Wall Street Journal: We LOVE Death Panels

Dem regrets language in memo on death panels that reignited debate
Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) is distancing himself from a memo sent by his office that urged health reform advocates not to advertise new end-of-life counseling Regulations to avoid reviving talk of “Death Panels.” The weeks-old memo recommended that end-of-life advocates celebrate a “quiet” victory out of concern that Republican leaders would “use this small provision to perpetuate the ‘death panel’ myth.” Blumenauer now says he regrets the letter's secret

"Fox & Friends" Revives "Death Panel" "Controversy"
As the saying goes, the two certitudes in life are death and taxes. But the republican right seems to be seeking to avoid both. While normal, rational, sentient beings have no problem with the idea of long term care planning, which includes things like durable power of attorney and end of life directives, the Right Wing doesn't seem to want to deal with it - especially if it involves speaking to your doctor about it. (Better to have families fighting about "pulling the plug" so that Fox can have...

Pro-Life Leaders Want Congress to Overturn Death Panel Regs
Leaders in the pro-life community are angrily responding to the news that the Obama Administration added “Death Panels” to the ObamaCare implementation. They are calling on Congress to take steps to Repeal the new Regulations Obama officials put in place that they worry will give financial incentives to doctors to hold end-of-life discussions with patients that will lead to the Rationing of their medical care. Doctors will instruct patients in the annual “voluntary” exams...

Why does the far right think that planning for one's death is evil and wicked?
 The "hate Obama express" is in overdrive among the Far Right.  Do you know about End of life counseling? It is planning in advance basically, how you will die. With dignity or if you choose, great pain. I choose the former by the way. Private Insurance Companies regularly pay for end of life counseling. They have done so for years. Not one person, nor should they, have said that private Insurance Companies doing the exact same thing as Medicare and the federal government is going...

Geithner met Wall Street executives last month
WASHINGTON (AP) - Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner met with executives from several top Wall Street banks and with representatives from a foreign government investment fund last month to discuss the implementation of a new, sweeping financial regulatory reform law. The meetings were disclosed by the Treasury Department as part of its release of appointment calendars for Geithner and other Top Officials. The department is listing all the meetings held by its officials that are about the finan...

Geithner met Wall Street executives last month
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner met with executives from several top Wall Street banks and with representatives from a foreign government investment fund last month to discuss the implementation of a new, sweeping financial regulatory reform law. The meetings were disclosed by the Treasury Department as part of its release of appointment calendars for Geithner and other Top Officials. The department is listing all the meetings held by its officials that are about the financial regulatory law...

Newsflash for Greta Van Susteren: Sarah Palin is just not that bright
By R.K. Barry Greta Van Susteren, Fox News talking head and defender of all that is fair and balanced in the coverage of news, wants to know what criteria fellow Fox pundit Juan Williams used when he stated that Sarah Palin is not on the same "intellectual stage" as President Obama. You may recall that Williams once worked for National Public Radio but lost that job because of comments he made about Muslims on airplanes that NPR thought insensitive. Then Fox gave him a full-time gig - mostly...

Death panels are just the first step
Sarah Palin deserves an Apology. When she said that the new health-care law would lead to "Death Panels" deciding who gets life-saving treatment and who does not, she was roundly denounced and ridiculed. Now we learn, courtesy of one of the ridiculers -- the New York Times -- that she was right. Under a new policy not included in the law for fear the administration's real end-of-life game would be exposed, a rule issued by the recess-appointed Dr. Donald M. Berwick, administrator of the Centers...

2011 to die for: 'Super death panels' on a 'massive scale'
Angry pro-life leaders are calling on the incoming 112th Congress to revoke a new Obama Administration Regulation resuscitating "Death Panels," which were rejected by the last congress after a public uproar threatened the passage of the president's signature Health Care bill. At the request of several Democratic lawmakers, the administration quietly slipped language into a Medicare Regulation paying doctors to provide "end-of-life" consultations with patients. Doctors will instruct patients how...

"Die Quickly"
"Die Quickly" by digby Alan Grayson took a lot of grief for saying that the Republican Health Care plan was "Don't get sick, and if you do get sick, die quickly." But he was right. Here's Gene Lyons, who begins his essay with the sad tale of having to euthanize his sick horse because it would be too expensive to keep him alive: Long introduction, brief polemical point: Observing Republicans gear up to try to undo "ObamaCare," I suspect the only thing that will satisfy some is to make medical...

The Real Problem with Those Non-Death Panels
Health Care Reform: WWJD? Are U.S. Multinationals to Blame for High Unemployment? Is Chuck Hagel a Republican? RT @CatoOnCampus: Bad writing, bad arguments, and bad faith? @GeneHealy names the 5 worst op-eds of 2010: https://bit.ly/g58ffR # 16 hours ago...

Planning Your End-Of-Life
If you fail to plan, you plan to fail or should the saying now go, if YOU fail to plan, we the Government will plan your death for you.  The Obama Administration uses Bureaucracy again in order to get something done that they could not do through the legislative process by putting “End of Life Plan” or as Sarah Palin and so many others have stated, “The Death Panel” into Medicare starting January 2011.    The words voluntary are suppose to make this so...

Francine Hardaway: Both Health Care and Real Estate Face Further Reforms in 2011
Health Care and Real Estate, two important areas of interest to me and to the US economy, are due for some changes in 2011. I have no better crystal ball than anyone else, but here are some of the things I expect: Health Care reform will have to be re-reformed. No, I don't think the Republicans will actually Repeal it all. If they do, they're dumber than I thought, because they would then get caught in the same quicksand the Democrats have been in for the past two years. There will, however, b...

MSNBCs Cenk Uygur Laughs at GOProud Chairman for Being a Republican
MSNBC’s Cenk Uygur interviewed GOProud Chairman Christopher Barron Thursday night, and while the subject was supposed to be a Boycott of CPAC by social Conservatives, Uygur began with a broader question: “Why on God’s green Earth are you a Republican?” That question, and Uygur’s subsequent laughter at Barron’s responses, may seem uncharitable, but are they entirely unfair? While CPAC deserves some credit for standing up to the boycott, and the party has made s...

Is the Favorite to Replace Larry Summers Too Close To Wall Street?
[Guest post by Noam Scheiber:] If you’ve spent much time talking to Treasury officials over the past two years, you’ve probably heard them joke that Gene Sperling, a counselor to Secretary Tim Geithner, is the department’s in-house Populist. What makes this funny (insofar as wonk humor can be funny) is that Sperling isn’t exactly your classic pitch-fork wielder. He was director of Bill Clinton’s National Economic Council (NEC) in the late ‘90s, a period when ...

Matt Taibbi on Wall Street's Weeps and Whines
Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi discusses Wall Street's recent whining about how terribly the Obama Administration is supposedly treating them that John wrote about here -- Wall Street Masters still Whining about Obama's words even after the bail out. It's all GOP for them now. Since the story is as mutually beneficial to the administration as it is to the thieves on Wall Street, Taibbi thinks it easily could have been either of them that decided to plant the story with the hacks at Politico....

Wall Street edges lower as year draws to a close
By Ryan Vlastelica NEW YORK | Thu Dec 30, 2010 9:37pm EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks closed slightly lower on Thursday as a trio of better-than-expected economic data wasn't enough to entice buyers to take on much risk in a market sitting on strong gains just before the new year. The S&P 500 is up 6.5 percent so far this month, putting it on track for the best December since 1991. Reports on the labor market, business activity and housing all showed surprising strength. New U.S. cla...

Wall Street's Year In Gaffes: Susan Antilla
Bloomberg: The year opened with Sandy Weill whining in a New York Times article that he was horrified to be depicted as a greedy, out of touch Wall Streeter for jetting to Cabo on the Citigroup plane weeks after the bank took a $45 billion Taxpayer Bailout. Read the whole story: Bloomberg Get HuffPost Business On Twitter and Facebook! Know something we don't? E-mail us at [email protected] ...

Stock futures point to slight gains for Wall Street
LONDON (Reuters) - Stocks were set to open slightly higher on Thursday, adding to gains from the previous session, with futures for the Dow Jones, the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ all up by around 0.1 percent by 0900 GMT (4 a.m. ET). The S&P 500... Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, December 15, 2010. LONDON (Reuters) - Stocks were set to open slightly higher on Thursday, adding to gains from the previous session, with futures for the Dow Jones, the S&P 500 and the...

Wall Street edges lower as year draws to a close
Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, December 15, 2010. NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks closed slightly lower on Thursday as a trio of better-than-expected economic data wasn't enough to entice buyers to take on much risk in a market sitting on strong gains just before the new year. The S&P 500 is up 6.5 percent so far this month, putting it on track for the best December since 1991. Reports on the labor market, business activity and housing all showed surprising stren...

Is It Time To Use The T Word To Describe The Obama Administration?
Is it time to start openly describing this administration as tyrannical? I’ve been calling Obama and his left-wing allies in Congress Democrat Socialists for two years, now, (because that is what so many of them are), but this is something altogether different. It’s a stronger, harsher word that conjures up images of leftist dictators like Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro. But - what else do you call it when the administration flouts the will of Congress, the courts, and the Americ...

Chase Sued for $300M Over Ponzi Scheme
(Wall Street Journal) - The trustee attempting to recoup money for the companies of convicted Ponzi schemer Tom Petters has sued J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., seeking more than $300 million that the bank and its private-equity arm received from Petters' purchase of iconic camera company Polaroid Corp, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. In a suit filed Wednesday in Federal Court in Minnesota, Douglas A. Kelley, the court-appointed receiver for Petters' companies, alleged that J.P. Morgan and i...

How Government Regulations Push Up Cost of Medicine and Limit Patient Choice
It’s no secret that Health Care is an industry beset by huge problems. The problem doesn’t as much stem from “evil Insurance Companies” as it does from a system created by federal and State Governments to make a system as economically inefficient as possible. For instance, most people do not pick their own Insurance companies. Their employer does. The customer then isn’t the consumer, it is the business that contracts them to provide Insurance for their employees....

Obama Continues His Leftist Assault On The US
Obama uses red tape and agencies to support bills that were defeated. After an inspiring mid term election that saw Republicans recapturing many lost seats and gaining control in many states, everyone one assumed that the resulting Lame Duck session of the Democrats would be the last hurdle. However, that assumption would be proven wrong. Obama will continue his manner of shoving Legislation down the throats of the American People a different way. Many assumed, and rightly so, that Obama would r...

If You Can't Legislate, Regulate
Newsmax: Obama Sidesteps Hill With EPA Carbon Limits Thursday, 30 Dec 2010 The Obama administration will use government agencies and the Clean Air Act to push through its Global Warming agenda after failing in Congress. FoxNews.com reports that on Jan.2 new carbon limits will be set and the Environmental Protection Agency will then draw up Regulations requiring companies to get permits to release Greenhouse Gases. Fox said the administration, which points to a 2007 Supreme Court ruling for its...