JMHO Loc: Utah

Last week, esteemed doctor and one of our ObamaCare Architect Overlords penned a column for the Atlantic that should win a Pulitzer Prize for passive-aggressive shaming. Although Emanuel claims that *he* doesn't want to live past the age of 75, the article itself could have been a listicle titled, "Top 15 Reasons No One Over 75 Should Receive Healthcare."

Emanuel even includes a monstrous but brightly colored graph that is meant to tell anyone over 75 that their "last contribution" to society likely occurred more than a decade ago.

Good God.

The phrase "the banality of evil" gets bandied about a lot. Emanuel's column, which in reality is a public service announcement meant to begin a debate about the way in which we prioritize healthcare, takes the prize in that department.

And yes, Emanuel's article is an act of evil, written by a soulless bureaucrat with no respect or compassion for the individual. Emanuel's only concern is for the collective, the State. And he is exactly the kind of "medical professional" many feared would grab hold of our healthcare system if the Federal government got their hands on it -- which it now has.

Thanks Obama!

Leftists like Emanuel don’t see human life as anything more than utilitarian. They see nothing special or unique or inviolable about the Individual or life itself. For them, creating an orderly and structured Utopia takes precedent over the value and rights of the Individual. Abortion is a perfect example. Unwanted children mess up society. Unborn children with handicaps are imperfect and have no place in a society striving for perfection. So they are stripped of their rights, and as a result, by the millions, we break their spines and suck out their brains and call it "choice."

Not everyone on the Left is as coldly robotic as Emanuel, but there's a strain of this thinking throughout the Democrat Party; the idea that individual liberty and the rights of the individual must be subjugated by the need to perfect society and the future. Fat-shaming is a perfect example. Instead of leaving people alone to live life how they want, the Left is shaming them with the busybody argument that their obesity is everyone's business because it costs society money through increased health care costs.

And now Emanuel is hoping to use the Fed's grab of our healthcare system to create policies that will more quickly rid society of those "leeches and takers" you and I call Mom, Dad, Grandpa and Grandma.

Emanuel's method is brilliantly sinister. Using figures and science and facts, he's just sayin'!

I've broke Emanuel's madness down into a handy listicle and highlighted the real jaw-droppers:

1. But over recent decades, increases in longevity seem to have been accompanied by increases in disability—not decreases.

2. My father illustrates the situation well. About a decade ago, just shy of his 77th birthday, he began having pain in his abdomen. Like every good doctor, he kept denying that it was anything important. But after three weeks with no improvement, he was persuaded to see his physician. He had in fact had a heart attack, which led to a cardiac catheterization and ultimately a bypass. Since then, he has not been the same.

3. The bad news is that many of the roughly 6.8 million Americans who have survived a stroke suffer from paralysis or an inability to speak.

4. So American immortals may live longer than their parents, but they are likely to be more incapacitated. Does that sound very desirable? Not to me.

5. Half of people 80 and older with functional limitations. A third of people 85 and older with Alzheimer’s. That still leaves many, many elderly people who have escaped physical and mental disability. If we are among the lucky ones, then why stop at 75? Why not live as long as possible?

6. Even if we aren’t demented, our mental functioning deteriorates as we grow older. Age-associated declines in mental-processing speed, working and long-term memory, and problem-solving are well established.

7. Conversely, distractibility increases. We cannot focus and stay with a project as well as we could when we were young. As we move slower with age, we also think slower.

8. It is not just mental slowing. We literally lose our creativity.

9. Living parents also occupy the role of head of the family. They make it hard for grown children to become the patriarch or matriarch.

10. When parents routinely live to 95, children must caretake into their own retirement. That doesn’t leave them much time on their own—and it is all old age.

11. How do we want to be remembered by our children and grandchildren? … We want to be remembered as independent, not experienced as burdens.

12. But even if we manage not to become burdens to them, our shadowing them until their old age is also a loss. And leaving them—and our grandchildren—with memories framed not by our vivacity but by our frailty is the ultimate tragedy.

13. This means colonoscopies and other cancer-screening tests are out—and before 75. If I were diagnosed with cancer now, at 57, I would probably be treated, unless the prognosis was very poor. But 65 will be my last colonoscopy.

14. After 75, if I develop cancer, I will refuse treatment. Similarly, no cardiac stress test. No pacemaker and certainly no implantable defibrillator. No heart-valve replacement or bypass surgery. If I develop emphysema or some similar disease that involves frequent exacerbations that would, normally, land me in the hospital, I will accept treatment to ameliorate the discomfort caused by the feeling of suffocation, but will refuse to be hauled off.

15. Flu shots are out.

This is what decent people would call the mission statement of a death cult.

When you look at society as a whole, instead of people as individuals, wiping out everyone over 75 looks like a great idea. Moreover, so does aborting unwanted pregnancies and "imperfect" fetuses.

Using a slide rule, all kinds of clinical madness sounds smart, even compassionate; The Greater Good, and all that.

What's so unsettling is that Emanuel and his ilk aren't trying to save money or improve quality of life. The endgame with ObamaCare has nothing to do with that. ObamaCare is the vehicle and this "cost-saving" propaganda is nothing more than the roadmap to crafting the Left's twisted version of Utopia.

My dad just turned 75 this year. Because he wasn't born with a silver spoon in his mouth like Mr. Emanuel, he couldn’t live the kind of life he's dreamed of until he turned 70. After 50-plus years of pumping our gas, fixing our cars, keeping our Air Force flying, remodeling our homes, and ensuring our nursing homes were up to code (oh the irony!), Dad finally had what he needed to retire only 5 years ago.

Put aside the countless "contributions" my father offers me and the rest of his family and friends (contributions not considered worthy enough to rate on Ezekiel Emanuel's horror show of a slide rule) on a daily basis; for over a half-century my father did more than his part to keep our world turning. And now he deserves and has earned the right to enjoy his retirement, and the best medical care available to help him do just, for as long as he damn well pleases.

My father is not a burden and never will be.

He's my dad.

So I guess that what I'm trying to say is that Ezekiel Emanuel and his ObamaCare death cultists can go straight to Hell.

Breitbart News

Boo_Boo Loc: Jellystone

Yes, he is your Dad and any decent society would see the worth in people like him. Hats off to him!!!

Do not be surprised as more of these articles enter into society. It is a move toward eliminating the elderly. It is a planned propaganda that will slowly eat into the culture until a law is passed to terminate any care, other than terminal minimal care or assisted suicide, for anyone past the age of 70. There are already portions of this in Obamacare. When it is repeated enough, then it will not be a shock and will not raise any red flags because people will have been indoctrinated and exposed to the notion on a gradual basis. It is like the frog experiment. Take frogs and toss them into hot water and they will do almost anything to save their lives. However, take the same frogs and put them in cool water and gradually raise the temperature, the frog will stay in the water until they boil. Same with propaganda, introduce it slowly until it becomes "normal" thinking, then pass the law. Everyone will accept the non-care or death care as expected reaction to an aging population. This notion was seeded in the time of Clinton, now it is on to the next rung of the ladder.

Ricko Loc: Florida

ginnyt-i have a simple philosophy about death and dying. I believe that when I lose QUALITY of life I am no longer living but merely existing. I do not believe anyone who is in a nursing home surrounded by sick people and being fed through a tube wants to continue living. I realize that religion enters into it but we put sick animals to sleep and allow sick humans with no quality of life to linger on and suffer silently. I believe, that over time, society will change and people will be given a choice as to whether they want to take a pill and go to sleep permanently or linger on. We allow murderers to exit this world by lethal injection but keep good people who are hurting around until their heart finally ceases to beat. I believe that in the not too distant future, Advance Documents will include a person's desire to be allowed to exit peacefully when quality of live is no longer there. That decision should not be made by the government. Good Luck America !!!

Tasine Loc: Southwest US

"So I guess that what I'm trying to say is that Ezekiel Emanuel and his ObamaCare death cultists can go straight to Hell." Oh, would that it be sooner rather than later.

Not one word of what comes from Emanuel's mouth has anything to do with compassion, with ANYTHING EXCEPT THE EXHORTATION THAT WE SHOULD BE PREPARING TO DIE A SOONER DEATH THAN OUR BODIES DICTATE. He, like all progressives, socialists, communists, all collectivists, has no soul and without a soul, one has nothing, and in my view that is why they so desperately NEED POWER.

Boo_Boo Loc: Jellystone

I can see how the propaganda has already taken root in your mind. I think that if as much energy that is spent on cultivating a death to senior attitude was put into making those nursing homes better, changing the attitude from the "expendable" old people to a more positive of the aged being respected and made comfortable, that wisdom comes with age, then our society would become more concerned about the plans to eliminate anyone over the age of 70. Off of the top of my head, Benjamin Franklin helped draft the Declaration of Independence and he was in his 70th year, Businessman Cornelius Vanderbilt began buying railroads, French actress Sarah Bernhardt had a leg amputated but refused to abandon the stage, Justice John W. Sirica heard the Watergate case and Judy Brenner, who had recently run the Boston Marathon, chased a teenage shoplifter 100 feet and helped hold him until police arrived. Life has become cheap, and I think it will be cheapened even more as your line of thinking becomes the pervasive thoughts among the younger generation. What is sad, by the time society wakes up, the trains will have been filled with grandmothers, grandfathers, the mentally infirmed.... the smoke stacks will be common.... can anyone spell Soylent Green?

And, you cheapen it even more with the sick animal comment. These are people. When you and your strange cult stop seeing that fact, then what have you become? You become savages, self centered, selfish savages!!

Tasine Loc: Southwest US

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Re life and death for ME, I totally agree with every word you wrote. I recently told my doctor that he didn't own my body, that only I and my creator owned my body. I had refused to go to a sleep clinic. I thought I knew what was causing my problem, and I told him I didn't want to be made to FEEL sick when I actually was not sick, and that it was MY DECISION to refuse the sleep clinic. I also intend to do some of the things the nut, Emanuel, suggests - but what I do or do not do with my body is NONE of the government's business. A doctor should tell you of your disease, what the recommended treatment is, offer to help - then step back and allow the patient to make the decision. That is called "freedom".

Constitutional libertarian Loc: St Croix National Scenic River Way

Do not get me wrong I do not in away advocate this form of mindset. With that said, I can see their logic. If you raise the age of receiving social security to 72 and stop medicare at age 70 you will have effectively eliminated what will become an economically crushing fed gov liability. I do not call SS an entitlement because it is no any such thing, but an obligation to the people who have spent a live time contributing to society.

It will be very interesting to see how this all pans out. I doubt very much the liberals will ever give up on forcing people to pay SS, but will the young be smart enough to see that they will never get a penny of it back.

Jeez I see horrible evil in all of this, it smells of sonething so insidious I couldn't even begin to describe half of what I am thinking in pages of writing.

Tasine Loc: Southwest US

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I'm so sorry. I had meant to respond to YOUR comment, but it landed as a response to Ginny. Here is what I intended to write to YOU:
Re life and death for ME, I totally agree with every word you wrote. I recently told my doctor that he didn't own my body, that only I and my creator owned my body. I had refused to go to a sleep clinic. I thought I knew what was causing my problem, and I told him I didn't want to be made to FEEL sick when I actually was not sick, and that it was MY DECISION to refuse the sleep clinic. I also intend to do some of the things the nut, Emanuel, suggests - but what I do or do not do with my body is NONE of the government's business. A doctor should tell you of your disease, what the recommended treatment is, offer to help - then step back and allow the patient to make the decision. That is called "freedom".

Boo_Boo Loc: Jellystone

You have a right to your issued opinion. When your parents, spouse, or child is put down like an animal, I wonder if you will see this differently. To me, I owe my family, my grandmothers, grandfathers, older relatives changed my diaper as a baby, fed me, protected me, taught me, picked me up when I fell..... So whatever they need and as long as I live, they will have the best of the best. I love them. And they are human.

You advocate cutting off the only source of income for many of our elderly. And you think that is a good thing. You say cut off their medical, and again that is a good thing. You are heartless, you are barbaric.

How this will pan out. Well, if everyone over the age of 70 is murdered, then the age will be lowered, then lowered again. Within a short time span, when a person reaches 55 they will be required to report to an euthanasia station for disposal. That will be the kinder, evolved, Liberal thing to do!!

Tasine Loc: Southwest US

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Ginny, without a doubt you are one of the most exasperating humans I have ever come in contact with. Soylent Green will only occur if GOVERNment arranges for it. Private citizens will not be instituting Soylent Green. Only the political left thinks it is a cool idea. Private citizens will not be putting the elderly on trains, GOVERNment will. But if MY generation of old folks - I am 75 and going slowly but strongly - are threatened with cattle cars and FEMA camps, we won't be the ONLY ones in danger.

You must be responding to someone who supports Emanuel. And who would that be, pray tell? No conservative. No libertarian. No Constitutionalist. Ergo, why this vitriolic comment, "When you and your strange cult stop seeing that fact, then what have you become? You become savages, self centered, selfish savages!!"

As to nursing homes. I spent a good part of my working life in nursing homes caring for so many whose families had deposited them there and were seldom seen again. We tried to make up for the lack of a loving family. I don't know how familiar YOU are with nursing homes, but I am EXCEEDINGLY FAMILIAR WITH THEM - OF ALL TYPES. I will tell everyone that some are wonderful, and some are disgusting and in my view should be shut down. GOVERNment is partly to blame for the lousy ones. GOVERNment sets the rules and makes the inspections. I will tell you this: one inspector was so obsessed about the size of the little squares within a window screen that he didn't have time to check out the care the patients were given. It wasn't of interest to him that we had all but closed up a bedsore on a lady who had come to us with one on each hip, so bad that one could watch her muscles and joints move. Closing it by attentive care was no easy task but persistence paid off. We were the ones who also independently discovered she had diabetes and got treatment for her. I never met a single person in her family - and I was director of nurses for 5 years there. She was lucid and pleasant, though mostly bedridden. Families are the responsible people for finding the right nursing homes for loved ones, but most don't know what to look for or why. One thing families ARE good at, however, is denigrating those who do care for their loved one. If they find a ragged dress missing, they raise cain.

Tasine Loc: Southwest US

As I said, you are so exasperating. You talk as though everyone here is advocating government regs to kill people. We are NOT. We are very opposed to that. What WE are saying, and you are incapable of understanding, is that MY life is MINE, not yours, not the government's, and not the doctor's. If I decide it is time to die, I should be allowed to do so - because it IS MY life. If I choose to live, it is incumbent on the doctor to help me survive - NOT the government's choice to let me live or die.

Boo_Boo Loc: Jellystone

You hold the same opinion of me as some of my family. Yes, outspoken and exasperating. I was also given the distinction of being incorrigible, humorless, and according to one poster on OPP vile, contemptable, and the worst person they have ever seen. So, just add your contempt to the list.

What is government? Is it not what we the people allow? Would there be a government without the voting members? This is a government of the people? "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

My comment was about the article, not directed at you. I do not know what other's think, other than what they share. I can not be as sure as you are that no conservative, no libertarian, no constitutionlist support in the privacy of their own minds. I know that I could never support the termination of a human just because they are old.

Nursing homes. They should be staffed with people that want to work with the patients. It is up to relatives to ensure that the home treats their loved ones well, but often times they do use those facilities for dumping grounds. And those types of people will be the first to become the "We the People" government who signs off on euthanasia for the elderly.

This will happen. The evidence is there for all to see. And I care, I will fight it tooth and nail. These are people we are talking about. Not an animal that can no longer plow the field or run the race, but those that were there for us through thick and thin, who wiped our tears, encouraged us when we were lost in sorrow, they are the ones that told us the stories before bed, and they have to be afforded dignity, love and respect. And no, I am not God, so I would never say when a person's time should end.

Ricko Loc: Florida

Tasine-I agree totally. Improving nursing homes does nothing for a person who is paralyzed and being fed through a tube or intravenously. My thoughts are to allow us to decide in advance what we want to happen to us if we should end up in such a condition. Believe Ginny missed my point entirely. What I alluded to was that we as a society are more merciful to animals who are hurting than we are to humans who may be ravaged with incurable diseases and are living in dreadful pain day in and day out but have to endure because society demands it. By the same token government has no business being involved in whether a person should live or die for the convenience of society. I agree that it should be a personal decision but if not made in advance it becomes a moot point if the person is physically unable to make that decision. i believe God will call me home when he is ready and that same God will change society's minds when he is ready. Now the big question for Zeke Emmanuel is what happens to those of us who have already passed his age deadline ? Good Luck America !!!

Constitutional libertarian Loc: St Croix National Scenic River Way

Interesting, I am only looking at your statement from a different angle and am not disrespecting your believes.

If as you point out it is not within our control but God's are we then meddling in his grand plan for us by using modern medicine in prolonging life. Could certain fundamentalists be correct in their way of thinking when they choose to not accept possible life saving medical treatment for themselves or their families.

Tasine Loc: Southwest US

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Don't mind Ginny. She misses EVERYBODY'S point. All of us knew what you were talking about, but Ginny is stuck on arguing and cannot bring herself to even agree with people who agree with her. I don't think she even realizes most of us were fighting this before she even came on the scene.......government control. And she still thinks WE citizens control the government. Nothing could be farther from the truth. It controls us to the maximum degree it can get away with controlling us - and that is why it is afraid of us - we MAY cause them to lose control. IF I could control the government, I'd have a good part of them arrested. Government can arrest. Citizens cannot. Government can fine. Citizens cannot. Government can confiscate property. Citizens cannot. Etc, ad nauseum.