As The Veterans Administration Or ANYTHING Goes The Way Of Liberalism, It Goes Down The Toilet

I am a service-connected disabled veteran and use the Veterans Administration as my primary source of health care.

For the most part, the VA has done me well.  I have mostly had excellent physicians and health care professionals attending to me.  And I have been grateful to the VA for the care I have received.

But I have also been watching my level of care deteriorate.

And it is deteriorating because of liberalism.

This week is a marvelous example.

As a service-connected veteran with injuries to both knees and both shoulders, I have a significant level of pain to deal with.  I am prescribed oxycodone for my pain.  And of course that is a Schedule II drug that requires extra-level monitoring.

I have never ONCE been convicted for any kind of substance abuse.  I have never ONCE been arrested for any kind of substance abuse.  I have never ONCE ever even been ACCUSED of any kind of substance abuse.

But, you know, some people have abused their oxycodone.

So let’s treat EVERYONE like a drug abuser.

I got a phone call this week and was commanded to submit a urine sample for a drug test within two weeks of receiving the call.  I’m going in today and I am pissed off about it.

Oh, if I were a welfare-sucking parasite, I wouldn’t have to submit to a drug test.  I mean, they tried to do that in one state and the unholy rabid frothing-at-the-mouth fury on the part of liberals squashed that pretty fast.  I mean, how DARE you insinuate that people might not be getting jobs because they’re abusing drugs, you RACIST!

But it’s perfectly okay to accuse us veterans who fought for your right to be a depraved jackass of being a drug abuser, isn’t it, Democrat?

Thanks to Führer Obama, I get to deal with that insinuation about four times a year.   I was tested in November.  The fact that there wasn’t so much as a trace of a contraband cream puff in my system doesn’t absolve me.  Because where Democrats are involved, the last thing that matters is “facts.”

But I’m not done.

I just had shoulder surgery for my left shoulder.  And I’ve been having physical therapy on a schedule of three times a week, followed by two times a week, followed by three times a week, followed by two times a week, etc.  Well, I had a setback when I strained myself.  The physical therapist and the surgeon saw me and told me I needed to miss about a week plus and heal up.

So I just came back, and during that week plus I’d missed, the physical therapy department changed their scheduling policy.  You see, some veterans aren’t showing up for their appointments, and it cost the system money when people don’t show up for their appointments and leave medical professionals twiddling their thumbs when they could be treating patients.

So does the VA go after the patients who aren’t showing up for their appointments?  Of course not.  That would make as much sense as going after the actual MUSLIMS who are doing all the actual TERRORISM.  So instead, they have to treat EVERYONE like a terrorist, or in this case an appointment-abusing no-shower.

It doesn’t matter that I have NEVER missed a VA appointment in my entire life.

Now I have to get ONE appointment per visit.  The therapist has to spend one-fifth of each appointment writing the paperwork so I can get my next appointment.  And now suddenly I can’t GET two or three appointments a week anymore; nope, I’m lucky to get ONE.  And my recovery is going to suffer as a result.

So because Democrats are running the bureaucracies, we ALL get treated like terrorists.  Whether we’re 95 year-old nuns in our walkers slowly making our way through the airport or service-connected veterans who never once missed an appointment (or abused drugs).  We ALL get treated like terrorists who did something wrong by these power-grabbing dictators.

What is liberalism?  Liberalism is the belief that everybody is “good” while society is “evil” and must be reformed and then “fundamentally transformed,” and so on the one hand they refuse to hold perpetrators responsible for their crimes or their behavior because it’s SOCIETY that is to blame, right?  So we ALL get treated like farm animals while your Hillary Clintons are running around exempting themselves from the laws and regulations and policies that they impose on everybody else.

It would make sense to single out the abusers – whether the drug abusers or the appointment abusers – but Democrats are vile, wicked, depraved people who won’t be held accountable and won’t allow anyone else to be held accountable.  And add to that that Democrats are fascists who want to have total dictatorial control of every system of government.  And you get the perfect storm of me having my health care ruined because the system won’t hold the people who are screwing up accountable for being the ones who are actually screwing up.

Especially if they’re welfare-sucking parasites, for the record.

It’s the same thing with guns, and that’s going on right now, too.  Obama just tried to do one of his innumerable end-runs around the Constitution by banning ammunition for certain types of guns he doesn’t like.  It doesn’t matter if we have a right to those guns because Obama is a fascist and we have the rights Obama says we have and we’re racist if we think we have the rights the Constitution says we have.  In California and other states, Democrats are releasing criminals from prison at a record rate much the way Obama has released terrorists from Gitmo at a record rate (because the fact that I should be treated like a terrorist in any airport in America doesn’t apparently mean that actual TERRORISTS should be treated like terrorist, right?).  And this goes back decades, when during the 1960s Democrats declared that it was wrong to commit crazy people against their will and that the nutjobs who voted Democrat had RIGHTS, dammit.  And so Democrats made it impossible to deal with mentally ill people in America.

And now they demand that we ALL be treated like criminals and nutjobs as a result, and that we ALL have our right to keep and bear arms stripped away from us.

“Democrat” stands for “DEpraved deMOnic bureauCRAT.”  And they have “fundamentally transformed the United States of America” into something truly pathetic and truly despicable.

Now, excuse me.  I’ve got to go pee in a cup.  I’d have a Democrat take the test for me, but you know I’d fail my drug test given the fact that these same hypocrite liberals who are making me take this damn drug test are trying to get the very drugs that I’m being tested for legalized in state after state.

Especially if they’re welfare sucking parasites.

Barack Hussein Obama, Our Class 4 Felon-In-Chief (Outrage On The Border With THOUSANDS Of Children Being Dumped On Street By Feds)

I have pointed this out many times: Barack Obama is a fire hose of pure demonic evil.  There is literally NO WAY to keep up with all the sheer outrages to reason, to justice, to morality as this demon-possessed president pours evil out of his White House like a giant tsunami that washes over what has now become “God damn America.”

Consider that as I write this, the VA scandal consumes more and more Veterans facilities like a raging fire, proving that socialized medicine is inherently inferior to privatized health care and that Obama and the Democrat Party were genuinely evil to impose an even more socialist system onto our health grid than we already unfortunately had.  As I write this, the second largest city in Iraq (Mosul) just fell to the Taliban.  The black flag of al Qaeda now flies over Iraq – exactly as conservatives declared would happen as a result of our fool-in-chief cutting and running from a nation AFTER the war was won without bothering to keep troops there to maintain what 4,500 soldiers died to secure.  As the left-leaning Daily Beast points out:

Friday’s anniversary of Saddam Hussein’s arrest sees the country struggling with a resurgent al Qaeda and a death rate double that of a decade ago.

Ten years after the capture of Saddam Hussein, Iraq is at risk of becoming a failed state again as al-Qaeda reclaims vast swathes of the country. […]

Al Qaeda now controls more territory and more people than they EVER have in their history as a testament to the complete failure and disgrace of the Obama administration’s foreign policy.

Well, things have changed.

In what can be described a truly ironic event and a major failure for America’s stated mission (because one can’t help but wonder at all the support various Al Qaeda cells have received from the US and/or CIA) of eradicating the Al Qaeda scourge from the face of the earth, we learn today that al Qaeda appears to control more territory in the Arab world than it has done at any time in its history. According to a CNN report “from around Aleppo in western Syria to small areas of Falluja in central Iraq, al Qaeda now controls territory that stretches more than 400 miles across the heart of the Middle East, according to English and Arab language news accounts as well as accounts on jihadist websites.”

This splinter group from al Qaeda – ISIS – which by all accounts is even MORE deadly and radical than their “daddy” has seized THREE MAJOR CITIES.  They have done what al Qaeda only dreamed of: create a caliphate out of which to launch global jihad.  What has happened in Iraq – which conservatives repeatedly PREDICTED WOULD HAPPEN if Obama did what he did by withdrawing – is not only the nightmare scenario, but is actually even WORSE than anyone predicted.  It is STUNNING how quickly Obama failed America and failed the free world in Iraq.

Back in 2008, McCain warned that Obama was a politician who would “legislate failure” in Iraq.  He declared, “Both candidates in this election pledge to end this war and bring our troops home. The great difference — the great difference — is that I intend to win it first.”  Now we are beginning to experience what will happen with Obama’s approach.  Barack Obama made a decision to pull back and withdraw from the Middle East and claim victory as he did so.  He created a massive vacuum.  That vacuum has now been filled by the terrorist ideology that anyone with common sense knew would fill it.

Of course, the article I link to above discusses Obama’s pathetic weakness to Putin’s Georgia invasion.  And we know that Sarah Palin predicted that Putin would go after Ukraine next as a result.  Which of course he did the moment after the Olympic games held in Russia ended when he realized what a weak, cowardly, craven, incompetent, political, cynical, gutless weasel Obama is.

Many of the terrorists streaming into Iraq came from Syria.  Obama’s failure there – and his weakness and refusal to do ANYTHING while civilians have been slaughtered by the hundreds of thousands after Obama’s “red line warning” fiasco – is manifest.  Again, conservatives BEGGED Obama to aid the pro-democracy rebels when he had a chance to do so.  He refused, and in doing so he FAILED.  Without the support they needed, the terrorists wings that DID get support quickly overran the pro-democracy forces.  And now we’ve got a metastasizing cancer of gargantuan proportions.

As a result of Obama’s radicaly failed policies, terrorism has increased – and get this – NINEFOLD according to a major study by the Rand Corp. basically under Obama’s watch.

This is what happens when you boast of “ending wars” rather than winning them.

Consider that the IRS scandal continues to prove that Obama is worse than Nixon (who merely TALKED about using the IRS as a political weapon to punish his enemies): the IRS – that specifically targeted “anti-Obama rhetoric” and harassed and terrorized Americans for trying to exercise their Supreme-Court-verdict rights – criminally sent 1.1 million records to the IRS and tried to bait the FBI into prosecuting as a crime opposing Obama.

We may now know why the FBI had predetermined that there wouldn’t be any charges filed in the IRS scandal. It turns out that the nation’s leading law enforcement agency may have been involved in the targeting of conservative groups.

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) have uncovered new information indicating that the IRS sent 21 disks containing some 1.1 million confidential documents of tax-exempt groups to the FBI in October 2010, just weeks before the mid-term election:

Issa, who heads the oversight committee and Jordan, who chairs a subcommittee, said in a statement on Monday they sent a new letter to the IRS, demanding more information about the data sent to the FBI.

“At the very least, this information suggests that the IRS considered the political speech activities of nonprofits to be worthy of investigation by federal law-enforcement officials,” the letter states.

According to Issa and Jordan, the IRS apparently realizes it should not have sent the information to the FBI.

“After the Justice Department turned over the database to the Oversight Committee this month in response to a subpoena, the Justice Department says it was informed by IRS officials that it contains legally protected taxpayer information that should not have ever been sent to the FBI and it now plans to return the full database to the IRS,” a statement from the oversight committee said.

According to material obtained by the committee, the IRS sent the FBI “21 disks constituting a 1.1 million page database of information from 501(c)(4) tax exempt organizations, to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

Issa and Jordan’s letter to IRS Commissioner John Koskinen can be read here (PDF). It includes emails between disgraced IRS official Lois Lerner and Richard Pilger, director of the Justice Department’s Election Crimes Division. Pilger’s name came up in the Lerner emails released in April by Judicial Watch.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) grilled FBI Director James Comey last month over the agency’s foot-dragging on the IRS scandal. The Texas conservative was unable to get answers on the most basic questions, including how many targeted organizations the FBI had interviewed or whether the agency had interviewed any White House employees.

The FBI’s involvement in the scandal further underscores the need for an independent investigation, something that Republicans have wanted since news of the targeting of conservative groups came to light. There’s no other way the IRS, Justice Department, and the FBI are going to get answers for those whom the federal government tried to silence.

We now know that Barack Obama BROKE THE LAW when he refused to notify Congress of the release of what his own military officials claimed were the equivalent of “five four-star generals.”  We know that Obama’s intelligence officials, his Pentagon officials, the intelligence committee members of his very own party, were opposed to this release of five terrorist generals AND INTERNATIONAL WAR CRIMINALS for a documented deserter.

Obama has told what is documented to be one lie after another: first he said that he had to do the trade without notifying Congress because Bergdahl was sick to the point of death – which turned out to be obviously untrue when he showed up physically healthy at the swap site.  Then the claim was that they couldn’t notify Congress out of concern for Diane Feinsten blabbing – but Obama told some ninety members of his own White House and it was this White House rather than Diane Feinstein which had just destroyed the cover of the top CIA man in Afghanistan.  And of course we had the same Susan Rice who had lied so demonically at the outset of the Benghazi fiasco who Obama trotted out to declare that a DESERTER “served with honor and distinction” and was “captured on the battlefield” when in fact he had removed his uniform and sought out the enemy.

All that is going on as we speak, and so many more vile, evil things that I can’t even so much as shake a stick at them.  Barack Obama is and has been a fire hose of satanic evil.

And if those outrages aren’t enough, now we’ve got thousands of illegal immigrant children pouring across the border because they know that if they can get here, Obama will pursue his “catch-and-release” program and they will ultimately become US citizens and get all the welfare, et al of every other lazy degenerate Democrat voter.

What Barack Obama is doing is felony child abuse:

Maricopa county attorney: Feds dumping illegal minors is ‘child abuse’
June 09, 2014 1:56 pm  •  By Howard Fischer Capitol Media Services

PHOENIX — Saying illegal immigrant children being bused to Arizona may be being placed in danger, Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery warned federal officials today they may be violating state child abuse laws.

In a letter to a top immigration official, Montgomery said he fears that unaccompanied minors are being left at bus stations “without food, water or shelter, or means to acquire same.” And he cited an Arizona law which prohibits someone who has care or custody of a child from permitting them to be injured or placed in a dangerous situation.

He said that, given the 100-plus degree temperatures, “any federal official who directly engages in such conduct or who authorizes such conduct may be guilty of a Class 4 felony.” And if that is classified as a dangerous offense, the presumptive prison term is 6 years behind bars.

Montgomery’s complaint comes as top officials in the Obama administration admitted earlier today they’re not meeting a requirement in federal law to process unaccompanied minors within 72 hours and turn them over to federal health officials.

The officials, speaking with reporters on background, said they had prepared for an increase in illegal immigrants from violence-prone Central American countries. But they said the flood of illegal immigrants, mainly coming through the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, was larger than anticipated.

What that means is that children are remaining longer in what essentially is a refurbished warehouse with no indoor plumbing.

One administration official said efforts are underway to provide hot meals and shower facilities, “all kinds of thing to make their life there as comfortable as possible — but with the ultimate goal of trying to move the children as quickly as possible.”

That, however, creates another problem: Administration officials admit that the three facilities being prepared for the children to go at military bases in Texas, California and Oklahoma can house perhaps a maximum of 3,000. But hundreds have been arriving daily at Nogales for processing.

Administration officials said the Department of Health and Human Services, which is accepting legal responsibility for these unaccompanied minors, has access to thousands of other beds at existing facilities. But they said that clearly is not a good long-term answer.

What is, they said, is trying to find adult relatives for these children — even those in this country illegally and awaiting their own deportation proceedings — or at least foster care families.

What Obama did is a growing disaster of epic proportions.  “Obama’s kids” are sleeping on plastic bags and being denied basic needs like showers.  All because Obama cynically believes that if he can capture the illegal immigrant vote – and don’t you DARE tell me Democrats don’t want these illegal immigrants voting or they wouldn’t be going frothing-at-the-mouth rabid psycho every time somebody suggested reasonable voter IDs – he can steal America from Americans the way Adolf Hitler stole Germany from Germans.  It is fascism, and it is merely a different face of Nazism.

And this is at the very same time the most vicious kind of political payback from the president who said, “punish your enemies and reward your friends”:

Are Illegal Immigrants Being Dumped in Arizona as Payback?
Katie Pavlich | Jun 04, 2014

Payback. That’s the word being used to describe recent busload transfers of illegal immigrants, mostly children, caught in Texas and dumped at bus stops in hot, Arizona cities. In case you missed it last week, here’s a refresher about what’s going on. First, the crisis happening at the Texas border:

Children traveling without their families, including an “overwhelming” number younger than 12, are flooding across the southwestern border in the latest test of the Obama administration’s immigration policy.

Homeland Security Officials predict that 60,000 minors will cross the border this year and that the number will double next year, accounting for an astonishing percentage of people trying to jump the border — braving the tremendous perils of crossing Mexico and trying to evade border authorities, hoping to eventually connect with family in the U.S.

 

Instead of using resources to send the children home, I.C.E. and Border Patrol agents were instructed by officials in Washington to transport illegals from Texas to Arizona. When illegals are dropped off, they are given a court date and ICE simply hopes they show up for the hearing.

Hundreds of undocumented immigrants detained as far away as Texas are being released under supervision in Tucson. But getting to their next destination leaves them on their own.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, has said that it does not want to put children in detention centers and it does not want to split up families. ICE releases those families with the condition that they contact ICE for their next court date once they reach their destination in this country.

Now, the move is being seen as payback for Arizona’s previous attempts to take control of their illegal immigration problem by bucking the feds inaction. Republican Rep. Paul Gosar, who represents Arizona’s 4th district, made an appearance on America’s Newsroom recently to explain.

Bill Hemmer: Why Arizona?

Paul Gosar: Well we are one of the hubs. We’ve been having the argument in regard to upholding the rule of law Bill and this is actually just a way for the administration to poke Arizona in the eye.

Gosar is demanding an investigation from the House Oversight Committee into what he is calling, “illegal alien smuggling by the Obama administration.”

“I support Governor Brewer and Treasurer Ducey’s calls for an investigation by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee into the actions taken by the Obama Administration in the wake of detained illegal immigrants being shipped to Arizona,” Gosar said in a statement. “As a member of that Committee, I plan on taking a lead role in seeking accountability for those individuals responsible for this violation of the Rule of Law, should the Committee favorably respond to my request.”

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer is questioning the administration’s decision from a humanitarian angle, pointing out that not only do these children not have parents with them, but that they’re being dropped of in 100 degree temperatures.

“I remind you that the daytime temperatures in Arizona during this time of year are regularly more than 100 degrees. Consequently, this federal operation seems to place expediency over basic humanitarian concerns. The federal government should not shirk its lawful responsibility to care for and properly process these individuals,” Brewer wrote in a letter to President Obama earlier this week.

Two weeks ago newly minted Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson (who was put into the position after bundling money for President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign) testified in front of Congress and was asked about how the administration plans to handle this ongoing crisis. Since then, President Obama has called on FEMA to provide housing for children roaming around the streets without parents.

Barack Obama is the Stalinist psychopath who released 68,000 criminal illegal aliens – and by “criminal” I mean to include THOUSANDS OF RAPISTS and MURDERERS – to prey on innocent and thanks-to-Obama-helpless Americans again.  And probably again after that.

Barack Obama – the same “Liar of the Year” who assured Americans over and over and over again (to the tune of at LEAST 37 times) that you could keep your doctor and you could keep your health plan in his socialist-takeover of health care – has lied without shame in EVERY aspect of his dishonest presidency.  And this is as true for illegal immigration as it is for every other issue under the sun.  Because we now know that Barack Obama boasted that he had deported more illegal immigrants than any previous president to falsely claim he was tough on immigration AFTER DISHONESTLY CHANGING THE STATISTICS THAT EVERY OTHER PREVIOUS PRESIDENT HAD USED.

Barack Obama has deliberately and systematically refused to enforce America’s laws – both on our borders and pretty much everywhere else (as just one example, consider that he has disregarded his own ObamaCare law thirty-eight times).  And this fiasco on our border in the inevitable consequence.  Obama as a fascist always wants a crisis to exploit.  And he crafted himself one here.

This lying disgrace is truly evil.  And everyone who supports him is truly evil.

And this nation is probably done now – bankrupt and imploding on virtually every relevant aspect – because of his wicked presidency and the wickedness of the American people who voted for him twice.

‘Death Panels’ Are REAL. They Are Simply Part of ANY Socialized Medicine Scheme (VA Now Your ObamaCare Next)

Remember when liberal economist Paul Krugman heralded the VA as the “triumph of socialized medicine“?  Maybe not so much to those who don’t inhale the contents of spray paint.

Let’s just face facts: Sarah Palin was wrong when she famously said:

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.”

She was wrong only in this: you don’t GET to “stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ and face the bureaucrats who decide whether you live or die.  That’s a privilege you don’t deserve in a socialized health care system.  Rather, you are just left twisting in the wind wondering where the hell your health care is while you die of medical neglect.

In other words, Sarah Palin’s description of reality under Obama – as terrifying as it was – wasn’t anywhere NEAR terrifying enough.

When you’ve got a Hitler or a Stalin or a Mao – or a true socialist ideologue dictator like Obama – running your country, the truth is almost always more terrifying than the fiction.

The Veterans Administration debacle where veterans across the country are DYING while waiting in vain with their neglect covered up by secret lists is proof that death panels are all-too real.  And that no, you don’t get to “stand” in front of them.  Because even THAT is too much work for these bureaucrats.

You’ve got to stop and think about what the Obama administration’s excuses are.  Do they say something on the order of, “You can’t possibly blame me for this given the sheer size of government.  Now please excuse me while I make the government that is clearly already too big and too out-of-control even BIGGER and even MORE out-of-control.”

Or maybe Obama wants to say something like, “The death panels that you see are not my ObamaCare death panels, but VA death panels.  Now excuse me while I go make your ObamaCare more like the socialized VA system.”

You need to understand that: the classic Democrat talking point is that the VA disaster is one that has been going on for years, so it’s nobody’s fault.  Except that Democrats – and Barack Obama in particular – have been trying to make EVERYBODY’S health care more like the VA system.  And so how is it not their fault?

If the VA is a bad system that is too socialized, too big, too bureaucratic and too bloated, then why the hell are these Democrats (i.e., “DEMOn possessed bureauCRATS) trying to make the REST of health care just like the system they say is broken and can’t be made to work?

There are at least two reasons why socialized medicine invariably becomes a death panel from at least two different directions.  The first is because the government can force private medical practices to jump through all kinds of hoops and impose all kinds of burdensome regulations and costs.  But when they take over health care delivery, suddenly they discover that, hell, this is EXPENSIVE, and then they begin to reduce treatment to save money.  And the second is more insidious but pervasive throughout the system: once health care is socialized, there is simply no incentive for doctors to provide the sort of care they are forced to provide in private practice.  As an example of this, it was discovered in the Albuquerque VA facility that eight cardiologists were doing the work of ONE private practice cardiologist:

There are eight physicians in the cardiology department. But at any given time, only three are working in the clinic, where they see fewer than two patients per day, so on average there are only 36 veterans seen per week. That means the entire eight-person department sees as many patients in a week as a single private practice cardiologist sees in two days, according to the doctor.

For perspective, 60% of cardiologists reported seeing between 50 and 124 patients per week, according to a 2013 survey of medical professionals’ compensation conducted by Medscape. On the low end, the average single private practice cardiologist who participated in the study saw more patients in a week than the Albuquerque VA’s entire eight-person cardiology department.

In some cases, a long wait to see a doctor is just another routine inconvenience of the sort people expect in a large bureaucracy, but other times it can be a matter of life and death.

The problem is NOT money.  The problem is a stifling bureaucracy that simply ABSORBS money like a  giant sponge and the problem is the disincentivization of salaried doctors who simply do not have the incentives to work harder and see more patients the way that private practice doctors have.

It is simply a FACT that money is not the problem, contrary to socialist progressive liberal lies to the contrary:

The backlog of claims and unnecessary delays in veterans’ care has broadened despite a 235 percent increase in the budget of the Department of Veterans Affairs between 2001 and 2013.

That finding has prompted veterans’ advocates to contend that it is a lack of accountability, not funding, that is at the root of the systemic crisis.

Budget increases at the VA have come as the total number of veterans is decreasing due primarily to the deaths of aging World War II participants.

According to figures from the Office of Management and Budget, funding for medical care, which composes 40 percent of the VA’s annual budget, increased 193 percent from 2001 to 2013.

During the same period, the overall veterans’ population declined by 4.3 million, Investor’s Business Daily reported.

As of June 2011, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs reported that an average of 1,100 veterans die every single day.  I recently heard the figure of 1,800 WWII vets dying per day – and you would expect that as the years go by and these veterans get older, the survivors would die at an increasingly faster rate.  There is simply no way that the relatively small number of younger veterans who are entering the system compared to the large number of older veterans who are dying off are overwhelming the system.  The fact is the opposite of what Democrats are saying: we have more money per veteran than EVER.  And yet we have more problems (under Obama) than we have EVER had.

Here is the bottom line: socialized or “single payer” medical systems are doomed to inefficiency.  The result is you keep paying more and more to keep getting less and less.  That is simply a fact.

ObamaCare is one giant ‘death panel’ in the making.  And with the above-mentioned caveat, Sarah Palin NAILED its essence in her “death panel” warning five years ago.

We now know that Obama – who has said in this scandal just as he has said in every other freaking damn scandal that he had no idea that it was happening and it can’t be his fault because everything is still Bush’s fault blah-blah-blah – is just a bystander-in-chief who is discovering the failures of his government by reading the damn newspaper.

At best, this turd is such a failure as a leader it is unreal.

Do you know that Obama hasn’t bothered to have a one-on-one meeting with Shinseki – where real problems could be discussed – in two damn years???  That’s a complete failure to lead.  Period.

But we also know that NOTHING about Obama is “at best.”  We know that this worthless disgrace is always THE WORST.  And so we also now know that Obama is a serial LIAR without any shame, any honor, any decency, any integrity, or any virtue.  The FACTS scream that Obama is a liar and yeah, HE DID KNOW this was going on for the six years he was doing NOTHING:

From the Washington Times, May 18, 2014:

The Obama administration received clear notice more than five years ago that VA medical facilities were reporting inaccurate waiting times and experiencing scheduling failures that threatened to deny veterans timely health care — problems that have turned into a growing scandal.

Veterans Affairs officials warned the Obama-Biden transition team in the weeks after the 2008 presidential election that the department shouldn’t trust the wait times that its facilities were reporting.

“This is not only a data integrity issue in which [Veterans Health Administration] reports unreliable performance data; it affects quality of care by delaying — and potentially denying — deserving veterans timely care,” the officials wrote.

And from the Washington Post, May 20, 2014:

Robert Petzel resigned last week as the top health official for the Department of Veterans Affairs, just one day after testifying before a Senate committee that he knew VA health clinics were using inappropriate scheduling practices as early as 2010.

Whistleblowers claim the schemes continued until this year, leading to a recent wave of outrage that sent the VA and White House scrambling to correct the alleged problems and restore confidence in the department.

Petzel admitted that he knew of the issue after Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) questioned him about the memo below, in which a top VA executive warned the directors of all VA health networks that questionable scheduling practices would “not be tolerated.”

The message summarized at least 17 tactics that VA hospitals were known to have used to hide treatment delays and give the impression they were meeting the department’s goal of seeing patients within 14 to 30 days.

[A PDF of the memo is available here].

Please notice that it was a REPUBLICAN who questioned the Obama administration.

So the White House comes out and says, “Oh, we’re taking measures.  Look, we’re going to fire this turd bureaucrat Petzel.”  When Petzel had ALREADY LONG-SINCE ANNOUNCED HE WAS RETIRING.

To wit: this is like every single other of Obama’s long list of scandals.  Initial professed outrage: “I’m mad as hell,” Obama’s VA turd Shinseki says.  And then not to be outdone, “Obama is madder than hell,” a top Obama aide says of his master.  And then nobody is held responsible, nobody is fired, nobody even loses their damn BONUS.

Obama – as his mouthpiece Jay Carney has been doing – is referring to the VA abominations as “allegations.”  When what has ALREADY been documented is criminal and evil.

On the “problems,” Obama said, “We have been working really hard to address them.”  He said, “Taking care of our veterans and their families has been one of the causes of my presidency.”  Which begs the question just what the hell he HAS been doing when I documented above that Obama KNEW about these “problems” for SIX YEARS and has done NOTHING to keep the crisis from growing FAR WORSE.

Obama also said that he’s not going to let this “become a political football.”  And thus as dictator and Fuehrer seized all power to investigate this so that no one can possibly hold him accountable in any way, shape or form as he deals with this scandal “the Chicago way.”

This is exactly what happened with the Fast and Furious scandal in which Obama and Eric Holder put guns into the hands of Mexican drug cartels and then let them murder a Border Patrol agent.  And did NOTHING beyond their cover-up.

This is exactly what happened with the Benghazi scandal in which Obama and Hillary Clinton sent a United States Ambassador to a Libyan hellhole, refused to provide him with security he was begging for even as every other civilized power was pulling their people out of the violence-ridden region, left him to be raped, tortured and murdered while issuing stand down orders to those who pleaded to be allowed to help him and then covered-up their fiasco by dishonestly blaming the attack on a Youtube video that had absolutely NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with the pre-planned terrorist attack they should have seen coming.  To date, Obama’s disgustingly shameful promises aside, the only person who has EVER been held responsible for this attack is the United States citizen who was slandered as the cause for this al Qaeda-sponsored terrorist attack.

This is exactly what happened with the IRS scandal in which, at the direction of Washington and specifically at the instigation of an Obama appointee, the IRS was used as a political weapon to target and punish Obama’s political opponents.

In every case, Obama relied on the fact that the mainstream media “news coverage” amounts to naked leftist propaganda.  If you want to know how the media would have treated a Republican, just google “Donald Sterling” and see the daily outrage as the media focuses in on their target and then attacks him like red meat on a daily basis until he’s destroyed.  Whereas in Obama’s case, if they even report the story, it’s treated as done and over with.  So move on.

It is the routine script for a despicable ideologue failure.  And he’s playing the same damn game again.

Everything that conservatives said would happen with ObamaCare has either happened or is happening, versus Obama who is now documented to have lied about EVERYTHING from being allowed to keep your doctor, or your health plan, to bending the cost curve down when in fact he’s done otherwise, to there being no taxes on people earning less than $200,000 when there are now all kinds of taxes, etcetera ad nauseam.

And as ObamaCare becomes more and more like the socialized medicine of the VA system, we can look at the countries who have victimized their citizens with appalling care and see what is coming next:

What Liberals Want For Your Child (To Die). As Evidenced By What Is Now Happening In England’s NHS Socialist Health Care System.

Coming Soon To America (Thanks To Obama And Democrats): ‘Production Line’ Government Healthcare

What Lies In Store For Your Parents Under ObamaCare (It Will Be Even WORSE For You!)

Democrats, Please Explain Why You Want To Inflict Americans With This Vile Health Care System?

‘Crazy Claims About Death Panels’ Sadly Not Crazy At All

The only people in America who deserve to die slow, painful deaths of medical neglect are those who voted for Obama.  But unless Republicans take over the Senate and then take the presidency away from Hillary Clinton – who wanted socialized medicine even before Obama did – we’re ALL going to suffer death by socialism.

Veterans EARNED their health care.  By SERVING in the armed forces, and by subjecting themselves to conditions and environments that no civilian would EVER willingly experience – and by submitting to conditions in which they cannot sue the government which ordered them to do what they did – they EARNED their health care.

But the VA system – because it IS socialized, because it IS a government bureaucracy, because it IS huge – is broken.

Now Obama and the Democrats demand that every single person in America receive the benefits and care that only those who SERVED ought to receive.  And now Obama and these Democrats are breaking our health care system by letting the same government that clearly is incapable of administering the Veterans Administration run the REST of the far larger health care system into the ground.

 

 

The Lost Washer, The Ruptured Tendon And The LORD Who Is God Over Both. A Story of Thanksgiving Gratitude.

This happened last week, but I think that’s close enough to call it “my Thanksgiving miracle.”

It began with my biceps tendon basically standing in front of an ObamaCare-like death panel.  I was told several weeks back that my biceps tendon had ruptured and that it was too late to save it.  Yes, I’d rather frantically called the morning after the injury, but of course given the state-of-affairs of modern medicine and the bureaucracy which owns it, by the time I actually saw the doctor, he told me it was too late.

I am a service-connected veteran with traumatic and cumulative and degenerative injuries to both knees and both shoulders.  So this isn’t a story of “that evil insurance company.”  This is THE GOVERNMENT.

The doctor told me the story of Brett Favre, who had suffered this injury during his career and had not had the reattachment surgery, and that I didn’t really need to have the tendon reattached.

Continuing with the “ObamaCare death panel” theme, the surgeon also pointedly told me that, “In Europe, they don’t even reattach those any more.”

I had tried to reason with the surgeon – who as the attending physician actually runs the ortho department at my VA hospital.  As for the Brett Favre story, I countered with the fact that Hall of Fame defensive back Ronnie Lott famously had a broken finger amputated rather than miss playing time the same way Favre elected to play with a busted tendon rather than miss playing time  – and so should average people have whatever limb on which they happen to suffer a broken bone AMPUTATED?  I hope not.  As for the “Europe” thing, I pointed out the fact that “THIS IS NOT EUROPE!”  And while my dad was too young to fight in WWII, I actually had a three uncles who fought in that war to ensure that America would NOT become Europe.

Apparently, they lost the war sixty years after they thought they’d won it, but that’s another story.

The ortho doctor acknowledged that a few years ago, they would have reattached the tendon no-questions asked (i.e., BEFORE Obama), but that things had changed quite a bit.

Mark Halperin is one of the leading journalists in America today.  He also leans well to the left.  So it was quite an admission when he acknowledged that not only did ObamaCare contain death panels, but that they are a cornerstone of ObamaCare.

Howard Dean, a former Democrat governor, a medical doctor and an expert in health care – albeit a doctrinaire liberal ideologue – has also acknowledged that, yes, the ObamaCare IPAB amounts to a “death panel.”  And so, yes:

Shorter Howard Dean: “So… yeah, Republicans were right about death panels.”

Just as they were dead right about how catastrophically awful this ObamaCare law would be.

I was stunned when the attending orthopedic surgeon said they would not reattach my tendon.  I mean, what do you mean, you don’t need to do this surgery?  I was saying, “I’m busted; FIX ME!”  I had never had anything like this happen before.

ObamaCare is all about rationing.  It is all about Marxist redistribution, acknowledges and actually BOASTS the New York Times.  It is intended to create “winners and losers.”

Milton Friedman observed that if you put the government in charge of the Sahara desert, in five years there would be a shortage of sand.  So what will necessarily happen when you put a bunch of statist bureaucrats in charge of health care?  We already know the answer.

And believe me, NOBODY wants to be a health care “loser.”  Especially because of a law that MAKES you a “loser” when you’ve never been one before out of naked, cynical political calculus.  Especially when you are service-connected by your government for the infamous “pre-existing conditions” that you can’t have taken care of anywhere else.

When I continued to object the “death panel” decision, the chief ortho doctor told me he would leave the decision to the surgeon who would be operating on me, but he didn’t see it happening or even the need for it.

Well, I was rather panicky about this.  Aside from the whole “Popeye biceps” deformity (which so far hasn’t seriously manifested itself), there’s a significant loss in strength because a tendon no longer connects your muscle to what you’re trying to lift.  As a weightlifter, it was the loss of strength that I feared more than anything else.  I didn’t want to go through a surgery only to be mediocre.

Weightlifting has been the centerpiece of my highly successful weight loss (76 lbs in 14 months without stomach “Lap-band” surgery).  If preventative care is important, if weight loss is important, just give me the tools I need to maintain that weight loss.  Because what happens to people is that they become frustrated, then they give in to a feeling of futility, and then they give up altogether.

That’s why this biceps tendon deal has been such a critical concern for me.

Well, after my appointment with that surgeon, I was rather frantically trying to figure out my next option.  And a wise Christian medical doctor friend gave me some wise counsel: to see the doctor who would be doing my surgery as quickly as possible and appeal to him (rather than start a war with the bureaucracy through hospital patient advocates, etc.).  I made an appointment.

For two weeks I angsted as I waited to see the surgeon.  Given what I had already heard from his boss, I was very fearful.  And I knew that time was tendon, because the longer you wait the more a ruptured tendon shortens and contracts.  And the story becomes, “Well, sorry, but we waited too long dithering, so now it’s too late for us to fix you.  Too bad, so sad.”

We get a picture how ObamaCare will “save” money.  By rationing and denying care to people who need it, surgeries and treatment that used to happen doesn’t any happen any longer.  And that’s great – unless the rationing axe falls upon you or one of your loved ones.

Anyway, I’m at Tuesday of last week, with the all-important appointment with my surgeon on Thursday morning.  And I’m on my daily walk as usual.

Remember, I said I was messed up in both shoulders and both knees.  To take some of the stress off my awful knees, I use a pair of canes when I go on long walks out in the desert.  Which of course torques my shoulders, doesn’t it?  But I need to walk because that’s been a major part of the 76 pounds of weight that I’ve lost over the last fourteen months.  So I’ve got a Catch-22 thing going, don’t I?

Anyway, near the end of my walk – which that day was over five miles – I noticed that one of my cane tips had ruptured rather like my biceps tendon.  I put large washers in the tip to help the rubber tips last longer, and the washer was gone somewhere out in the vastness of the desert.

Well, I’m usually able to eyeball the cane tip and see that it’s about to wear out and rupture in time to replace it.  But let’s just say that I’d been occupied with other concerns.

I could go to the hardware store and buy some washers, but I’ve always used the few that I had in my garage that matched the diameter of the cane tip.

Well, I wanted to find my washer.  Which was God-only-knew-where.  So as I set out on my walk the next day, I tried to retrace my steps as best I could and said a prayer that I could find it.

As I prayed, it popped into my head to point out to God that I wanted my biceps tendon far more than I wanted that washer (just in case He didn’t know).  But I had that moment of theological clarity strike me that God wasn’t the sort who would only grant me one request.

That Wednesday, I walked along with my nose to the ground like a bloodhound.  A mile passed, then two.  And I was entering an area where there was a lot of soft sand where the tip would have likely become covered up and I’d never see it.  To make it worse, because of the soft sand, I’d meandered through that area – and good luck trying to remember the exact same route.

I kind of gave up finding that washer at that point.

Financially, it was hardly a big deal; I could go to a hardware store and probably find an even better-fitting washer for fifteen or twenty cents at most.  But for whatever reason, I had kind of associated that lost washer with my busted biceps tendon.  So it was kind of sad to let that washer go.

It was within a few feet of giving up on finding that washer that I came upon some 9mm pistol brass.  I reload ammunition in several calibers – 9mm Parabellum being one of them – and my nephew (who would be coming out for Christmas) always loves to go shooting.  So I bent over to pick up the brass.

Somebody had popped of most of a box, so I’m furiously picking up the brass.  And I turned around and walked back up the path I had just come down as I see more brass…

… And yes, there was my washer – which I had already walked by and had not seen, and which I never would have seen had I not been looking for that 9mm brass which hadn’t even BEEN there the day before (or I would have collected it then).  The washer was dull and faded; the brass was new and shiny.  I needed the latter in order to find the former.

I immediately realized what had happened and why it had happened:

God had heard my silly prayer for that silly washer.  And God knew that in my silly heart, I had connected something I clearly didn’t need to find with something far more important to me.  And He was telling me that He had me covered, that He knew what I needed – and that He was Jehovah Jireh (the LORD who provides).

And when you’ve got that kind of a God in control, watching your back, taking care of you, why are you so anxious???

I realized that the decision whether to repair my ruptured biceps tendon wasn’t up to the doctors.  Because if God wanted me to have that tendon, it was going to be restored no matter what the doctor said; and if He didn’t want me to have it, I wasn’t going to get it reattached no matter what the surgeon tried to do.  It wasn’t my surgeon I had to convince; it was my God – the very same God who cared enough about me to allow me to find a silly washer in the middle of a desert just because for whatever silly reason it mattered to me.

It’s one thing to look at the vastness of the sky at night and see the billions of stars; it’s quite another to realize that that very same God actually gives a damn about YOU.

I’ve lost – and FOUND – stuff that was valuable and irreplaceable after desperately praying about it.

It’s an interesting thing: if you are the kind of person who doesn’t believe, the biggest answered prayer in the world won’t matter; if you are the kind of person who believes, the smallest answered prayer can seem huge.

God gives us small things to see how we’ll handle big things.  Maybe He gives us small miracles to see how we’ll handle big ones.

All I know is that I had an audience with God, Creator of heaven and earth and all the stars that fill the sky.  And He heard very little, very insignificant little me about something as tiny and irrelevant as a lost washer because He cares about me more than I will ever be able to comprehend.

When I went to that appointment with that surgeon the next morning, I had no fear, no anxiety.

I had already prepared myself during the previous two weeks with every argument I could think of for why I needed and deserved that tendon reattachment surgery.  I would submit that if a high-priced attorney had been present with me, he wouldn’t have had more arguments to muster than what I had thought up.

And what did the surgeon say when I told him I wanted that surgery?

“Sure.  We’ll try to do that for you.”

Here I was with all my arguments and I didn’t even get to use them.

There are a couple of down sides that the surgeon explained to me: because this tendon is ruptured, they’ll have to do an incision rather than doing it with the arthroscope the way they would have been if it had still been attached.  That means that they won’t be able to repair the torn rotator cuff I also have in that shoulder in the same surgery because when they scope a joint, they fill it with fluid to clear space for their instruments.  And that fluid creates a lot of swelling.  Which means that if they do the rotator cuff first, they’d create too much swelling to be able to find the biceps tendon; but if they do the incision to fix the biceps tendon, the fluid and the corresponding swelling would rupture the sutures.  He also told me that he couldn’t guarantee that the reattachment surgery would be successful because sometimes the tendon is just too damaged.

Here’s the thing: I realized that the condition of my tendon is up to God.  Just as everything else was.

I told that story to a friend who told me his own “mini-miracle” story.  He had been arrested for a DUI (bad thing) and had his little dog in the car with him.  The police had kenneled the dog and towed his car.  His sister came to pick him up, but for whatever reason had refused to take the dog.  He’d have to leave it.

Well, he wouldn’t leave his dog.  He told her he’d rather walk.  So she drove off.  And he had to walk miles across an isolated Texas highway out in the middle of nowhere.  In the heat of the desert.

He came to a point of desperation.  He and the dog were thirsty.

What happened?  In the middle of nowhere he came across a gallon of water and a five dollar bill.  The presence of the bill particularly freaked him out: because there was a wind and the bill should have blown away, but didn’t.  Who had put that there and why?  Only God knew.

But God is Jehovah Jireh.

The water helped him make it to a gas station way, way up the road, where he was able to trade his five dollars for a ride.

I don’t know what will happen, but I have a feeling and an attitude of confidence about the success of the surgery (my pre-op is January 14).

Strangely, had I just been allowed to have the surgery, rather than having to angst about just getting it, I realize that my attitude wouldn’t have been nearly so positive.  I would have been focusing on the surgery and the recovery and bemoaning the fact that the tendon had ruptured and the fact that had the doctors just told me what I’d needed to know before I’d ruptured it I would have at that time requested the reattachment surgery as opposed to waiting until it was nearly too late.  I would have been looking at all the negatives.

As it is, I am very grateful and very thankful.  I am thankful to the Veterans Administration for taking care of me.  But more importantly I am even more thankful to my God who saw me floundering around and provided for me.

Thanksgiving is about being grateful.

Gratitude is the very best and the very happiest attitude that a human being can have.  It is the attitude we should all be walking around with all the time.  But for most of us (like me) we need reminders.

I wish you all a happy and a grateful Thanksgiving Day.  I pray that you have a sense of Jehovah Jireh specially looking out for you today.

Update, February 5, 2014: Well, I had my surgery.  And a couple more divine lessons.

I now realize that my “washer” story was my audience with God.  He gave me a divine appointment because He wanted me to know a few things.

On that day, that God told me that 1) He truly does care (cf. 1 Peter 5:7); that 2) if He cares even about my stupid washer, it is obvious that He will care about something I truly care about, such as my biceps tendon surgery; and that 3) whether the surgery is successful or not has nothing to do with the doctors and ultimately everything to do with God.  Because He can do anything and if He wants me to have that tendon, I WILL HAVE THAT TENDON.

He since let me know how to turn even the result of the surgery over to Him.

On the one hand, I knew that if the surgery was successful, it would be a long recovery.  On the other hand, I learned that if the tendon was too destroyed and contracted to do the surgery, it would be a short recovery and I would be able to get back to my [relatively] normal activities very quickly.  What I didn’t want was to make the short-sighted mistake of not having the surgery because of the short-term hassles, only to then regret later that I didn’t do it.  I was [finally!] able to completely turn it over to the Lord, and give it to HIM and let HIM decide.

So I went into the surgery with the peace of Christ, which surpasses all comprehension.

I woke up and the surgeon gave me the news.  The surgery was a complete success.  Somehow – and I got the sense that this was very surprising to the surgeon – my tendon had in fact ruptured, but had somehow become hung-up on the bone, such that it was EASY to find and such that it didn’t contract the way it otherwise would have.

He did the surgery in less than HALF the time he believed it would take.

Just like the washer, that “hung-up” tendon was GOD at work.

Now all I have to do is heal up and start rehabbing.

Fearmongering Obama Holding Gun To Seniors’ Heads With Social Securty Threat. The FACT Is He Is A Lying Demagogue

The words of Barack Hussein Obama, our fearmonger-in-chief:

Obama in an interview with CBS said he couldn’t guarantee Social Security checks would be sent out on Aug. 3 if Congress did not raise the debt ceiling by Aug. 2, when the Treasury Department has said it will no longer have the money to pay all of the U.S. bills

Republican Allan West is entirely right in saying, “That’s fear mongering that’s not leadership, that’s sad and pathetic.”

Allow me to point out first of all that this fearmongering from Obama is nothing new.  Allow me to quote a Wall Street Journal article from almost immediately after Obama was sworn in as president:

“President Barack Obama has turned fearmongering into an art form. He has repeatedly raised the specter of another Great Depression. First, he did so to win votes in the November election. He has done so again recently to sway congressional votes for his stimulus package.”

Obama’s fearmongering then resulted in our undertaking a suicidal $3.27 TRILLION pork-laden “stimulus” that has massively failed to do what Obama promised it would do at a giantic cost to our children.  But he is an evil, cynical loathsome man who has experience in the fact that the lowest common denominator often wins.

Let’s move on to a demonstration of a man who is A) a liar; B) a fearmonger; and C) the worst kind of demagogue.  Let me begin by citing the Bipartisan Policy Center:

Bipartisan Policy Center: U.S. Won’t Default on Debt If Congress Fails to Raise Debt Ceiling
Posted in Weekly Standard – 8 July 2011 – No comments

With under a month left until the U.S. hits its statutory limit to borrow more money, Republicans and Democrats continue to disagree about what exactly would happen if Congress and the president fail to reach an agreement that raises the debt ceiling.

“Failure to raise the limit would precipitate a default by the United States,” wrote Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner earlier this year. No, that’s not true, say Republicans. There’s enough federal revenue to pay the interest on the debt as well as fund the troops and entitlement programs.

According to a study by the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC), Treasury could indeed avoid a debt default by prioritizing payments, but failure to raise the debt ceiling would mean deep and immediate cuts.

Which is to say that Democrats are lying and fearmongering, and Republicans are telling the truth.  But seriously what else is new???

And, with that, a piece of an article from Market Watch that provides the numbers to support what the Republicans are saying and to factually disprove what lying Obama is saying:

Q: What is a default?

A: In this case, a default would be the failure by the U.S. Treasury to make payments of principal or interest on its debt in a timely manner.

Q: In a given month how much does the Treasury owe as interest on its debt?

A: Roughly about $15–20 billion (more on this in a moment).

Q: How much revenue does the Treasury take in on average in a month?

A: Roughly about $200 billion.

Q: Are you saying the Treasury could pay interest on its debt 10 times over (or more) from monthly income?

A: Yes.  Therefore the likelihood of not paying interest on its debt is zero.

Q: But, what about redeeming bonds that come due?

A: As bonds come due, the Treasury would again use monthly income to pay them off. This would lower the debt owed beneath the so-called debt ceiling.  Then, the Treasury could turn around and issue debt in that amount up to the debt ceiling.

Q: Why then do Treasury Secretary Geithner and others in government make such apocalyptic statement about the horrors of default.

A: I’m afraid Secretary Geithner and others in government are doing the moral equivalent of yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater and they are doing so for political reasons rather than financial reasons.  They simply do not want any interruptions in the bloated spending underway in Washington and they want to scare Americans into thinking the end of the world is nigh unless the gravy train keeps chugging along.

Math is hard for politicians

Now, let’s do the math to flesh out some of these points.  I know that for many politicians and pundits math is hard, but I’ll try to make it as simple as possible. If we do not raise the debt ceiling by August 2nd, we will not default on Treasury obligations.  Nor, will we have trouble making Social Security payments.  However, there would be a big drop — roughly 44% — in government spending because that percentage represents the difference between government revenues which would be about $200 billion for the full month of August and $172 billion for August if we start counting after the first week when the deadline hits.  Spending is slated to be over $300 billion that month.

Here are the numbers from an excellent and highly detailed study by the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) quoted in this piece [emphasis added]:

…The BPC study found that the United States is likely to hit the debt limit sometime between August 2 and August 9. “It’s a 44 percent overnight cut in federal spending” if Congress hits the debt limit, [BPC’s Jay] Powell said. The BPC study projects there will be $172 billion in federal revenues in August and $307 billion in authorized expenditures. That means there’s enough money to pay for, say, interest on the debt ($29 billion), Social Security ($49.2 billion), Medicare and Medicaid ($50 billion), active duty troop pay ($2.9 billion), veterans affairs programs ($2.9 billion).

That leaves you with about $39 billion to fund (or not fund) the following:

Defense vendors ($31.7 billion)

IRS refunds ($3.9 billion)

Food stamps and welfare ($9.3 billion)

Unemployment insurance benefits ($12.8 billion)

Department of Education ($20.2 billion)

Housing and Urban Development ($6.7 billion)

Other spending, such as Departments of Justice, Labor, Commerce, EPA, HHS ($73.6 billion)

The decision to prioritize payments would fall on the Treasury department, and Powell points out it would be chaotic picking and choosing who gets paid (in full or partially) and who doesn’t…

No doubt picking and choosing who gets paid and who doesn’t would be chaotic.  And, lots of programs would not get their funding and that would lead to plenty of screaming.  Nonetheless, it should be clear from this exactly how much we are spending in excess of government revenues.  And, that could and should lead to a sober assessment of what government can and cannot do.

We can easily make all of our debt payments (both interest and principal), our Social Security payments, our contributions to Medicare and Medicaid, our payments to our active duty soldiers and provide funding to the VA system.  With room to spare.  Barack Obama and Timothy Geithner (a lying weasel who didn’t pay his own taxes) are lying weasels.

They are treacherous and un-American.  They are the very worst kind of cockroaches.  They represent everything that is wrong with this country’s political system.  What Obama is doing is low and loathsome beneath contemptible.  The only way that we wouldn’t send out Social Security checks is if Obama decides to fund demonic ACORN instead of sending out those checks (see here and then see here and here).  And the scumbag might actually do that because he’s simply that wicked and depraved and uncaring about the American people or their suffering.

Obama – the liar, the demagogue, the fearmonger – falsely demonized Republicans by claiming that they were using the debt ceiling as a gun to the American people’s heads.  HE’S THE ONE USING THIS ISSUE LIKE A GUN.

This is what happens in God damn America.

The beast is coming.  And with Obama’s help imploding America, he is coming soon.

“… So We’re Going To Let You Die.” Vote Deathocrat, Vote Death Panels

Verum Serum sets up the hypocrisy of the Democrats:

Robert Reich, the former Secretary of Labor under Clinton and more recently an Obama economic adviser, has been all over the media lately shilling for ObamaCare. The public option is no more dangerous than a box of puppies according to this professionally produced video featuring Reich. (I won’t embed it but it’s worth a quick watch.) The real injustice, according to Reich, is that political operatives like us are trying to “confuse and scare” people about change.

So perhaps he can explain for us his comments in the video below. Reich is speaking at a Colloquium on Political Science at UC Berkeley on Sept. 26, 2007. No other set-up is necessary – watch:

Listen to the words of Robert Reich:

[Youtube link]

Here’s a transcript of the most relevant remarks of Robert “Third” Reich:

I’ll actually give you a speech made up entirely, almost on the spur of the moment, of what a candidate for president would say if that candidate did not care about becoming president. In other words, this is what the truth is and a candidate will never say, but what a candidate should say if we were in the kind of democracy where citizens were honored in terms of their practice of citizenship and they were educated in terms of what the issues were and they could separate myth from reality in terms of what candidates would tell them:

“Thank you so much for coming this afternoon. I’m so glad to see you and I would like to be president. Let me tell you a few things on health care. Look, we have the only health care system in the world that is designed to avoid sick people. And that’s true and what I’m going to do is that I am going try to reorganize it to be more amenable to treating sick people but that means you,  particularly you young people, particularly you young healthy people…you’re going to have to pay more.

“Thank you.  And by the way, we’re going to have to, if you’re very old, we’re not going to give you all that technology and all those drugs for the last couple of years of your life to keep you maybe going for another couple of months. It’s too expensive…so we’re going to let you die.”

Pay more, old people die.  Check, and check.  Sounds like exactly what any big government fascist would want.

“Third” Reich isn’t the only one pointing out this actually quite obvious central tenet of the Democrats’ health plan.  Obama has appointed at least two other “experts” to advise him on medical issues.  Here’s White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s brother, Ezekiel Emanuel, whom Obama appointed as OMB health policy adviser in addition to being picked to serve on the Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research:

“When implemented, the Complete Lives system produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most substantial chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated… The Complete Lives system justifies preference to younger people because of priority to the worst-off rather than instrumental value.”

“Attenuated” means, “to make thin; to weaken or reduce in force, intensity, effect, quantity, or value.”  Attenuated care would be reduced or lessened care.  Dare I say it, in this context it clearly means, “rationed care.”

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel included a chart with his work (available here), which shows how he wants to allocate medical resources under a government plan:

When you’re very young, or when you start reaching your 50s and 60s, you start receiving less and less priority.

Then there’s Cass Sunstein, Barack Obama’s Regulatory Czar, who wrote in the Columbia Law Review in January 2004:

“I urge that the government should indeed focus on life-years rather than lives. A program that saves young people produces more welfare than one that saves old people.”

Barack Obama’s Regulatory Czar explains:

“If a program would prevent fifty deaths of people who are twenty, should it be treated the same way as a program that would prevent fifty deaths of people who are seventy? Other things being equal, a program that protects young people seems far better than one that protects old people, because it delivers greater benefits.”

There’s a great deal more about Obama’s own advisers’ plans here.

Which very much jives with what Obama himself told a woman concerning her mother:

“At least we can let doctors know — and your mom know — that you know what, maybe this isn’t going to help. Maybe you’re better off, uhh, not having the surgery, but, uhh, taking the painkiller.”

We can sum it up quite nicely with the words of Obama’s former senior economic adviser: “So we’re going to let you die.”

Sarah Palin just cut right to the chase back when she wrote:

The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. 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.

And for all the hell that the servants of hell have unleashed on her for her comment, she was 100% correct.

The entire plan is evil:

And, yeah, there really are things that can very legitimately be called “death panels.”  Take “The Death Book for Veterans” – which George Bush banned and Barack Obama demanded be reinstated – that required veterans to consider life and death from a bleak perspective and consider euthanasia to avoid being a burden.  My article on that discovered some dishonest federal government shenanigans when that story was exposed as the VA sought to cover up the role of the Hemlock Society.

We’re seeing the genesis of a genuine holocaust beginning to emerge.  The Democrats’ plan will force health insurers to cover everyone regardless of whether they have a pre-existing condition, regardless of whether they honestly represented themselves when they obtained their insurance, and regardless of whether they can even pay for their coverage.  And the system the Democrats are creating completely depends on young, healthy people who have historically not bought medical coverage.  You can’t add massively to the costs of providing care if you don’t have at least an equally massive inflow of dollars coming in.  If young people who have never bought medical coverage before don’t buy coverage in huge numbers, we will very quickly face critical shortages, and massive rationing of care – particularly to the elderly who have less value under the Democrats’ plan – will ensue.

And I don’t mean just pay the “individual mandate” fines – which have been watered down significantly to make the Democrats’ plan more palatable – because they don’t create enough revenue.  I mean if they don’t purchase health care in huge numbers, we will see serious shortages, rationing, and death by medical neglect.

Harry Reid made a staggering admission while trying to prevent Democrat-special-interest anathema tort reform.  He said:

HARRY REID: “He talked about CBO saying that there would be $54 billion saved each year if we put caps on medical malpractice and put some restrictions — tort reform — $54 billion. Sounds like a lot of money, doesnt it, Mr. President? The answer is yes. But remember, were talking about $2 trillion, $54 billion compared to $2 trillion. You can do the math. We can all do the math. Its a very small percent.”

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The Democrats’ health plan will be FAR more costly than any estimates yet offered.  The government ALWAYS underestimates its cost for its programs.  Medicare cost nine times more than was estimated, for example.

And let me point out that figures such as Robert Reich, Ezekiel Emanuel, and Cass Sunstein are proponents of the Democrats’ system and believe it will go well – AND THEY ARE STILL TELLING US THAT A CENTRAL PART OF THE SYSTEM WILL BE TO ALLOW ELDERLY PEOPLE TO DIE.

Democrat Rep. Alan Grayson “warned” Americans that “Republicans want you to die quickly” during a floor speech in the House of Representatives.  But he is a liar.  It is not Republicans who are literally out talking about letting people die, but Democrats.

Please come to your senses and start denouncing the Deathocrats’ Death Panel bill.

Obama’s VA ‘Death Book’ And Your Future Health Care

No death panels?

Recently we learned that Barack Obama has re-instituted the “Death Books” that President Bush banned from being used by the Veterans Administration.

On page 21 of the VA book, “Your Life, Your Choices,” you get to answer questions pertaining to the issue: “What makes my life worth living?” And guilt-inducing scenarios to consider such as,“I can no longer contribute to my family’s well being,” and “I am a severe financial burden on my family” to “guide” one to come to the conclusion, life is “not worth living.”

On Sunday’s “Fox News Sunday with Chri Wallace,” Jim Towey – who broke the story to the public in a Wall Street Journal article entitled, “The Death Book for Veterans” – made this statement:

“The 2007 edition said go to Compassion Choices. That’s the Hemlock Society. The 1997 version referred you to an organization that was the American Euthanasia Society. I think the bias of the document’s clear. Why would Americans be given such a poor document, a poor planning tool, on a subject so important?”

What is frankly just as frightening as the Veterans Administration trying to steer veterans toward a renamed version of the Hemlock Society is the fact that they’ve clearly altered the page with gibberish in a clearly last-second attempt to cover-up what they were doing.

Here’s a printscreen of the relevant PDF page (52) that I downloaded on Monday, August 25:

I’m no investigative reporter, but when I tried to learn what http://www.choices.org was under the heading, “Advance directives,” I went to the site – and discovered that it was geared toward providing children with education resources so they wouldn’t drop out of school.  It had nothing whatsoever to do with end-of-life decisions.  And when I called 1-800-989-9155, I discovered that it was Loesche America – an engineering and construction firm.

In other words, it was a hastily orchestrated scam perpetuated by government employees to hide the truth from the American people.  That should scare you.

Why did the VA scrub their website? I would argue that they did so because someone had a guilty conscience. Democrats KNOW this stuff is evil; and they KNOW that the American people would reject them if they knew the truth about what Democrats are trying to do.

And what is that truth?  Let me just use the phrase that Sarah Palin was so demonized for using: “death panel.”