Sarah Palin: Completely bat****

[KrazyHorse]

I don't think twice is enough for that, Jon.

He's like one of those premeds who has some formulas and doesn't know how to do anything other than plug **** into them with nothing to guide him...

[Drake Tungsten]

But most of us live closer to true "wilderness" than they do.

No ****. 95% of your country is like an episode of "Survivorman"...

[KrazyHorse]

Survivorman

That ***** Man vs. Wild faker

[Drake Tungsten]

They both kind of suck. Bear Grylls is a huge faker, but Survivorman is boring (obviously, as he's a Canadian) and teaches you **** no one in a real country would ever need to know. I'm never going to crash my bush plane onto a frozen lake in a Canadian winter...

[KrazyHorse]

Survivorman is the guy I want next to me when my plane does crash into the Arctic in winter.

If Bear Grylls was beside me I would kill and eat him before he got the chance to suggest that we do something stupid like eat caterpillars.

[Ramo]

[Q=Ramo;5662600]Dear lord, the 'tartitude here is epic.

1. There is NO single payer in any of the pieces of legislation that might be passed. [/Q] Numerous Representatives, Senators and Mr. Pres himself have all stated that single payer is their goal, and whatever they pass will be an incremental application of that goal. The various drafts of the bill have included Procrustean means of virtually eliminating private insurance. Please take your head out of your nether orifice and smell the coffee.

2. The person in charge of the federal administration of health care is a gal. Her name is Kathleen Sebelius. The person in charge of getting health care through Congress is also a gal. Her name is Nancy-Ann DeParle. Zeke Emanuel is one of many advisers at the White House.

OK, I over-spoke his importance. Zeke is only an advisor to the Pres who says single payer is his goal. He advocates single-payer and portends a Malthusian "solution" to the economics of rationing and artificial scarcity of supply induced by single-payer.

3. Nowhere did Emanuel say anything about cutting services to downs syndrome kids. Money isn't infinite. Responsible people like Emanuel are interested in coming up with a fair and equitable way to distribute resources.

How 'bout leaving the market to find a way to meet the needs rather than trying to control the resources by command? Then he can use his great intellect to make sure the weakest members of society, like the Downs kids and the elderly, don't get left out. Instead he thinks he and other like himself are smart enough to control from afar how we spend our healthcare money. Such hubris is never rewarded.

Jesus, I don't have the patience for this. At least Ben has a redeeming quality in being amiable. Have fun with your little paranoid fantasy.

[Jon Miller]

http://www.rwjf.org/files/research/costoffailure20090529.pdf

JM

[Ben Kenobi]

Ben, even in its current "fixed" state, it's pretty bad.

Then fix it. I'm really getting tired of ******* saying it's wrong without fixing it.

[Ramo]

Ben. You need to make a couple reasonable assumptions. Then you need to write F = ma. Then you need exploit conservation of angular momentum (due to the rotational symmetry of a central force). This really is not difficult.

[Solomwi]

Then fix it. I'm really getting tired of ******* saying it's wrong without fixing it.

I'm not here to fix your ****ups. Besides, it's more entertaining to watch you spin in circles trying to figure out where you went wrong.

[Ben Kenobi]

Damn me for wanting to get it right.

[Asher]

Damn me for wanting to get it right.

If God wanted you to do physics, he would've made you smart.

Stick to what you know. I'll let you know when anyone can find out what that is.

[Lorizael]

You probably haven't seen my last post on this, but this is the last warning for this subject. People wishing to harp on BK's intelligence instead of productively discussing the topic - and this includes BK himself - need to find something else to talk about.

[Asher]

You probably haven't seen my last post on this, but this is the last warning for this subject. People wishing to harp on BK's intelligence instead of productively discussing the topic - and this includes BK himself - need to find something else to talk about.

You are fighting a war you can never win. Ben is Apolyton's Vietnam. Pull out, pull out, pull out...

Also, note the topic of the thread. Discussing the sanity and other factors of her supporters is fair game.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Krauthammer as usual nails it

The Truth About Death Counseling

By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, August 21, 2009

Let's see if we can have a reasoned discussion about end-of-life counseling.

We might start by asking Sarah Palin to leave the room. I've got nothing against her. She's a remarkable political talent. But there are no "death panels" in the Democratic health-care bills, and to say that there are is to debase the debate.

We also have to tell the defenders of the notorious Section 1233 of H.R. 3200 that it is not quite as benign as they pretend. To offer government reimbursement to any doctor who gives end-of-life counseling -- whether or not the patient asked for it -- is to create an incentive for such a chat.

What do you think such a chat would be like? Do you think the doctor will go on and on about the fantastic new million-dollar high-tech gizmo that can prolong the patient's otherwise hopeless condition for another six months? Or do you think he's going to talk about -- as the bill specifically spells out -- hospice care and palliative care and other ways of letting go of life?

No, say the defenders. It's just that we want the doctors to talk to you about putting in place a living will and other such instruments. Really? Then consider the actual efficacy of a living will. When you are old, infirm and lying in the ICU with pseudomonas pneumonia and deciding whether to (a) go through the long antibiotic treatment or (b) allow what used to be called "the old man's friend" to take you away, the doctor will ask you at that time what you want for yourself -- no matter what piece of paper you signed five years earlier.

You are told constantly how very important it is to write your living will years in advance. But the relevant question is what you desire at the end -- when facing death -- not what you felt sometime in the past when you were hale and hearty and sitting in your lawyer's office barely able to contemplate a life of pain and diminishment.

Well, as pain and diminishment enter your life as you age, your calculations change and your tolerance for suffering increases. In the ICU, you might have a new way of looking at things.

My own living will, which I have always considered more a literary than a legal document, basically says: "I've had some good innings, thank you. If I have anything so much as a hangnail, pull the plug." I've never taken it terribly seriously because unless I'm comatose or demented, they're going to ask me at the time whether or not I want to be resuscitated if I go into cardiac arrest. The paper I signed years ago will mean nothing.


And if I'm totally out of it, my family will decide, with little or no reference to my living will. Why? I'll give you an example. When my father was dying, my mother and brother and I had to decide how much treatment to pursue. What was a better way to ascertain my father's wishes: What he checked off on a form one fine summer's day years before being stricken; or what we, who had known him intimately for decades, thought he would want? The answer is obvious.

Except for the demented orphan, the living will is quite beside the point. The one time it really is essential is if you think your fractious family will be only too happy to hasten your demise to get your money. That's what the law is good at -- protecting you from murder and theft. But that is a far cry from assuring a peaceful and willed death, which is what most people imagine living wills are about.

So why get Medicare to pay the doctor to do the counseling? Because we know that if this white-coated authority whose chosen vocation is curing and healing is the one opening your mind to hospice and palliative care, we've nudged you ever so slightly toward letting go.

It's not an outrage. It's surely not a death panel. But it is subtle pressure applied by society through your doctor. And when you include it in a health-care reform whose major objective is to bend the cost curve downward, you have to be a fool or a knave to deny that it's intended to gently point the patient in a certain direction, toward the corner of the sickroom where stands a ghostly figure, scythe in hand, offering release.

So to paraphrase no death panels but sure as shootin' an intent to psychologically pressure old fogies by virtue of an authority figure.