Et tu, Chuck? I'm so disappointed. I didn't think he'd sink that low.

I used to live in Iowa back in the '80's. Back then I mostly disagreed with Grassely, but I thought he was sincere and thoughtful. I sure don't know what happened!

How can President Obama expect to get this done if the leaders on the health care committees responsible for putting together these bills, like Baucus and Grassley, are documented liars, going out there and perpetrating these myths?

Something just hit me.

This fits right in with 'The Culture of Death' (Terri Schiavo, abortion) that the evil Libs are supposedly part of. I'm suprized the phrase hasn't been bought back up.

Ofcourse there will death panels, because Dems are pro-death!

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Two comments:

1. Recent behavior seems to indicate that Chuck Grassley may be suffering from some kind of dementia (weird twitter feeds, strange comments in the press, now this.)

2. After this month, screw bi-partisanship. Go for 51 votes and reconciliation. In 5 years everyone will be so grateful for the benefits of health care reform that Republicans will be trying to claim credit.

I'm an oncologist. And I talk to my patients regularly about end of life issues. And these comments by Grassley and others are an insult to doctors and patients everywhere.

Earlier this evening, I spoke with a patient who is dying. I've known this patient for a long time. And in spite of many treatments we've tried for his cancer, nothing has been working. Today, we spoke about his illness, and he told me what he wanted. He told me that he's tired of coming to the emergency room, and he's tired of being admitted to the hospital. He told me that he wanted to be home for the remainder of his life. He told me that he didn't want to suffer. And he told me that he wanted to die peacefully, in his sleep. We spoke about this at length, and he asked me to enroll him in a hospice program.

People have a right to talk about their wishes at the end of life. This includes setting up health care proxies and advanced directives, exploring their wishes about resuscitation efforts, and discussing end-of-life care options such as hospice. It is the responsibility of doctors -- whether they are oncologists or cardiologists or primary care physicians -- to have these discussions with patients and their families. Such discussions ensure that an individual's wishes are respected at the end of life. Any physician will tell you that patients and their families benefit from these discussion. And they benefit whether these discussions occur over 10 years or 10 days.

We need to make it clear to everyone that this provision does one single thing: it allows physicians to be compensated for having these discussions. These discussions happen anyway -- compensated or not. But they need to happen more. And perhaps one of the reasons they don' happen enough is that there is frequently no way for physicians to be reimbursed for them.

Doctors need to speak out against these unconscionable lies. We know the importance of end-of-life counseling. Many, many people have spoken to their doctors about end of life issues as well -- and they should be speaking out as well. It is time that we stopped these awful lies.

Now that Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has shown his true spots, can we please stop trying to meet him halfway? There is no halfway. Why does everyone except for the White House seem to understand this?

Why doesn't the GOP just place Glenn Beck in charge.

Here is Glenn Beck's broadcast from last night condensed into 10 minutes. I have never seen so many scare tactics, and such much talk of eugenics in such a short period of time.

You have to watch this.

http://progressnotcongress.org/?p=2505

Ok.

If we make this concession: no Death Panels. Health care reform will NOT include euthanasia squads periodically visiting any grandmothers-- can we get Grassley on board?

Also can they still visit old spinsters?

Gotta love those "moderate" Republicans. Keep it up, Max. This is totally the guy you need to give a huge amount of power to, what with his obvious good faith and sincerity and all.

Grassley went wacky a few years ago. He's gone soft in the head, much like his Democratic counterparts.

So how many reform supporters were bused into Grassley's Town Hall Meeting to show support?

Somehow, this reminds me of Obama's campaign. Everyone (almost everyone) kept wondering why are they doing what they are doing and why are they letting other people set the agenda and why are they not speaking out more. In the end, there seemed to be a strategy in place that was a lot more strategic and intelligent than what we (the worriers, not warriors) could come up. Obama and his team almost always seemed to be three steps ahead of the game and was just waiting for the right time to play their hand. My guess would be that the Obama team saw this (Grassley's action) as one of several possible and had a plan to deal with it, either immediately or at the "right" time. Obama's campaign supporters almost always questioned the right time and almost always came away proud of their candidate and his smarts when he played his hand. I think Obama's team have something up their sleeves...again..that none of us would have thought up out loud, but admit that "we knew all along" when it 's another good or brilliant move. Let's hope I'm right.

I posted this chez Digby, but repeat it here in the hope that someone else may recall Grass;ey's first exposure outside of Iowa:

Google isn't helping me to remember why I have thought of Grassley as a typical Republican asshole (not a principled legislator, or independent thinker) since he first joined the House in 1974. But even though I can't remember why I came to that conclusion, it has remained with me for 35 years, and I have had to smile when I hear ignorant people hail him as something that he is not and never has been. The dead grandmother pandering is just par for the course for him, and I would rather puke in his face than try to work constructively with him. On pretty much anything.

This is how the America I know and love conducts town hall meetings, Go Oregon!
http://www.kval.com/news/local/53074457.html?video=pop&t=a

"Grandma is laying in a bed with tubes in her... and that the government should intervene. I think that's a family or religious thing that needs to be dealt with."

Tell that to the Schiavo's.

I do take comfort in having Obama as our president. Throughout the campaign an the begining of his term he has shown himself to be playing te Long-term game. He and he advisors(while clearly not perfect) are aware that when Repub gin up there base they will overplay their hand and show their true colors(white, angry and, sooner or later, violent). This will be exactly the cover needed to justify the reconciliation process.

We have to have faith(ironic coming from an athiest, but anyway) that we have a reasoned individual running our country instead of running amok. He has proven to be up to this challenge.