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August 07, 2009 09:42 PM UTC

"Patients First" Bus Tour Skids Off Course

  • 21 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

From TPM, covering yesterday’s “Patients First” tour stop in Pueblo:

Patients First is a project of Americans for Prosperity–one of the key conservative interests groups helping to organize the town hall protests we’ve been covering. The speaker repeats the debunked conservative canard that Democratic health care reform will mandate physician assisted suicide. “Adolf Hitler issued six million end of life orders–he called his program the final solution. I kind of wonder what we’re going to call ours.” [Pols emphasis]

And after comparing Democratic health care reform efforts to the murderous regimes of Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot, the speaker advises his audience to “go to offices of members of Congress and put the fear of god in them.”

We talked yesterday about manipulating ignorance for political advantage, and an underlying viral message being spread among excitable conservative activists that Obama wants to ‘kill old people.’ In this particular stop on Jeff Crank’s Americans for Prosperity Colorado bus tour, it appears the ignorance and ‘kill old people’ message wasn’t delivered with much subtlety.

Comments

21 thoughts on ““Patients First” Bus Tour Skids Off Course

  1. I love the chain of reasoning start like the “little engine that could” and working it’s way up to mass murder. Squarestate had a writeup that’s pretty good, including a transcript of the ‘genocide’ passage:

    http://squarestate.net/diary/8

     Part of this process is called end of life counseling.  Part of the end of life counseling can be an end of life order.  Let me repeat that.  Part of this end of life counseling on line 429, of HR3200 deals with an end of life order.  What does that mean?  End of life.  Another word for that is death.  Order.  What’s another word for that?  A Sentence. Now. You folks review with me a little bit as I recall Stalin in the 1920s issued about 20 Million end of life orders for his fellow Russians.  Pol Pot did it in the Vietnam War.  He issued about 2 Million end of life orders.  It’s being done in Africa today.  Mugabe is doing it every day.  Adolf Hitler issued 6 Million end of life orders.  He called his program the final solution.  I kind of wonder what we’re going to call ours…  

    1. Who cares that the “end of life order” is a standard clause in an advance directive, issued by the person who is writing it for him or herself, not the government.

      Both my grandmother and my father died in recent years, both put me in charge of their care in their living wills, and both were very clear about their wishes as to when to pull the plug, which I had to do in both cases. Their written guidance was invaluable because in the drama of being on life support, what they had said verbally was easily misconstrued and subject to faulty memories by members of the family who either didn’t want to ever let go, as well as those who wanted to pull the plug instantly just because they didn’t like seeing tubes and dealing with the inconvenience of sick relatives. And we had both of those cases.

      Had the fact that these people are Type A personalities (and I am not) had their ways, my dad would not have recovered and lived and worked for another 5 years before having another crisis. And my grandmother would have lingered for weeks in excruciating pain but unable to communicate. In both cases members of the family went around me, and nearly convinced doctors to bow to their will. But I held in my hand the absolutely decisive document that the insurance goons have twisted into some sort of Nazism, even though they themselves highly recommend having that legal paperwork (and many plans cover paying for it).

      1. were you related to that oman on tv a few years back who had left clear instruction for her spouse but got end runned (almost) by her parents, Congressman, Governor and Senator?

        Seriously- been there myself with and without documents and cooperative and uncooperative family and other “well” intentioned.

        And I can tell you the documents were better everytime.

      2. at the Boulder Hospice Center in Louisville and it was at his written direction that no extraordinary measures be taken to prolong his life.  He was taken to the hospice instead of a hospital when he collapsed unconscious and never woke up again.

        He was being treated for Alzheimer disease, prostrate cancer and emphysema or ACE as he liked to call it.

        He had been in the Boulder County Hospice program and was able to live at home with the care provided by his wife of 64 years and the county hospice program.

        I can not begin to express my gratitude for the volunteers and professionals who are involved in hospice programs.  The home visit volunteer helped him put his memories in writing so we could read them and the hospice center was a place for the family to gather to hold his vigil.  We asked that donations be sent to the hospice center for their care and compassion.  It was a death with dignity.

         

        1. He was proud of his country and wanted to be buried in his naval uniform with all his metals. An Irish Catholic from Massachusetts, direct descendant of someone who fought in the American Revolution and descendant of a president of the United States my father was the father of eleven children. In his last days he remembered his life and ours with long ago forgotten stories about each of us that he fondly relayed to us before he passed away.

          While in hospice care he helped to write his obituary telling us about the ships he served on and his distant encounter with Winston Churchill. He didn’t want to be a burden on anyone and requested to be able to die with dignity. And he had the right. He had served his country for forty years, twenty in the navy and twenty as a civil servant. He fought in two wars; WWII and the Korean War. End of life planning made his death an experience I will never forget and it taught me the value of end of life planning. He taught us all how to die with dignity.  

    2. I think it’s safe to say that the euthanasia conspiracy theories are going to quickly delegitimize the insurance industry’s anti-reform agenda. Now, Sarah Palin makes clear that the Pueblo Rant video is not an outlier opinion, but is central to the anti-reform narrative:

      http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo

      The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

      Classy.  

      1. What is her source, for instance, for “death panel”.  Did she read that phrase somewhere in the bill?

        The thing with Sara is she probably really does believe this crap the way Bush probably believed all the crap Cheney and Co. fed him. Shows American voters don’t discriminate against the none too bright.

        She probably believes, for instance, that she’s not a quitter because only quitters refuse to quit.  It probably even makes sense to her.  Like her myth of rugged libertarian self reliance in a state that ranks as one of the biggest welfare states nationally in terms of the amount of federal funding it receives per dollar paid in fed taxes.

        http://swampbubbles.com/bubble

        1. might be that she knows full well that she is feeding the dummies a pack of lies but keeps it up for direct personal political gain.  How cynical is that?

    1. what the heck is going on in the world or why is scary.  Fearful leads to excitable and angry. These are people who are scared of their own shadow.

      1. And they want guvmint to stay out of their medicare too. No socialist government interference for them.

        I think the prevalence of gray hair is just because retirees have more time and freedom to drop everything and go to meetings.  The fact that they are already on a government, single payer, socialized plan is apparently no drawback to getting them to agitate against the evils of socialized healthcare.  Plenty of very smart, well informed old folks around but not these particular ones.

  2. When people contact a lawyer for a will, one of the questions always asked by the attorney is whether the individual has a living will. If not, the attorney explains what a living will is and that it allows that person (potential patient) to control the kind and extent of medical treatment he/she will receive if terminally ill. The emphasis here should be on the fact that it allows the individual, not the government or the physicians, to control the medical treatment.

    The President’s health care bill does nothing to change the existing system and it certainly doesn’t mandate death for elderly people or mandate assisted suicide. All the bill does is require individuals to review, at given intervals, whether they have such documents. In other words, it reminds people how they can control the end of their life, if they choose to do so. Even, if they don’t choose to have a living will, then they will be treated to the fullest extent that medical science can treat them.

    The Republican House leadership is the origin for this nonsense about mandating death and it cannot be characterized as anything except a bald face lie. These so called conservatives, who love to expound about their dearly held Christianity, should be ashamed of themselves for they have broken one of the Ten Commandments: Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

     

    1. You make a lot of sense and I appreciate your honesty.

      I don’t have cancer but a gene mutation that causes cancer and so I have a patient visit with my oncologist every year. For my initial appointment they asked me to fill out a questionnaire for end of life decisions. It was kind of creepy but well worth it for piece of mind and knowing that my family of origin will have little to say when I choose not to stay alive by extraordinary means.  My husband and daughter will help with these decisions and they will comply with my wishes and I with theirs.

      Healthcare reform will happen in spite of these hateful people. What they don’t realize is that the majority of Americans get it now and they know the insurance companies want to keep the status quo so that they can continue to make obscene profits off the backs of the insured by denying claims.

  3. […] the speaker advises his audience to “go to offices of members of Congress and put the fear of god in them.”

    It’s getting ugly out there.

    Via Twitter:

    If ACORN/SEIU attends these meetings for disruptive purposes, and you have a license to carry…carry.

    If ACORN/SEIU attends these townhalls for disruption, stop being peaceful and hurt them.  Badly #iamthemob

    Via the phone (to SEIU):

    I suggest you tell your people to calm down, act like American citizens and stop trying to repress people’s First Amendment rights. That, or you all are gonna’ come up against the Second Amendment.

    Stop the violence.

    Love the irony in that one…

    But, seriously, folks.  It’s time to condemn the violence on all sides.  Time to stop the angry rhetoric that’s stirring things up among the less rational followers.  This shouldn’t be a violent discussion.

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