Semper Fi - Now Just Die Obama Pushes Euthanasia on Veterans

Wall Street Journal: Obama and Shinseki now pressuring Veterans toward Euthanasia

HOT PETITION to STOP OBAMA'S SOCIALIST HEALTH CARE

TAKEOVER. Please select, sign, and WE WILL FAX your petition automatically to all 52 "Blue-Dog" House Democrats and/or all 100 Senators, right away (saving you hours of labor!) We've already sent over 400,000 faxes, can you help us reach 1,000,000? The campaign is working and Americans are responding now lets make it work in the Senate.

If you choose not to use AmeriPac’s Petition system, which is easier and faster, the information for Congress is below for you to fax, call, email and write them directly. Either way, make it part of your 9/11 remembrance and let your congressperson, your Senator and the Blue Dogs (and anyone else you’d like to contact) know that ObamaCare and the deplorable treatment of our Veterans cannot be passed or stand!!)

WSJ: Obama and Shinseki now pressuring Veterans toward Euthanasia

The Wall Street Journal just published a shocking editorial written by a respected University President, confirming the Obama Administration is now using VA hospitals to order doctors to pressure all military veterans to sign "pull the plug" do-not-resuscitate orders, hastening their premature deaths through mandatory "end of life" counseling.

President Jim Towey of Saint Vincent's College, founder of the non-profit "Aging With Dignity" and former White House Director of faith based initiatives, wrote a blistering expose entitled "The Death Book For Veterans," revealing President Obama's new Veterans Administration (VA) directive, presumably signed by VA Secretary, General (ret.) Eric Shinseki, which mandates all veterans' primary care physicians must graphically discuss "end of life planning" with all VA patients (not merely those nearing death), and must refer them to "Your Life, Your Choices," a book that openly encourages Euthanasia and was written with guidance from the group formerly known as the Hemlock Society. That same pro-suicide group now boasts on their web-site of directly leading the charge to ensure "end of life counseling" is mandated in the Obamacare bill, HR 3200.

On page 21 of the Shinseki-mandated Veteran's Euthanasia book, all military veterans are encouraged to complete a checklist of various scenarios, to decide whether their own life would be "not worth living." For example, the booklet asks veterans 7 questions pressuring veterans to sign a "living will" that authorizes doctors to terminate your life, if you are:

1. Living in a nursing home?
2. Being in a wheelchair?
3. Not able to "shake the blues?"
4. Ever heard anyone say, "If I'm a vegetable, pull the plug?"
5. No longer able to contribute to your family's well-being?
6. Are you a severe financial burden to your family?
7. Do you cause severe emotional burden for your family?

"This hurry-up-and-die message is clear and unconscionable," says Towey, "Worse, a July 2009 VA directive [presumably signed by Shinseki] instructs its primary care physicians to raise advance care planning with all VA patients and to refer them to 'Your Life, Your Choices.' [the Euthanasia booklet.] Not just those of advanced age and debilitated condition-all patients. America's 24 million veterans deserve better." Towey recommends a "five wishes" living-will document that does not pressure suicide.

But instead the Hemlock Society booklet is now MANDATED for doctor referral to all patients in all VA hospitals, heaping more evidence upon the growing list of proofs that the Obama Administration is LYING TO THE PUBLIC by denying their health care plan pushes Euthanasia on the elderly. They already do it today. Just imagine if ALL hospitals become government-run like the VA.

SELECT HERE TO SIGN PETITION, AND WE WILL FAX ALL 52 "BLUE-DOG" DEMOCRATS IN THE HOUSE, AND ALL 100 SENATORS, TO OPPOSE OBAMACARE.

We all gasped when the federal government seized control of General Motors, and Obama effectively fired the Chairman and replaced the board with government bureaucrats selected by Treasury Secretary Geithner. Now Obama and his liberal Democratic House allies want to replace your doctors with bureaucrats, hasten grandma's demise, abort and kill children in urban neighborhoods, cut doctors' pay and control their religion, and transform Private hospitals into government-controlled atheist bureaucracies. Does any of this remind you of Communism? I won't stand idly by to allow this. I will fax Congress to say, "no to Obamacare." Will you? Please sign our petition and I'll send your faxes now. Then please forward this email to all your friends who care about our beloved country, especially those senior citizens who may be at greatest risk.
Please, take action right away to STOP this bill dead in its tracks!

For more information, visit http://www.ameripac.org/

Defend America,

Alan Gottlieb
AmeriPAC
President and Founder

P.S. Time is urgent! When the House and Senate return from summer vacation their first priority is to send Obama this dangerous "health" care bill. Please don't delay, but sign our petition today!

SELECT HERE TO SIGN PETITION, AND WE WILL FAX ALL 52 "BLUE-DOG" DEMOCRATS IN THE HOUSE, AND ALL 100 SENATORS, TO OPPOSE OBAMACARE.

P.S. America needs health care reform. But new government programs, mandates, and price controls would deny patients control over their most important and personal medical decisions -- and it's "reform" that we cannot afford.

THIS ATTEMPT BY LIBERALS IS OUTRAGEOUS -- and it MUST be stopped! Send your faxes right away to make sure these Senators get a STRONG message, to REJECT the socialized plan of "Obamacare" NOW -- Thank you!

Please make checks payable to AmeriPAC:
American Political Action Committee (AmeriPAC)
PO Box 1682
Dept Code 2946
Bellevue, WA 98009-1682

Source: AmeriPac

Related Resources:

• Fact Check: President Obama Repeats Falsehoods in Joint Session Speech
• Outcry Over Vets ‘End of Life’ Care
• Click here to read the "Your Life, Your Choices" guide.

United States Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121

Senators from your State.

And let us take note, that if the administration and Dems in the House are lying to us about “Duty to Die” as it relates to Veterans, who fought to keep them and us free and we know that rationing takes place in Canada and Britain and in other “government-run” healthcare countries, the notion that the same will be done with seniors and special needs patients is hardly far fetched!

NO Public Option of Any Kind!!!

Government-Run Co-ops = a Public Option

A Trigger = a Public Option… Just Delayed

We Need Healthcare Reform, but ObamaCare is not it!!

Insist that Congress dump all the Bills presently on the table and START OVER! in a logical and bipartisan manner!

Posted: Knowledge Creates Power – Cross Posted: Daily Thought Pad

“Blue Dog” Refuses to Let Constituent Videotape Town Hall!

"This Is My Town Hall, And I Make The Rules…” Hmmm… a public servant? And wasn’t it the Blue Dog Democrats who were supposed to be the sensible Dems??

That's what Rep. Baron Hill (D-IN), the policy leader of the conservative/moderate Blue Dog coalition, explained to a journalism student at a town-hall meeting Wednesday night who asked why she wasn't allowed to videotape the event for a school project.

"This is my town hall meeting, and I set the rules, and I've had these rules," Hill responded, in an authoritative tone. "Let me repeat that one more time. This is my town hall meeting for you. And you're not going to tell me how to run my congressional office. Now, the reason why I don't allow filming is that usually the films that are done end up on YouTube in a compromising position."

Hill went on to say, "You are not going to tell me how to run my congressional office!" Hello?!? I hope his constituents show him who is boss come election time and vote him out if they haven't impeached him before... which might be a thought if Hill chooses to vote against the majority of his constituents' will on healthcare reform!

Socialized Medicine Update – From Congressman John Campbell’s Laptop to Yours (8/5/09)

Wednesday, August 5, 2009:

Socialized Medicine: The final committee mark-up in the House for the socialized medicine bill finished late Friday evening with the bill passing by a vote of 31-28. Five of the "Blue Dog" Democrats (Gordon, Hill, Harman, Ross, and Space) who had previously opposed the bill, voted in favor of it, with the announcement of some minor modifications. Three other "Blue Dogs" (Matheson, Barrow, Melancon) voted ‘No.’ In essence, the bill is the same as it was before. What’s interesting here is that Committee Chairman Henry Waxman called for the vote on the bill when there were still 52 amendments pending that had neither been debated nor voted upon. The Chairman provided a vague promise that those amendments would be heard in September.

So why take a vote on a bill that supposedly isn't done yet? This is pure speculation on my part, but I suspect that those who are pushing this mess (including the President and the Speaker) want to show momentum before the August recess. That’s to be expected, but the Republicans in Congress and the majority of Americans, who oppose this increase in taxes, costs, deficit, debt, and the incumbent reduction in the quality of care and competency of caregivers, will not be silent during these next 5 weeks either. I intend to tell the truth about this government-run healthcare plan every chance I get in every medium.

In all practicality, I believe that there will be a healthcare reform bill passed at some point this Congress, and It will likely be directionally opposite from where I think we ought to go. We should be moving further away from the government run systems we have now, and instead be moving toward a true open market where everyone buys the plan they want. Those who cannot afford it are subsidized, and pre-existing conditions are handled through a high-risk pool. The best we can probably hope for in this Pelosi-led Congress, is legislation that will not completely destroy private medicine in this country. With this Congress and this President, this is the new standard for the definition of winning.

Here is an article I wrote for last Sunday's Washington Times which explores some of the deeper consequences of the push for socialized medicine. I hope you enjoy it.

Cost-benefit analysis vs. American citizens' lives
Sunday August 2, 2009
By Rep. John Campbell

Click here to go to WashingtonTimes.com
Prior to the founding of the United States, political theorist and philosopher John Locke developed the theory that government derives its power and authority from the consent of the governed. Benjamin Franklin once wrote that "in free governments the rulers are the servants and the people their superiors and sovereigns."

These are the principles that are fundamental to the American system and have helped shape the nation we know and love today.
Flash forward to the current setting and context. President Obama has made his intent clear on health care: Medical decisions will no longer be made by doctors and patients, but by the omnipotent prowess of the federal government. By proposing creation of a bureaucracy to ration care and determine the cost-effectiveness of care for individuals, he has violated at least one fundamental tenet of America's founding.

The House version of the bill creates fifty-three new departments, agencies and commissions, but one stands out: the ‘National Institute of Comparative Effectiveness.’ Though it may sound benign, this bureaucracy will be used to ration care.

A similar institution exists in Britain, called the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, given the curious acronym of N.I.C.E. Rulings on whether people live or die are made frequently in Britain and Canada, and if an individual has a pre-existing condition, is elderly, or for some reason deemed "unfit" for a lifesaving procedure, his chances of being granted that lifesaving procedure become uncertain. With health care rationing, lives will literally hang in the balance, subject to the whims of government.
In fact, it is documented that in countries where socialized medicine is in place, citizens suffer from drastically lower survival rates from ailments such as cancer and heart disease. On balance, survival rates range from around 30 percent to 50 percent below that of countries with private medicine.

This socialized-medicine package is a giant leap in a direction that changes the dynamic of government as a servant to the people, violating the widely acknowledged precept of democratic government, that it derives its power from those which it governs. Mr. Obama and other big-government advocates are now effectively forcing a shift in how the government views those it serves. The American government will begin to view its citizens as liabilities rather than assets.

By definition, a liability is an item to be categorized, managed, and ultimately dispensed with. If government views its citizens through the prism of structured assets and liabilities, a terrible precedent has been set.

I and my Republican colleagues view the American people as assets with the intelligence and power to decide for themselves what is best for them and their families. This is something we are committed to fight for, and we continue to do so.

Our grand republic was founded on the premise that the government derives its power from the "consent of the governed." If Mr. Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have their way and this bill passes, perhaps we should change that to "consent of the governed, unless they represent too high of a liability."

Until next time, I remain respectfully,

Congressman John Campbell
Member of Congress

The only way to stop socialized medicine which will include loss of control and choice over your health care decisions, rationing, more government control in our lives, and tax increases for less services and worse care is to stand up.

Morris (author of Catastrophe and former advisor to President Clinton) notes that senior citizens will pay the biggest price under the overhaul.

SEE THE NEW TV AD DICK SAYS CAN DEFEAT OBAMA'S HEALTH CARE TAKEOVER -- CLICK HERE!

Read Dick Morris’s suggestions Here

Related Posts:

• Dick Morris Says Obamacare Will Replace Medicare
• Grass-roots revolts in Texas and Pennsylvania Against Obamacare
• Obama in 2007 Said He Wanted to Eliminate Private Health Insurance
• Healthcare: Does Canada Do It Better?
• ObamaCare For Seniors: Sorry, You’re Just Not Worth It
• *Letter to Your Congress Person on Health Care (Obamacare) HR3200
• *A Look at What is Really in the Health Care Bill (HR 3200): Chilling!
• Useless Eaters
• Reparations By Way of Health Care Reform
• Kennedy: Let’s Ration Healthcare
• GovernmentCare’s Assault on Seniors
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• Catastrophe

Posted: Knowledge Creates Power

‘Blue Dog’ Democrats Hold Health-Care Overhaul at Bay

WASHINGTON — So-called Blue Dog Democrats continued to resist key aspects of their party’s health-care overhaul Sunday, despite pressure from party leaders who fear they will endanger President Barack Obama’s most ambitious legislative effort.

A leader of the fiscally conservative group of representatives said he expects any vote on the House’s health proposal would have to wait, likely until after Labor Day. “I think the American people want to take a closer look at this legislation. They want to feel more comfortable with it,” Rep. Jim Cooper, a Blue Dog from Tennessee, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Blue Dogs

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi disputed any suggestion that the Blue Dogs’ protests threatened the bill’s passage. “Absolutely, positively not,” she said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “When I take this bill to the floor, it will win…We will move forward. This will happen.”

Blue Dogs have emerged as pivotal players in the national health-care debate, a swing group that the White House is wooing more intensely to keep its initiative on track. The group, which accounts for about one-fifth of House Democrats, wants to make sure the health-care plan isn’t too expensive for small businesses and hopes to keep the government’s costs down. They don’t want private health insurers to compete with a federally funded plan, and seek to reduce the share of lower-income Americans who would receive health-care subsidies.

Following a week in which the Blue Dogs challenged several key planks of the Democratic plan, most lawmakers agree a delay in the House legislation is likely. The House is set to adjourn next week, and unless lawmakers decide to stay in Washington for a few extra days, a decision would be put off until after Labor Day.

The Blue Dogs’ clout arises from simple math — they account for 52 seats in the House, enough to topple any law in cooperation with Republicans — and some irony. Hungry to retake Congress, Democrats actively recruited moderate candidates in conservative districts. The strategy was strikingly successful in recapturing the majority. But now the Democrats are learning the price as they try to enact their agenda.

The power of the Blue Dogs was on full display Friday, when they humiliated California Rep. Henry Waxman, one of the most liberal Democrats on Capitol Hill. Late last year, Rep. Waxman had shown his power by gaining control of the Energy and Commerce Committee, wresting the chairman’s seat from Congress’s most senior Democrat. On Friday morning, Rep. Waxman went before cameras and fired a blast at seven Blue Dogs on his committee who have blocked the health legislation from proceeding to the House floor for vote.

The chairman said he was done negotiating with them. “We’re not going to let them empower the Republicans to control the committee,” he said.

Hours later, the Beverly Hills Democrat was back in front of reporters with one of the seven, Rep. Mike Ross of Arkansas. “Our colleagues have pulled us both back and said let’s all take a deep breath, that nothing is irreconcilable,” the chairman said.

The Blue Dog Coalition came together after the Democrats’ loss of Congress in 1994. Some representatives, mainly Southerners, believed the party’s losses stemmed from a drift to the left. They decided to take a name that played on the old term “yellow dog,” Southern Democrats who were ostensibly so loyal they would vote for a yellow dog if it ran on the party’s ticket.

One of the founding members, former Rep. Billy Tauzin of Louisiana, had paintings of blue dogs in his office by artist George Rodrigue, prompting some of the roughly 20 lawmakers to joke that they were yellow dogs who’d been “choked blue” by the party’s liberals. Rep. Tauzin later switched to the Republican Party.

The Blue Dogs’ numbers expanded with the election of lawmakers such as North Carolina Rep. Heath Shuler, an ex-Washington Redskins quarterback who opposes abortion, gun control and gay marriage. Democrats begged him to run for Congress in 2006, believing he could win his rural, religious district. The coalition retains a Southern sensibility but many of its members now come from other areas. Nineteen members, called “Blue Pups,” won seats in the past two elections.

Beyond health care, the Blue Dogs have helped delay a climate-change bill and block legislation that would make it easier for unions to organize.

That frustrates liberals, who say the Democratic Party’s victory last November, including a 256-178 majority in the House, gives it a once-in-a-generation chance to enact a liberal agenda.

“Since they can vote with the Republicans in order to get their way around here, that doesn’t sit well with progressives — who don’t want to vote with Republicans ever,” said Rep. Lynn Woolsey, a California Democrat and co-chair of the House Progressive Caucus.

Rep. Shuler, for his part, said that before agreeing to run, he spoke to Rep. Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer to make sure he’d have the freedom he needed.

“One conversation I had with both of them before coming to Congress was, ‘I’m going to vote my district,’” Rep. Shuler said. “It’s one of those swing districts that can go either way…They’re aware of that.”

As long ago as May, the Blue Dogs complained of being shut out of the health-care debate. In a sharp letter to Democratic leaders, they wrote they were “increasingly troubled” by their exclusion.

Rep. Pelosi and others set up a flurry of meetings with them, but the Blue Dogs were not satisfied — especially their point man on health care, Rep. Ross of Arkansas, a former drugstore owner.

“We want to be the brokers of this health-care debate,” said Rep. Ross, who leads a bloc of seven Blue Dogs on the Energy and Commerce Committee. “Not a roadblock.”

Overall, House Blue Dogs are not always in alliance. But the bloc of seven on the Energy and Commerce Committee — an eighth Blue Dog there, Rep. Jane Harman of California, is a liberal on health-care issues — has shown every sign of remaining unified.

The question now is whether Democratic leaders could bypass the committee and take the bill directly to the House floor. Rep. Ross and others say that without the Blue Dogs, Democratic leaders do not have the votes to pass the bill on the floor. So far, Democratic leaders have not wanted to test that proposition.

If Democratic leaders ultimately satisfy the Blue Dogs, the health bill will likely clear the House this week, marking a significant victory for President Obama. A version of the bill is still mired in the Senate, where Democrats and Republicans are engaged in tough negotiations to produce bipartisan legislation.

Mr. Obama met with the Blue Dogs for an hour at the White House last week. Rep. Pelosi recently spent 90 minutes listening to their concerns.

Tennessee Blue Dog Rep. Cooper, who clashed with then-first lady Hillary Clinton over her failed health-care revamp in 1993, is considered by many Democrats a key player to win over this time. He says his group has spent “endless hours” with White House aides seeking common ground.

The Blue Dogs’ resistance has angered other Democrats. At a heated closed-door meeting of House Democrats last week, Rep. Hank Johnson, a Georgia Democrat and member of the Congressional Black Caucus, complained about the Blue Dogs holding up the health bill in Energy and Commerce Committee, noting pointedly that all are white men.

Some critics also point out that while the Blue Dogs proclaim their desire to cut the health bill’s costs, they are also demanding that rural doctors — who serve their districts — get more money, which could drive up those same costs. The Blue Dogs say they are asking for a redistribution of funds among care providers, not an overall increase.

Emotions have run high among Blue Dogs as well. When the health-care talks nearly broke down Friday, Rep. Ross said Rep. Waxman had reneged on agreements he’d reached with the Blue Dogs. Rep. Charlie Melancon of Louisiana said he’d been “lied to.”

“We’ve always been in the middle,” said Rep. John Tanner, a Tennessee Blue Dog. “If you’re going to get some of these really tough issues done, it has to be done somewhere in the middle.”

When Mr. Obama took office in January, with Democrats sweeping to dominant majorities, many in the party were giddy at the prospect of an agenda that would mark a third great wave of progressive Democratic legislation, after the New Deal and the Great Society.

It didn’t take long for the Blue Dogs to play their cards. When Mr. Obama unveiled his $787 billion economic-stimulus plan, a crucial priority of his early presidency, the Blue Dogs said they would not go along unless Democratic leaders agreed to pay-as-you go budget rules. Those rules require new spending and tax cuts to be offset so the deficit doesn’t grow.

The White House had little choice but to agree. That deal bore fruit Wednesday, when the House voted 265-166 to impose a “paygo” system. Rep. Baron Hill of Indiana, a leading Blue Dog, exulted that this had been one of the group’s signature issues for a decade. Republican critics said the legislation still doesn’t go far enough because it exempts all discretionary spending, and applies only to non-routine increases in entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare.

By Naftali Bendavid

Source: Competent Conservative

Posted: Knowledge Creates Power