Top Doctor’s Chilling Claim: The NHS Kills Off 130,000 Elderly Patients Every Year

Here is the article about Sarah Palin bout with Bob Beckel about death panels. They are real …

• Professor says doctors use ‘death pathway’ to euthenasia of the elderly
• Treatment on average brings a patient to death in 33 hours
• Around 29 per cent of patients that die in hospital are on controversial ‘care pathway’
• Pensioner admitted to hospital given treatment by doctor on weekend shift

NHS doctors are prematurely ending the lives of thousands of elderly hospital patients because they are difficult to manage or to free up beds, a senior consultant claimed yesterday.

Professor Patrick Pullicino said doctors had turned the use of a controversial ‘death pathway’ into the equivalent of euthanasia of the elderly.

He claimed there was often a lack of clear evidence for initiating the Liverpool Care Pathway, a method of looking after terminally ill patients that is used in hospitals across the country.

It is designed to come into force when doctors believe it is impossible for a patient to recover and death is imminent.

It can include withdrawal of treatment – including the provision of water and nourishment by tube – and on average brings a patient to death in 33 hours.

There are around 450,000 deaths in Britain each year of people who are in hospital or under NHS care. Around 29 per cent – 130,000 – are of patients who were on the LCP.

Professor Pullicino claimed that far too often elderly patients who could live longer are placed on the LCP and it had now become an ‘assisted death pathway rather than a care pathway’.

He cited ‘pressure on beds and difficulty with nursing confused or difficult-to-manage elderly patients’ as factors.

Professor Pullicino revealed he had personally intervened to take a patient off the LCP who went on to be successfully treated.

He said this showed that claims they had hours or days left are ‘palpably false’.

In the example he revealed a 71-year-old who was admitted to hospital suffering from pneumonia and epilepsy was put on the LCP by a covering doctor on a weekend shift.

Professor Pullicino said he had returned to work after a weekend to find the patient unresponsive and his family upset because they had not agreed to place him on the LCP.

‘I removed the patient from the LCP despite significant resistance,’ he said.

‘His seizures came under control and four weeks later he was discharged home to his family,’ he said.

Professor Pullicino, a consultant neurologist for East Kent Hospitals and Professor of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Kent, was speaking to the Royal Society of Medicine in London.

Easier to kill than to care. Cuts costs. It’s what socialism does, equal misery for all.

Ouch! Sarah Palin Slaps Down Bob Beckel on Death Panels

This was great.

Bob Beckel: Governor, that deception, does that go for the death panels that were never real, that you said were in there?

Sarah Palin: Oh, it’s in there. There’s a faceless bureaucratic panel, and the acronym is the IPAB, and it will be a board that will tell you Bob, whether your level of productivity in society is worthy of receiving the rationed care that will be a result of Obamacare. Consider this Bob, it defies all common sense to ever consider that health care won’t be rationed, when, obviously with more and more enrollees in the program and fewer and fewer services being provided because it will be so inefficient and expensive and bureaucratic, of course, healthcare in a socialized system which this will become, it will be rationed.

Greg Gutfeld: Governor, way to put Bob in his place. Nicely done. He’s speechless.

Did she call Beckel stupid?

Strap Yourselves in: Jim Rogers Explains Why We Are Going to Have ‘Financial Armageddon’

Here it comes, at least to well respected Jim Rodgers. and he should know.

Leaders of the 17-nation eurozone announced on Friday a plan to rescue their failing banks with cash normally reserved for fledgling governments. When the “recapitalization” (i.e. bailout) plan was unveiled, markets responded very, very well.

However, despite the positive market reaction, there is one veteran businessman who thinks the deal is a big mistake. In fact, he thinks it’s only making things worse. According to Quantum Fund co-founder, free market advocate, author, and regular lecturer of finance at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business Jim Rogers, the EU’s decision to recapitalize its banks won’t do anything to fight off the oncoming “financial Armageddon.”

“Just because now you have a way to get [EU governments] to borrow even more money, this is not solving the problem, this is making the problem worse,” Rogers said during an interview on CNBC on Friday.

It’s a simple concept, stop spending money you don’t have. Only States which can prinit faux paper can do it. Sort of like Margret Thatcher said, Socialism is fine, until you run out of other people’s money to spend.

“People need to stop spending money they don’t have. The solution to too much debt is not more debt. All this little agreement does is give them (banks) a chance to have even more debt for a while longer,” he added.

Rogers went on to argue that the deal does very little to improve the finances of crumbling nations such as Greece and Spain and that governments need to stop rescuing failing banks, even if it results in “financial Armageddon.”

“What would make me very excited is if a few people went bankrupt or a few people started paying off their debt. We are going to have financial Armageddon anyways, when the rest of the world is not going to give these people any more money,” he said.

“What are you going to do in two, three, four years when the market suddenly says ‘no more money’ and the Germans don’t have more money, and the American debt has gone through the roof?” he asked.

The businessman went on to explain that the positive reaction the markets are currently experiencing will be short-lived.

“How many times has this happened in the last three years — they (EU leaders) have had a meeting, the markets have rallied, two days later the market says wait a minute this doesn’t solve the problem,” he said.

Video at The Blaze:

Murdoch Casts Off Newspapers To Uncertain Future

Newspapers may be Rupert Murdoch’s first love, but in the planned breakup of his empire he is acknowledging the news business has failed to keep pace with his high-flying entertainment assets.

The split of Murdoch’s massive News Corp unveiled Thursday would create separate companies for the huge entertainment division and the struggling publishing business.

The publishing arm has some of the most prestigious names in the industry, including The Wall Street Journal and Times of London, but has been hurt by a move away from print. It also took a hit from a phone hacking scandal in Britain, which led to the closure of News of The World.

“This move is a ratification that News Corp’s two businesses — entertainment and news — have radically different trajectories, and that those trajectories are only widening,” said Ken Doctor, an analyst with the research firm Outsell.

Some analysts say that the news operations are an “albatross” that drag down the value of the empire.

A simple way to view this, bye, bye newspapers.

DDT Lies

How do you halt development in Africa? Halt DDT. Simple … Not science, just liberal lies.

On radio yesterday, Glenn interviewed former Communist David Horowitz, a man who has now dedicated himself to exposing progressives, radicals, and extremists. And while Horowitz’s latest book, The New Leviathan, contains some chilling information about how organized and funded the left has become, he said that he now sees that American conservatives are starting to wake up to the realities in front of them.

Video here:

Transcript below:

The Dead Mexicans and our Border Agent just won’t go away …

The Republican-led House of Representatives on Thursday voted to hold Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.in contempt for failing to disclose internal Justice Department documents in response to a subpoena. It was the first time in American history that Congress has imposed the sanction on a sitting member of a president’s cabinet.

The politically and constitutionally charged dispute centered on whether the Justice Department must turn over e-mails and memorandums showing its internal deliberations last year about the botched Arizona-based gunrunning investigation known as Operation Fast and Furious. President Obama has invoked executive privilege to block the subpoena.

The vote — 255 to 67, with one Democrat voting present — followed an acrimonious debate that played out.

Scores of Democrats, accusing Republicans of abusing their power to engineer an election-year “partisan witch hunt,” walked out of the chamber in protest and cast no votes, punctuating a day filled with bitter, sharp-edged rhetoric.

The contempt citations are likely to have little practical impact. The criminal referral was sent to the Justice Department, which will decline to pursue it, as George W. Bush’s Justice Department declined to pursue contempt citations passed in 2008 against White House officials. A civil citation approved Thursday by the House will not wind its way through the courts until long after Mr. Holder’s announced departure at the end of this year.

But the citations could be seen as a stain on the attorney general’s record. House Democrats said Mr. Holder talked to Democrats at a White House picnic on Wednesday to hold Democratic yes votes to a minimum.

Representative Darrell Issa, Republican of California, who has led the House investigation into Fast and Furious, said the vote was necessary to hold Mr. Holder accountable for what he portrayed as “lies and a cover-up exclusively within his jurisdiction.”

The House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi of California, called the unprecedented vote a “heinous act” and an “unprincipled” effort on the part of the Republicans. Echoing other Democrats, she complained that the Republicans had rushed the floor consideration less than a week after Mr. Issa’s committee recommended it on a party-line vote.

Mr. Holder, a recurring target for conservatives, is associated with some of the administration’s most liberal policies on matters like gay rights, civilian trials in terrorism cases and the enforcement of civil rights laws.

In a statement, the White House accused House Republicans of engaging in “political theater rather than legitimate Congressional oversight.” It also noted that a day earlier, Mr. Issa said his investigation had uncovered no evidence and now had no strong suspicion that Mr. Holder had known about or authorized a tactic used in Fast and Furious called gunwalking. Under the practice, investigators do not swiftly interdict weapons and arrest low-level suspects in an effort to build a larger case.

But Mr. Issa has insisted that Congress had a right to see the documents, which cover a period last year after the gun-smuggling case had been shut down. Republicans, citing a false statement in a February 2011 letter the Justice Department sent to Congress and later retracted, want to determine whether officials engaged in a cover-up by willfully misleading Congress.

With Republicans in the majority in the House, there was little doubt that the final vote would be to cite Mr. Holder for contempt. The only question was how many Democrats representing conservative-leaning districts would cross party lines to join that effort. The National Rifle Association was pressuring them to do so, announcing that it would score the vote in its report card on how lawmakers approached Second Amendment gun rights.

In the end, 17 Democrats voted yes. They included some of the most endangered incumbents, among them Representatives Larry Kissell of North Carolina, Ben Chandler of Kentucky and Kathy Hochul of New York. Representative Joe Donnelly of Indiana, who is running for the Senate, also voted yes. The group Gun Owners of America released a letter this week demanding a yes from Mr. Donnelly.

The two Republicans who voted no were Representatives Scott Rigell, a freshman from a Virginia district with a large African-American population, and Steven C. LaTourette of Ohio, an outspoken moderate.

Operation Fast and Furious was conducted from late 2009 to early 2011 by Phoenix-based agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who were looking into a gun-smuggling network linked to a Mexican drug cartel.

Suspected “straw” purchasers for the network ended up acquiring about 2,000 guns, most of which are presumed to have reached drug gangs. In December 2010, two weapons that had been bought by one of the suspects were found at the site of a shootout in which a Border Patrol agent, Brian Terry, was killed, setting off the scandal.

Some Republicans and conservative commentators have claimed that senior Obama administration officials must have initiated or authorized the tactics. But public testimony and documents have not produced evidence to support such claims. Information has emerged, however, showing that the Phoenix division of the A.T.F. had a running dispute with Arizona-based prosecutors over how much evidence was necessary to bring charges in straw-purchasing cases, and that its agents had used similar tactics — and lost track of guns — in three other investigations, during the Bush administration.

While the documents in dispute date from 2011, after Fast and Furious was over, Republicans framed their move as being about getting answers and justice for Agent Terry’s family. “It’s our responsibility to investigate when things go wrong, and things went wrong — an agent of the United States was murdered,” said Representative John L. Mica, Republican of Florida, accusing Mr. Holder of “showing contempt for the Congress.”

The Obama administration has been preparing a letter to the House speaker, John A. Boehner, saying that it will not prosecute Mr. Holder for criminal contempt because the Justice Department does not consider it to be a crime to fail to provide information over which a president has asserted executive privilege, officials familiar with the discussions said.

Four more Democrats — and all Republicans — voted for a separate resolution authorizing a lawsuit that would ask a judge to order the Justice Department to comply with its subpoena, setting up a test of Mr. Obama’s assertion of a form of executive privilege that protects agency deliberations from disclosure.

The Justice Department had offered to give Congress several hundred of the disputed documents if Republicans scrapped the contempt recommendation. The White House on Tuesday allowed Republican staff members to scan about a dozen of them, which it portrayed as a representative sample. But the two sides failed to reach a deal.

“My efforts to resolve this matter short of such a battle were rebuffed by Congressman Issa and his supporters,” Mr. Holder said after the vote. “It’s clear that they were not interested in bringing an end to this dispute or obtaining the information they claimed to seek.”

Mr. Issa cited the votes of the 17 Democrats in favor of contempt, saying a “bipartisan majority” supported the inquiry.

“This was not the outcome I had sought,” Mr. Issa said, “and it could have been avoided had Attorney General Holder actually produced the subpoenaed documents he said he could provide.”

Gunwalker: The Biggest Scandal In U.S. History

Holder voted in contempt of Congress. 17 Democrats join with Republicans.

The GOP-led House voted Thursday to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for failing to provide key information pertaining to Operation Fast and Furious, making Holder the first sitting Cabinet member to be held in contempt.

The vote was 255-67, with 17 Democrats breaking ranks to side with Republicans in favor of contempt.

Must read — Coulter says it best …

Forget executive privilege, contempt of Congress, “fast and furious,” how many documents the government has produced and who said what to whom on which date.

The Obama administration has almost certainly engaged in the most shockingly vile corruption scandal in the history of the country, not counting the results of Season Eight on “American Idol.”

Administration officials intentionally put guns into the hands of Mexican drug cartels, so that when the guns taken from Mexican crime scenes turned out to be American guns, Democrats would have a reason to crack down on gun sellers in the United States.

Democrats will never stop trying to take our guns away. They see something more lethal than a salad shooter and wet themselves.

But since their party was thrown out of Congress for the first time in nearly half a century as a result of passing the 1994 “assault weapons ban,” even liberals know they were going to need a really good argument to pass any limitation on guns ever again.

So it’s curious that Democrats all started telling the same lie about guns as soon as Obama became president. In March 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced to reporters on a trip to Mexico: “Since we know that the vast majority, 90 percent of that weaponry (used by Mexican drug cartels), comes from our country, we are going to try to stop it from getting there in the first place.”

As she sentimentally elaborated on Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren show:

“The guns sold in the United States, which are illegal in Mexico, get smuggled and shipped across our border and arm these terrible drug-dealing criminals so that they can outgun these poor police officers along the border and elsewhere in Mexico.”

Suddenly that 90 percent statistic was everywhere. It was like the statistic on women beaten by their husbands on Super Bowl Sunday.

CBS’ Bob Schieffer asked Obama on “Face the Nation”: “It’s my understanding that 90 percent of the guns that they’re getting down in Mexico are coming from the United States. We don’t seem to be doing a very good job of cutting off the gun flow. Do you need any kind of legislative help on that front? Have you, for example, thought about asking Congress to reinstate the ban on assault weapons?”

At a Senate hearing, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said:

“It is unacceptable to have 90 percent of the guns that are picked up in Mexico and used to shoot judges, police officers and mayors … come from the United States.”

And then, thanks to Fox News — the first network to report it — we found out the 90 percent figure was complete bunkum. It was a fabrication told by William Hoover, of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATF), and then spread like wildfire by Democrats and the media.

Mexican law enforcement authorities send only a fraction of the guns they recover from criminals back to the U.S. for tracing. Which guns do they send? The guns that have U.S. serial numbers on them. It would be like asking a library to produce all their Mark Twain books and then concluding that 90 percent of the books in that library are by Mark Twain.

You begin to see why the left hates Fox News so much.

Obama backed away from the preposterous 90 percent claim. His National Security Council spokesman explained to Fox News that by “recovered,” they meant “guns traceable to the United States.” So, in other words, Democrats were frantically citing the amazing fact that almost all the guns traceable to the U.S. were … traceable to the U.S.

Attorney General Eric Holder told reporters that even if the percentage is inaccurate, the “vast majority” of guns seized in crimes in Mexico come from the United States. (And he should know, because it turns out he was sending them there!)

This was absurd. Most of the guns used by drug cartels are automatic weapons — not to mention shoulder-fired rockets — that can’t be sold to most Americans. They are acquired from places like Russia, China and Guatemala.

Right about the time the 90 percent lie was unraveling, the Obama administration decided to directly hand thousands of American guns over to Mexican criminals. Apart from the fact that tracking thousands of guns into Mexico is not feasible or rational, the dumped guns didn’t have GPS tracing devices on them, anyway. There is no conceivable law enforcement objective to such a program.

This is what we know:

(1) Liberals thought it would be a great argument for gun control if American guns were ending up in the hands of Mexican criminals;

(2) They wanted that to be true so badly, Democrats lied about it;

(3) After they were busted on their lie, the Obama administration began dumping thousands of guns in the hands of Mexican criminals.

We also know that hundreds of people were murdered with these U.S.-government-supplied guns, including at least one American, U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry.

But let’s look on the bright side. The BATF was originally going to ship warheads to Iran until realizing the explosions might disable the tracking devices.

(Contrary to more Democrat lies, there was no program to dump thousands of guns in Mexico under George W. Bush. The Bush administration did have a program that put GPS trackers on about 100 guns in order to actually trace them. That operation was ended almost as soon as it began because of the lack of cooperation from Mexican officials. You may as well say Holder’s program was “started” by the first cop who ever put tracer dye on contraband.)

No one has explained what putting 2,500 untraceable guns in the hands of Mexican drug dealers was supposed to accomplish.

But you know what that might have accomplished? It would make the Democrats’ lie retroactively true — allowing them to push for the same gun restrictions they were planning when they first concocted it. A majority of guns recovered from Mexican criminals would, at last, be American guns, because Eric Holder had put them there.

Unfortunately for the Democrats, some brave whistleblower inside the government leaked details of this monstrous scheme. As soon as Congress and the public demanded answers, Holder clammed up. He just says “oops” — and accuses Republicans of racism.

Chief Justice Needs New Beer Googles

Chief Justice calling the balls and strikes, needs new Beer Goggles the progressive ones he has are broke. Poor Bush boy doesn’t even know what the Constitution is.

Next time, someone with no track record tells you they are just going to call the balls and strikes … Check for a record. If they have none, take a pass on them, and look further.

Remember we could have had Harriet Meyers as Justice, now we have a wise Latino, whatever that is.

Does Chief Justice Roberts even understand what the U.S. Constitution is for? Hint it is primarily to stop the Federal Government from doing stuff like this … Death Panels, sounds a lot like what the NAZIs did.

USDA suggests food stamp parties, games to increase participation

Our food stamp Preezy Kardashian wants you to party, bring your friends, get free money from the Candy Man. Who needs a job, just take the handouts and vote fore me ….

While spending on the food stamp program has increased 100 percent under President Barack Obama, the government continues to push more Americans to enroll in the welfare program.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has embraced entire promotional campaigns designed to encourage eligible Americans to participate in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food stamps.

A pamphlet currently posted at the USDA website encourages local SNAP offices to throw parties as one way to get potentially eligible seniors to enroll in the program.

Social events for working men?

“Throw a Great Party. Host social events where people mix and mingle,” the agency advises. “Make it fun by having activities, games, food, and entertainment, and provide information about SNAP. Putting SNAP information in a game format like BINGO, crossword puzzles, or even a ‘true/false’ quiz is fun and helps get your message across in a memorable way.”

We would like to choose the questions for the ‘true/false’ quiz.

The agency’s most recent outreach effort targets California, Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Ohio and the New York metro area with radio ads.

The ads have been running since March and are scheduled to continue through the end of June — at a cost of $2.5 million — $3 million, CNN Money reported Monday…

In the 1970s, one out of every 50 Americans was on food stamps. Today one out of every seven receive the benefit…

So the parties and ads must be working.

Despite the high rate of food stamp participation, the USDA has numerous blueprints posted on their website aimed at getting more people to enroll in SNAP. A 2009 State Outreach Plan Guidance explains why the agency believes states should adopt strategies to get more people on the rolls:

Outreach Can Help Increase Participation in SNAP Resulting in Multiple Benefits for Participants, States, and Communities: SNAP is the cornerstone of the nation’s nutrition safety net and an investment in our future. SNAP offers the opportunity for improved nutrition and progress toward economic self-sufficiency for participants who become stronger members of the community. However, too many low income people, especially seniors, working people, and legal immigrants, who are eligible for SNAP do not participate and thus forego assistance that could stretch their food dollars and help improve their nutrition.

According to the USDA, greater food stamp usage can be an economic plus for states and communities.

“Every $5 in new SNAP benefits generates $9.20 in an additional community spending,” the USDA contends in their outreach guidance. “If the national participation rate rose five percentage points, 1.9 million more low-income people would have an additional $1.3 billion in benefits per year to use to purchase healthy food and $2.5 billion total in new economic activity would be generated nationwide.”

That’s the Commie Obama line, right to ruin.

So just like with unemployment benefits, food stamps actually help grow the economy. At least according to Nancy Pelosi. And free health care frees people up from having to work for a living, so they can pursue any nonsensical whim they have. Whee, it’s great, then the money runs out.

But you have to wonder, with the record high number of people on unemployment and record number of people on food stamps, why isn’t the economy booming? Hmm, technical details do take the fun out of it.

Fires Blazing, No Fire-Fighting Aircraft Planned?

It’s all going to work out, for people living in the Front Range, you need to figure out, an apartment in the crime infested cities is best for you, and more importantly, the environment.

Boulder braces…

Obama Shrunk Aerial Firefighting Fleet…

Good timing just when we need more aircraft to fight the fires in remote woods and mountains? Spent money on handouts instead of planes … Maybe, just maybe, paying to people to act like Grecians is not the right way?

Colorado’s epic fires shows cutting the Air Force budget, for “mo handouts” and EBT cash cards may not work? Mr Preezy, did you think of that?

Democrats, votes for handouts, it’s all out there for people to see. Just join a public sector union. What did you think the union money laundering was all about?

Colorado’s wildfire has exploded into an “epic firestorm,” in the words of Colorado Springs fire chief Richard Brown. Over 30,000 people have evacuated, and already hundreds of homes have been consumed. Ironically, the U.S. Air Force Academy has also been evacuated, at the very time that Colorado desperately needs more Air Force C-130s to fight the massive fire.

A C-130 fitted with the Modular Airborne FireFighting System (MAFFS) can drop 3,000 gallons of fire-retardant material in 5 seconds, and reload in just 15 minutes. This tempo is crucial to containing wildfires like the one devastating Colorado Springs. However, of a current fleet of nearly 380 C-130s, only eight can be fitted with the MAFFS—and four of them are already in the skies over Colorado. With another fire looming in the north of the state, there is no excess capacity to help protect civilian areas.

That means thousands of exhausted firefighters on the ground are without enough of the crucial support they need to control the fires.

All this raises concerns about President Obama’s defense budget, which cuts 65 C-130s from the fleet over the next four years. While that will leave 318 C-130s, the demands on the fleet are not shrinking in Afghanistan or other places.

Nor did the Air Force have much choice in the matter.

The Air Force took the brunt of Pentagon budget cuts in the 2013 budget, shrinking by 4 percent (or roughly $4 billion dollars), after having a flat budget since 2004. Since 2001, over 500 aircraft have been retired, and another 300 will be scrapped by 2017. All this is happening while demand for the Air Force increases: The service flew approximately 400 sorties per day in Afghanistan and Iraq during 2011, while also fighting in Libya and delivering thousands of tons of disaster relief aid to Japan after its earthquake and tsunami. C-130s have been central to all these operations, and the proposed cuts will reduce airlift capacity among all the Air Force’s components: active, reserve, and guard. Sequestration would be even worse, mandating equal percentage cuts down to the program level across the service, with no flexibility for Air Force leadership to target the cuts.

So we need to cut some-more …. Our lame excuse for a president, needs to go. He is destroying our country on so many fronts, to live up to the Soros plan and UNs Agenda 21 plans. We will be so encumbered with debt, there simple won’t be anything left over for our own people. The “eaters” are taking more than the “makers” can supply.

But as the wildfire in Colorado shows, readiness and flexibility are sometimes needed at home as much as abroad. Cutting more C-130s puts a greater strain on the entire Air Force fleet. It means fewer planes will be available for possible conversion to the MAFFS configuration. And that means that as hundreds of houses burn in Colorado, only eight planes can be called upon to help the thousands of firefighters on the ground. America should not have to make such tradeoffs: We can fight both aggressors and fires smarter and better, but only if we do it increasingly from the sky.