The Respectfully Republican Conversation

I was watching CNN when Harry Reid, the three traitors, and other dems talked to the press.  I was so mad  when Harry said that he wanted to thank the three republicans...they loved America and thanked them for their patriotism.  That means the rest of the repbulicans hate American and were not patriotic.  I wish he and Pelosi would have an affair!

Take the poll at LouDobbs.com

Schumer thinks we don't care about the tiny pork in this package.  TINY PORK? 

There's a place you can click on where you can sign a petition.  What good it will do?  I don't know.  They're not interested in listening to us.

http://americansforprosperity.org/?q=healthcare

Health Care Rationing and the Invasion of Your Privacy: It's in the "Stimulus Package"

The economic costs of the so-called "stimulus package" are now well known, and taxpayers are fighting back hard against the bill's dangerous spending and debt.

But, beyond the bill's reckless trillion-dollar price tag are some even greater threats to Americans.

In fact, the biggest costs of this scheme will be measured not in dollars and cents, but in life and death.

What does the so-called "stimulus package" mean for your health care? Hidden in the dark recesses of this monstrous spending bill are the first steps towards full-on health care socialism:

• Government rationing of your health care
• Government ownership and control of your medical records

Under the bureaucratic jargon of "Comparative Effectiveness Review" the package heavily funds the first steps towards the government-mandated rationing of health care and tramples your right to medical privacy. (Our own AFP senior fellow, Dr. Larry Hunter, was the first to blow the whistle on this. His column about it is here.)

First, the federal government would establish a massive new database to capture the full medical records of every American.

Then, federal bureaucrats will careful read and analyze all of your most private medical information as they see fit, and use that information to grant or deny treatment to Americans.

This new program would empower federal bureaucrats to decide, based on elaborate mathematic equations, which procedures and treatment are worthwhile for you. If you are old, sick, or have conditions that are expensive to treat, the government can deny you treatment - even if you can afford to pay for it.

Doctors and hospitals that don't participate in this new government health care scheme will face penalties, and eventually everyone will be forced into the system - whether your insurance is public or private.

You don't have to take our word for it-- Betsy McCaughey lays it all out in a chilling column on Bloomberg that quotes everything directly from the bill.

Hiding a government takeover of health care in the stimulus bill is dishonest.

When Americans had an open national debate on this issue in the 1990s, they decisively rejected socialized, government-run and -rationed care.

With all the real challenges Americans face when it comes to health care, we deserve an open and honest debate. But if this so-called "stimulus" becomes law, that discussion will be over before it even starts. You and I won't even have a chance to fight back.

But we can fight back today!

Surprisingly, many U.S. Senators and members of Congress have no idea that these outrageous health care provisions are even in the bill. Sign the petition!

Call your elected officials today and say "NO HEALTH CARE RATIONING! NO STIMULUS!"

"Surprisingly, many U.S. Senators and members of Congress have no idea that these outrageous health care provisions are even in the bill"

Which reinforces what I said earlier, not one living soul read that bill in its entirety before they voted on it.  We pay these people?  Fire them all!

Pelosi and Reid.............ewwwwwwwwwwww.............Shokk (there is an image I didn't need)

Me thinks Felicia or Amy is really acheing...... it's definitely an alter and I don't care ... at least it's not pm'ing me with nasty words this time.

Rosemary, I agree.  Every last person in Congress needs to go.  If the media is all over it, why aren't they?  Are their staff that stupid?  It takes the media to find this stuff! I mean, I can understand why they don't want to read the darn thing...it's BORING!  But to hell with billions of dollars being spent on crap that's certainly NOT necessary.  Just heard there was millions put in there for Pelosi for the wetlands in her state.    And to heck with the feds telling us what our docs need to NOT do.

Rocky, ROFLMAO!!!!$$$$!!!!! 

Shokk, I'm shocked that you are shocked at the image of Pelosi and Reid.  They're perfect for each other.  She and her botox smiling face and he and his wimpy voice.

Sherri, don't give away secrets.  Some people need to get out of their skin into some imaginary place.  Can you blame them.  After all, some may be seeing that the ONE cannot fix everything.  Some may need a place to hide.

Oh, and Rock, you are right. My post was NOT negative.  It was informative.  Just like the time I put a link for Wintley Phipps when he sang Amazing Grace at the National Prayer thing..I thought it was absolutely beautiful..heard him sing it before...heard him tell the history of the song.  My post was portrayed to be negative.  Never understood why.

Well, I'm up early in the AM because I fell to sleep on the couch.  Now I'm wide awake!  Geez!

I hope all of you are sleeping tight and the bed bugs aren't biting (you too IBC)

IBC, my dd could swing higher than Rock.  She loves to swing.  I love the song, SWANGING! LOL  Many years ago two of my brothers were in a band together.  We visited San Antonio we went to the little bar (GASP!!) to hear them do their thing, dance and have fun.  When they got wind  (NOT GAS!) that we liked SWANGING they'd dedicate it to us.  How very sweet.

Then you're really missing out! 

Shirley - what the heck are you doing up so late?...insomnia...like me!

I'm off to bed.  It's time to get up..LOL

Some people just do not want to believe that health care can be rationed.  I am hoping that other people come here to read..perhaps they do not post.  This is another article on "Comparative Effectiveness Research."  Too many people do not know what's in this plan.  It's important for the "word" to get out. 

Some people want to stick their heads in the sand and not believe such a thing could happen here in this country.  The language in this bill is "deceitful."  It has been snuck in here as we have just recently found out.  Some people refuse to believe the ONE is capable of turning this country into a socialistic country. 

The more we keep this subject going, hopefully, the more people will read and start questioning the motive.

http://townhall.com/Common/PrintPage.aspx?g=64f38446-2fe8-4007-856b-6100d38b0796&t=c  

Rationing Healthcare Creates Jobs?
John Shadegg
Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Every day Americans learn about another outrageous, irrelevant spending provision in Democrats' so-called stimulus bill.

There's money for global warming. There's money for sex education. There's money for Amtrak. There's money for unions. There's money to buy new cars and office space for bureaucrats. They're even doing golf course renovations. Who knows, maybe they'll even fix-up my rain gutter.

But here's the bottom line: this bill has everything except economic stimulus. It's just one big, sordid payback for Democrat special interests.

Congress has now become the make-a-wish foundation for greedy politicians.

And unfortunately, it gets much worse. Not only is the bill loaded with pork that will burden, rather than spur, the economy, but it also contains a dangerous - and overlooked - provision to begin handing over Americans' healthcare freedom to bureaucrats.

It's called "Comparative Effectiveness Research." While it sounds innocuous, the worst big-government programs always do. In short, comparative effectiveness research is a tool for bureaucrats take your health care decisions away from you and your doctor. Washington Liberals plan to use this "research" to determine which medical treatments are, or are not, ‘cost-effective,' as they determine.

Just read the words from the House Appropriations Committee's own report on the stimulus regarding this provision: "Those items, procedures, and interventions... that are found to be less effective and in some cases, more expensive, will no longer be prescribed." In reaction, 63 patient advocacy groups including the AIDS Institute, the Alzheimer's Foundation of America, and the American Association for Cancer Research, have written a letter to Congress, expressing their concerns. They explained that this provision could lead to "restrictions on patients' access to treatments and physicians' and other providers' ability to deliver care that best meets the needs of the individual patient."

A federal health care board proposed and envisioned by several leading Democrats will result in comparative effectiveness research being used to ration health care in America. Rather than patients and doctors making decisions about what treatments or drugs make sense for you and your loved ones, a federal health care board will control which health care options are available.

Using "comparative effectiveness," countries which already have government-run healthcare deny patients life-saving medical treatment. It's been used, for instance, by the UK's National Center for Health and Clinical Excellence to repeatedly denying breakthrough drugs to citizens suffering with breast cancer, Alzheimer's, and multiple sclerosis.

Consider the case of UK resident George Robinson, a lung cancer patient who died while waiting for the life-extending drug Tarceva. The National Center for Health and Clinical Excellence has recently deemed the drug to not be cost-effective. And now, 2,000 lung cancer patients may soon face Robinson's fate.

Government-run healthcare, which rations care to hold down cost, is a menace to free people everywhere. There are many thousands who would be alive today but for the monstrous myth that nationalized medicine works. And Comparative Effectiveness Research - shamelessly concealed in the stimulus bill - marches America toward that dreaded future when our most private medical decisions are made by far-off elites in Washington, D.C.

That day is now closer than ever. Recall that Tom Daschle - a leading force for government-run healthcare - nearly became Director of Health and Human Services. We dodged a bullet with Daschle, but the fight against government control of healthcare has only begun.

And in that fight, we must remember that freedom is as precious as it is vulnerable. It takes constant vigilance to preserve. But when taken for only a short time it may take generations to return. For the sake of our children, and theirs after, we must defend this basic freedom. We must not let history record that it was lost the day we were standing watch.

Don't you girls ever sleep? I am going to have to send you all  a bottle of melatonin.

Hey girls, I have a favor to ask. Would you please stop reading the other thread? I really do not want to see the threads shut down and  I think we need to let them have their say, even if we do not agree with it, and they should let us have ours. Let's please stick to the subject here. We all need to be big girls. Remember what we don't know won't hurt us and all those other things we learned in grade school.

Thanks!

On the health care parts,  no I don't think the government should be dictating to our doctors about who can get what treatment.  We already have insurance companies doing that.  But, I hope they can fix that part because I do agree with the other health care parts about helping to pay COBRA for those who lost their jobs, extending how long someone can get COBRA.  I also think everyone should have access to healthcare.  While there are pro's and con's (invasion of privacy issues) with an electronic medical record, I really think this is coming and the pro's outweight the cons.  Really, if the government wants your health information now, do you really think they can't get it? 

I am concerned about the rationing of medical care though.  Today, its old people who should 'accept their lot' according to Daschle, tomorrow its down syndrome babies, autistic children, etc.  Where will it stop?  Who's right is it to determine the worth of a life?  Based on this criteria, many people in the past, who overcame overwhelming odds and made great contributions to society, would never have survived childhood.  Does anyone remember Helen Keller?  The gentleman who played 'Corky' on a TV series?  Should we extend this to people with MS or Parkinson's since there is no cure for this?  Its a very scary and slippery slope or should I say 'precipice' we are looking at.

I did nothing wrong.  Only posted information and asked not to be called negative.  I don't get it.  Read my post over there.

Give me a freakin break:

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Pelosi's mouse slated for $30M slice of cheese

S.A. Miller (Contact)

UPDATED:

Talk about a pet project. A tiny mouse with the longtime backing of a political giant may soon reap the benefits of the economic-stimulus package.

Lawmakers and administration officials divulged Wednesday that the $789 billion economic stimulus bill being finalized behind closed doors in Congress includes $30 million for wetlands restoration that the Obama administration intends to spend in the San Francisco Bay Area to protect, among other things, the endangered salt marsh harvest mouse.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi represents the city of San Francisco and has previously championed preserving the mouse's habitat in the Bay Area.

The revelation immediately became a political football, as Republicans accused Democrats of reneging on a promise to keep so-called earmarks that fund lawmakers' favorite projects out of the legislation. Democrats, including Mrs. Pelosi, countered that the accusations were fabricated.

See related story: Deal reached on historic stimulus

Politics aside, the episode demonstrates that no matter how hard lawmakers argue that they technically lived up to their pledge to keep specific projects from being listed in the bill, there is little stopping the federal money from going to those projects after the legislation passes and federal and state agencies begin deciding where to spend their newfound dollars.

Programs for sexually transmitted diseases, smoking prevention, a clean-burning power plant and a computer center also appear ready to get infusions of money once the bill becomes law, congressional offices told The Washington Times.

"One of the proudest boasts of Democrats supporting their trillion-dollar spending plan is that it doesn't contain earmarks. But it seems like powerful Democrats will still find a way to bring home the bacon," said a frustrated Michael Steel, spokesman for House Minority Leader John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican, who took direct aim at the mouse.

"This certainly doesn't sound like it will create or save American jobs," Mr. Steel said. "So can Speaker Pelosi explain exactly how we will improve the American economy by helping the adorable little" critter?

A spokesman for Mrs. Pelosi said Republicans "fabricated" the claim.

"The speaker nor her staff have had any involvement in this initiative. This is yet another contrived partisan attack," Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill said. "Restoration is key to economic activity, including farming, fisheries, recreation and clean water."

Republican lawmakers said they learned of the marsh money when asking about how various agencies plan to spend stimulus money. The vitality of the mouse has been an issue for Mrs. Pelosi and other California Democrats since the early 1990s.

President Obama boasts that the stimulus plan contains no earmarks because Congress technically did not use the earmark process for lawmakers to request and drop in specific spending items. Congressional leaders were putting the finishing touches on a $789 billion final version of the bill Wednesday night. It was not clear how many of the programs criticized by Republicans remained in the package.

Some of those items that Republicans are calling earmarks include $200 million for a clean-burning power plant in Mattoon, Ill., and $750 million for the National Computer Center and $500 million for the National Institutes of Health offices, both located in Maryland.

Other spending questioned by Republicans -- but not considered on the chopping block -- are $275 million for flood prevention, $200 million for public computer centers at community colleges and libraries, and $650 million for the digital TV converter-box coupons.

The list goes on: $1 billion for administrative costs and construction of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration office buildings, $100 million for constructing U.S. Marshals office buildings, and $1.3 billion for NASA, including $450 million tagged for science.

Then there is the $300 million for hybrid and electric cars for the federal government. The funding includes golf carts for federal workers.