet's situation "causes severe emotional burden for my family."

One can only imagine a soldier surviving the war in Iraq and returning without all of his limbs only to encounter a veteran's health-care system that seems intent on his surrender.

I was not surprised to learn that the VA panel of experts that sought to update "Your Life, Your Choices" between 2007-2008 did not include any representatives of faith groups or disability rights advocates. And as you might guess, only one organization was listed in the new version as a resource on advance directives: the Hemlock Society (now euphemistically known as "Compassion and Choices").

This hurry-up-and-die message is clear and unconscionable. Worse, a July 2009 VA directive instructs its primary care physicians to raise advance care planning with all VA patients and to refer them to "Your Life, Your Choices." Not just those of advanced age and debilitated condition — all patients.

Oh... those Death Panels... that Barack Hussein Obama funded billions in research dollars to enrich Tom Daschle(D) to develop. I could have done it for a bit less given the VA model to work from.

On Glenn Beck's comment

Which I just read about here, after I saw it mentioned here.

The rest of Beck’s comment, asserting that Obama has “deep-seated hatred for white people of the white culture,” should be easy for the President’s defenders to disprove. All they have to do is cite one positive thing Obama has said or written about white culture. Anywhere. Ever. Hopefully they can get back to us before GMAC needs another taxpayer bailout, to address the self-inflicted financial damage from its participation in the boycott. I wouldn’t recommend wasting any time going through Obama’s university compositions, assuming you can find where they’re buried, and get past the three-headed guard dog. He graduated from Columbia and Harvard, where “deep-seated hatred for white people of the white culture” is written in green on your thesis when the professor hands it back to you, along with “excellent sentence composition!” and “good use of original sources!”

There’s no question that Beck’s comment was provocative and rude. If you happen to be in a room with Glenn Beck at the moment, and you’re reading this to him out loud, he probably just shouted “Exactly!” Political and cultural debates always feature provocation and rude behavior. The American media occasionally becomes very prim about this. Strangely enough, these occasions always coincide with the election of a Democrat President. The same people puckering their lips over the heated tone of Beck’s assertions, Sarah Palin’s “death panel” commentary, or the behavior of town-hall protesters, thought the temperature was just peachy when liberals were openly fantasizing about assassinating President Bush. The average liberal couldn’t order a burger and fries at McDonald’s without informing the cashier that Bush was a subhuman cowboy moron.

Hey, here's an idea: Maybe the reason Beck thinks that Obama is a racist is because Obama sat in a church listening to "GOD DAMN AMERIKKKA!" and "WHITEY INVENTED CRACK TO KILL THE BLACK MAN!" for oh, twenty years. I know, crazy right? It's almost like twenty years of past behavior is enough to accurately predict future actions!

Oh, and I read in the news today that Bawney Fwank threw a bitchy little fit at some person who brought a poster of Obama with a Hitler mustache to a town hall meeting.

"On what planet do you spend most of your time?" Frank asked the woman, who had stepped up to the podium at a southeastern Massachusetts senior center to ask why Frank supports what she called a Nazi policy.

"Ma'am, trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table. I have no interest in doing it," Frank replied.

He continued by saying her ability to deface an image of the president and express her views "is a tribute to the First Amendment that this kind of vile, contemptible nonsense is so freely propagated."

Hey Fwank, you hypocritical, ball-gargling, pasty-faced fucking bitch - where the hell have you been for the past eight years, you worthless damned piece of crap? Oh, that's right, you were using Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to drive the US mortgage market into the ground. You must not have been available to see YOUR SUPPORTERS calling Bush a Nazi, or calling him "BusHitler", or waving flags with swastikas instead of stars, or blaming the Jews for everything under the sun andohbythewaybushishitler. Either that, or you're just another slimy, two-faced fucking dirtbag who deserves to be tarred, feathered, and ridden out of town on a rail. Or rotting in a jail cell for the rest of your miserable life. You know what? Either option would make me quite happy.

In fact, the thought of Bawney Fwank tarred, feathered, and tossed in a jail cell is enough to make me smile for the next five minutes.

Oh, and just in case you needed a reminder - Democrats lie. It's what they do. It's who they are. They cannot win on their ideals, so they must lie. And lie. And lie.

Did you think that I call the Left domestic enemies of the Constitution just as a bit of hyperbole? Oh hell no. I'm being serious.

Favre signs with Minnesota Vikings

I'm sure that there are some Packer fans who will shrug and say, "Oh well, he's going into the Hall of Fame as a Packer, so no biggie."

They are in the minority, folks. Brett Favre could have been discovered eating babies in Green Bay, and the fans would have still forgiven him so long as he had stayed retired. But going to a rival team in the NFC North is the unforgivable sin, and there will be hell to pay when Favre and the Vikings come to Green Bay.

So congratulations, Favre. You've gone from a god-like hero in Green Bay to the one person that Packer fans would be happy to see torn into pieces and buried in dog shit. I hope your massive ego is stroked enough. Yeah, Favre will go into the HoF as a Packer, but he'll now have actual Packer fans pushing against that. Football is bigger than life in Wisconsin, and if Favre had any sense in his damn fool head, he would have remembered that.

I personally think that Favre will make the Vikings better, if only for the fact that teams now have to worry about more than Adrian Peterson. The Viks will win the NFC North, and make a big push into the playoffs. But I'm going to be rooting against him, because you can do a lot, but you never, EVER stab your fans in the back. And as far as Packer fans go, that's exactly what Favre has done.

What the f**k is wrong at NRO?

I'm one of the folks who subscribe to National Review on dead tree, but I'm really, really thinking about canceling my subscription at this point. Because at this time, most of what I see coming out of National Review is elitists who have fallen into the same attitude that the Democrat American Communist Party has - that Sarah Palin is somehow less of a conservative, or is somehow WRONG, because she's not some rich, snobbish, inside the beltway asshole. Case in point - NRO's editorial on Palin's "Death Panels" remark.

To conclude from these possibilities to the accusation that President Obama’s favored legislation will lead to “death panels” deciding whose life has sufficient value to be saved — let alone that Obama desires this outcome — is to leap across a logical canyon. It may well be that in a society as litigious as ours, government will err on the side of spending more rather than treating less. But that does not mean that there is nothing to worry about. Our response to Sarah Palin’s fans and her critics is to paraphrase Peter Viereck: We should be against hysteria — including hysteria about hysteria.

Let me ask a question - just why the hell do you think the "Death Panel" terminology was removed from the bill? Was it because the snobs at NRO talked Congress out of it? No, it was because Sarah Palin connected with the conservatives out there. Because she took a concept and boiled it down to it's base level, and the real conservatives took that and ran with it. Did I really think that there would be panels of people going thumbs up or thumbs down on whether granny got to live? No. But I do believe that had that language on "end of life" counseling remained in that bill, a government bean-counter would be deciding just how much the government would spend to keep granny alive. And in the end, it amounts to the same thing - care being withheld.

NRO needs to either pull their heads out of their collective ass, or they need to get the hell out of the way.

COR and Wall Street

As I have been pounding on the Healthcare takeover I have grown ever more frustrated that no pundits are discussing one of the truly serious issues facing our country if the (D)emocrat/Socialists conquer.

COR, is the ratio of claims paid to premiums collected and industry wide it runs about 1.02, or $1.02 in claims & administrative costs are paid out for every premium $1 collected. Efficient insurance companies dodge the burdensome state level regulation by staying close to this ratio and thereby expand their book of business by spreading the risk over ever more policy-holders through good underwriting practices.

So you say... No. No Insurance company is going to run at a loss. But they do. Why? Well... Billions of premium dollars flow in and the lag time between the payment of those premiums and the coverage of claims provides a float to the Insurance industry making them the largest capital investment source in America at... yes... 2%.

Wouldn't you borrow money at 2% if you could for reinvestment?

Now. Take a deep breath and let it sink in. Has the light bulb gone off yet?

What happens if the (D)emocrat's National Socialization project takes over the Health Insurance industry? What happens to all that capital?

It goes away.

Without those dollars what happens to the Stock Market?

It goes down. Way down.

What about the credit markets? Remember the last panic that justified the stampede that rationalized the 3/4 Trillion in TARP dollars, and the 1/2 Trillion dollar government spending expansion, and the 1 Trillion dollar stimulus? What will happen when the dollars behind 20% of the entire American economy are no longer available for capital investment in American business?

End game.

Cross Posted at DANEgerus

Culture of Death

Mark Alger has found this wonderful article that I think needs to be spread around as much as possible.

The American people know that the same people who wanted to pull the tube from Terri Schiavo want to be trusted not to pull the plug on grandma. Which is why they are appropriately skeptical of any hint that Obamacare would leave any power in federal hands to make those decisions. Four years ago, the Left was proud of its stance on withdrawing not just medical care but food and water itself from Terri Schiavo. That was their choice. If the price to be paid is a public in need of assurance that President Obama and his plan don’t share those values and won’t encourage the same thing, well, choices have consequences, and the voiceless dead can still haunt us in ways we had never foreseen.

The Democrats are the Party of Death, like it or not. It was the Democrats who demanded that Terry Shiavo die. It is the Democrats who insist that killing an unborn child for the convenience of the mother is somehow constitutional. It is the Democrats who talk about assisted suicide and euthanasia as somehow being fine and dandy.

Do we really want them creating a healthcare bill? Would you stake your life on it? How about the life of your parents?

What about the life of your children?

Heading Out

Yep, once again I sally forth to wage... well.... Um......

Ah hell - I'm going TDY yet again. Maybe I'll have internet, maybe not. We'll see when I get there.