The majority of poor that I encounter daily are poor because they refuse to work and would rather sit at home and do nothing and let the government support them. The dems promote this because these become democratic voters who want more free stuff.
For well over.a Century, tariffs were the only way for the government to raise money. Then the income tax was passed. It was supposed to be just enough to run the government. Then the government got drunk on spending to get more votes so taxes have to be raised. The California Teacher's Association is now collecting signatures to make permanent a temporary tax on those earning over 750,000 a year. It is set to expire in 2030. There have been so many temporary taxes that have become permanent in CA and yet voters still vote for them.
Trump leveled the playing field with tariffs. Many countries imposed tariffs on imported American goods but we had no tariffs on their goods. This made foreign made goods cheaper than American goods here and abroad. It has made us dependent on China and India for pharmaceuticals. There is a medication I take to manage my diabetes that is only made in China now because it is so cheap. For 6 months during the pandemic, I could not get this medication because China quit shipping it to the US. Then when shipments resumed, they were recalled a few months later because the were contaminated with toxic substances. After it was all cleared up, they resumed shipping non-contaminated meds and we have not learned the lesson, we need to make our own pharmaceuticals. It would be painful, but a tariff on pharmaceuticals would promote their manufacturing in the US
As for assisted suicide, that is a slippery slope. For too long governments have been able to offer generous social benefits because there were more younger working people paying to care for a small aging population. Now it is reversing with a larger aging population and fewer workers supporting them. So assisted suicide makes financial sense.
My mother married a Canadian and moved there. She kept her US citizenship because she was proud to be an American. She worked as an RN and was allowed to work past the mandatory retirement age because there is a severe shortage of nurses in Canada. She negotiated the hospital to pay for a private insurance plan because the government plan was terrible. When her husband turned 65, the government stopped paying for the heart medication he needed because he was past retirement age even though he was self-employed. She simply took him to Buffalo NY to see the American doctors that she trusted more than the Canadian doctors. They prescribed the medication and he was able to buy it cheaper than in Canada because her private insurance paid for it.
Canada and other countries with socialized medicine have been doing this for a very long, get past the age where you contribute to the government, you no longer get the meds you need to live a longer, healthier life.
Assisted suicide just sped up the process of getting the ones who no longer contributed but were a financial burden to die faster.
As a Christian, suicide is immoral. Assisted suicide is just dressing it up a bit to sound like a good idea. Once it becomes acceptable, then it will progress to forced assisted suicides.
Now, my father passed away from liver cancer. When he got to the point of the intense pain, we placed him in hospice care. By then he was going into a coma and my sister, who had the power of attorney for his medical treatment was able to sign off on hospice care, something he was against. He feared dying and wanted treatment even though no treatment could save his very weakened body. They could not even put him under anesthesia for any procedure because it would result in death.
Hospice did what they do best. Under the premise of pain management, they started a morphine drip. They assessed his pain and every day increased the dosage. The reality is they eventually got to the lethal dose of morphine and he passed. The last two weeks of his life, he was not feeling anything.
My mother was an oncology nurse. When she first started in the 70s, over 80% of cancer patients died within a year of diagnosis . During her career that dropped to 25% and many of those went on to have a long cancer free life as long as they kept up with their check ups every 6 months.
If you are a Christian, the difference between humans and animals is we have an internal soul. Life is sacred and our eventual death is in the hands of God. With modern medicine, we can allow terminal patients to die peacefully and relatively pain free. Some refuse that path because they want all life saving efforts to be used. Sometimes, the family wants assisted suicide because it is an emotionally painful process to watch a loved one die. Organisms do not easily die. There are so many internal processes to maintain life under bad situations.
This hit home with my father. His pulse dropped to 15 and respiration rate was between 4 and 6 for 5 days. When that point is reached, the person is no longer aware of anything, they are not getting enough oxygen for higher order thought processes. His heart and lungs should have stopped functioning with the amount of morphine he was given, it was well over the typical overdose level that often causes death.
My mother has had patients who had no detectable pulse and would only take a breathe once or twice a minute last a day or more. Death is a long process, not something that has a definite boundary. Electrical activity can go on for some time after the heart has stopped. Cells take time to die and stop functioning. She also said that even when she first started, many passed away peacefully and not in pain because they changed to pain management with morphine which often sped up the death process.
Our society wants to kill the unborn and the elderly but does everything possible to allow the worst of the worst criminals live a very long life in comfort. These are the ones that can never be trusted to roam free in society because they will harm others.
Finally, having been in the hospital for a few weeks from a stroke and then more recently with a difficult to diagnose heart issue, I can say that many times those you hear screaming out or in emotional distress are the ones that have refused to take care of their health and still eat all the wrong foods, refuse to follow treatments for chronic health issues because they just have to have all the foods they want to eat and it is too hard to get out of the chair to exercise. They want the magic pill that fixes everything so they do not have to change their behavior.
When I was in the hospital the last time, I had two different roommates that were grossly obese and had undergone multiple heart surgeries because they refused to change their diets and stop smoking and alcohol. Both were demanding foods that they could no longer have because they were in kidney failure and heart failure. One could not even swallow food without choking on it but he had to have his cheeseburger, fries and shake. The family refused to step up when the person was no longer competent to make their own decisions and authorize sedatives, morphine for the pain, or hospice care. The daughter of one was angry that the hospital would not release her father to her care that she called the police to file a report. When the officers told her there was no way he could be moved safely she went ballistic. Her father passed away screaming a few hours later and she was upset that when his heart stopped, they did not perform CPR. He was 50 and had been wheelchair bound for over 10 years due to uncontrolled diabetes and an ever worsening heart condition. The kidney failure put him over and dialysis was no longer working. He weighed over 500 pounds.
Fair points, but once you permit it, the slope will get slippery, and since government controls much of our health care, and wants to control more, it would only be a matter of time before government funded doctors start telling us it’s the “right thing to do” or “it’s your only option.”
I would 100% agree that it can be a slippery slope. But, I also think that just because it's a slippery slope doesn't mean we're doomed to go down it. For example, I think it's a good idea for parents to spank their kids. But, would I mandate that parents spank their kids? Nope. What about government mandated spanking of kids for things? I'd consider that a huge abuse of power.
I’d agree that government mandated spanking, like pretty much anything outside of basics, is an abuse of power. My concern is that once it’s ok for a third-party to legally take a life (sure, they can say it’s at the request of the person being euthanized but what about the mentally ill, unstable, depressed, etc.). how far is the next step for government to argue that euthanasia should be mandated under certain circumstances (mostly when the cost of continued treatment is “determined” to be too high?
That's a legitimate concern. It ABSOLUTELY IS a slippery slope. I would say also tho that I think it's currently legal in....maybe 10 states -- for a doctor to give you drugs to administer to yourself to kill yourself if you're terminally ill and in pain. This seems like a pretty small step beyond that, but one that would make a huge positive difference for a lot of people.
Fair point, although too frequently decisions made for “some people,” “a few people,” or a “lot of people,” have unforeseen circumstances negatively impact everyone else and society as a whole. That being said, I do see your point.
I used to think that American in general would never sway too far from our moral foundations and thus I was all for assisted suicide with adequate controls. Since Trump ran for President, I completely lost my belief in that, and now I am more on the side of keeping it as is, generally illegal, to prevent the moral hazard "progress" that would likely occur from the rent seeking money looters and the bizzarro left cult. Look what these cretins did during Covid. Look at what they have done with gender ideology and children. Look what they have done with illegal immigration vs citizen welfare. We simply cannot surf the logos waves with so much pathos and ethos power threatening to wipe us all out. We have to play defense and suffer some sub optimization for what would otherwise be an improvement based on reasonable moral arguments.
The good news is that today there is a path to what is really assisted suicide. It goes like this... Someone dying ends up in hospice care, and hospice can continue with increased doses of morphine to combat pain until the patient's heart stops beating. That is how my mother left this world two years after being diagnosed with a stage-4 glioblastoma tumor. Thank God for that hospice professional that saw her through to her starting her journey to the lord's house.
I am with you on the tariffs and not trying to solve income inequality by taking it from the people on top. Wary of the euthanasia idea. Too many other people have a vested interest in someone else's demise. And maybe your pain on earth counts toward your purgatory time?
This "purgatory time" of which you speak; this is a Middle Ages invention of the Catholic Church to sell indulgences, wasn't it? My KJV bible doesn't have any scripture about it, at least not that I've ever seen. I guess the Catholic bible is different, though, I mean they contend that Mary died a virgin and thus Jesus had no brothers, right? Or were they adopted or a product of more angelic conception? Thanks for your interesting comment!
I appreciate that and I am fully recovered with no long-term consequences other than losing a little bit of oblique muscle that I have fully compensated for once I was able to get back to training.
John, this is a tough subject, one that I wish I had the option to decide, even for myself, frankly. As someone has already commented, you're going to catch hell about interfering with God's timing. But I'm mentally adept enough to understand that with modern medicine, we typically greatly prolong people's lives beyond where they would have been had we let nature take its course. I remember when you almost died, and I was very happy that you survived. If you had refused that treatment, you probably would have died, yes? But the Bible talks about only God knowing the number of our days, and of course the Church has taken a very strong position against suicide. I don't want to f-up my eternity just to bail out of a really bad situation. So, I'm conflicted. And would I trust a government bureaucrat to make that decision for me? I'd have to be crazy to do that. My compromise is to rely a lot on the power of the Holy Spirit to heal me, but if that doesn't happen, to pray alternately that the angel of death comes quickly and that I get to go home a little sooner than I had "planned." Pray about it, and make your decision based on what you hear back.
I don't want a government bureaucrat making that decision either, but I also don't consider paying a private company to administer a lethal dose of poison suicide.
To me, the whole concept of a hospice seems unnecessary in 2026. We have the tech to put someone in a permanent coma or to quickly and painlessly end their life. When life has turned into nothing but suffering and there's nothing left to do but wait to die, I think the right thing to do is to give people a choice about whether they would continue on. Some of them would. Others wouldn't. I don't see anything morally wrong with saying, "My run is over and there's nothing but pain left, so I'm ready to let it end."
Those decisions are effectively made in hospitals all the time. People choose to stop treating things, knowing that the consequence is death. Whether the death occurs in a week or after six months of torment seems like something I think should be left to the person and if it can be done without having them make a moral choice they feel uncomfortable with, I think that's much better.
Love your stuff but not this. No. Society cannot go down this road.
The majority of poor that I encounter daily are poor because they refuse to work and would rather sit at home and do nothing and let the government support them. The dems promote this because these become democratic voters who want more free stuff.
For well over.a Century, tariffs were the only way for the government to raise money. Then the income tax was passed. It was supposed to be just enough to run the government. Then the government got drunk on spending to get more votes so taxes have to be raised. The California Teacher's Association is now collecting signatures to make permanent a temporary tax on those earning over 750,000 a year. It is set to expire in 2030. There have been so many temporary taxes that have become permanent in CA and yet voters still vote for them.
Trump leveled the playing field with tariffs. Many countries imposed tariffs on imported American goods but we had no tariffs on their goods. This made foreign made goods cheaper than American goods here and abroad. It has made us dependent on China and India for pharmaceuticals. There is a medication I take to manage my diabetes that is only made in China now because it is so cheap. For 6 months during the pandemic, I could not get this medication because China quit shipping it to the US. Then when shipments resumed, they were recalled a few months later because the were contaminated with toxic substances. After it was all cleared up, they resumed shipping non-contaminated meds and we have not learned the lesson, we need to make our own pharmaceuticals. It would be painful, but a tariff on pharmaceuticals would promote their manufacturing in the US
As for assisted suicide, that is a slippery slope. For too long governments have been able to offer generous social benefits because there were more younger working people paying to care for a small aging population. Now it is reversing with a larger aging population and fewer workers supporting them. So assisted suicide makes financial sense.
My mother married a Canadian and moved there. She kept her US citizenship because she was proud to be an American. She worked as an RN and was allowed to work past the mandatory retirement age because there is a severe shortage of nurses in Canada. She negotiated the hospital to pay for a private insurance plan because the government plan was terrible. When her husband turned 65, the government stopped paying for the heart medication he needed because he was past retirement age even though he was self-employed. She simply took him to Buffalo NY to see the American doctors that she trusted more than the Canadian doctors. They prescribed the medication and he was able to buy it cheaper than in Canada because her private insurance paid for it.
Canada and other countries with socialized medicine have been doing this for a very long, get past the age where you contribute to the government, you no longer get the meds you need to live a longer, healthier life.
Assisted suicide just sped up the process of getting the ones who no longer contributed but were a financial burden to die faster.
As a Christian, suicide is immoral. Assisted suicide is just dressing it up a bit to sound like a good idea. Once it becomes acceptable, then it will progress to forced assisted suicides.
Now, my father passed away from liver cancer. When he got to the point of the intense pain, we placed him in hospice care. By then he was going into a coma and my sister, who had the power of attorney for his medical treatment was able to sign off on hospice care, something he was against. He feared dying and wanted treatment even though no treatment could save his very weakened body. They could not even put him under anesthesia for any procedure because it would result in death.
Hospice did what they do best. Under the premise of pain management, they started a morphine drip. They assessed his pain and every day increased the dosage. The reality is they eventually got to the lethal dose of morphine and he passed. The last two weeks of his life, he was not feeling anything.
My mother was an oncology nurse. When she first started in the 70s, over 80% of cancer patients died within a year of diagnosis . During her career that dropped to 25% and many of those went on to have a long cancer free life as long as they kept up with their check ups every 6 months.
If you are a Christian, the difference between humans and animals is we have an internal soul. Life is sacred and our eventual death is in the hands of God. With modern medicine, we can allow terminal patients to die peacefully and relatively pain free. Some refuse that path because they want all life saving efforts to be used. Sometimes, the family wants assisted suicide because it is an emotionally painful process to watch a loved one die. Organisms do not easily die. There are so many internal processes to maintain life under bad situations.
This hit home with my father. His pulse dropped to 15 and respiration rate was between 4 and 6 for 5 days. When that point is reached, the person is no longer aware of anything, they are not getting enough oxygen for higher order thought processes. His heart and lungs should have stopped functioning with the amount of morphine he was given, it was well over the typical overdose level that often causes death.
My mother has had patients who had no detectable pulse and would only take a breathe once or twice a minute last a day or more. Death is a long process, not something that has a definite boundary. Electrical activity can go on for some time after the heart has stopped. Cells take time to die and stop functioning. She also said that even when she first started, many passed away peacefully and not in pain because they changed to pain management with morphine which often sped up the death process.
Our society wants to kill the unborn and the elderly but does everything possible to allow the worst of the worst criminals live a very long life in comfort. These are the ones that can never be trusted to roam free in society because they will harm others.
Finally, having been in the hospital for a few weeks from a stroke and then more recently with a difficult to diagnose heart issue, I can say that many times those you hear screaming out or in emotional distress are the ones that have refused to take care of their health and still eat all the wrong foods, refuse to follow treatments for chronic health issues because they just have to have all the foods they want to eat and it is too hard to get out of the chair to exercise. They want the magic pill that fixes everything so they do not have to change their behavior.
When I was in the hospital the last time, I had two different roommates that were grossly obese and had undergone multiple heart surgeries because they refused to change their diets and stop smoking and alcohol. Both were demanding foods that they could no longer have because they were in kidney failure and heart failure. One could not even swallow food without choking on it but he had to have his cheeseburger, fries and shake. The family refused to step up when the person was no longer competent to make their own decisions and authorize sedatives, morphine for the pain, or hospice care. The daughter of one was angry that the hospital would not release her father to her care that she called the police to file a report. When the officers told her there was no way he could be moved safely she went ballistic. Her father passed away screaming a few hours later and she was upset that when his heart stopped, they did not perform CPR. He was 50 and had been wheelchair bound for over 10 years due to uncontrolled diabetes and an ever worsening heart condition. The kidney failure put him over and dialysis was no longer working. He weighed over 500 pounds.
Fair points, but once you permit it, the slope will get slippery, and since government controls much of our health care, and wants to control more, it would only be a matter of time before government funded doctors start telling us it’s the “right thing to do” or “it’s your only option.”
I would 100% agree that it can be a slippery slope. But, I also think that just because it's a slippery slope doesn't mean we're doomed to go down it. For example, I think it's a good idea for parents to spank their kids. But, would I mandate that parents spank their kids? Nope. What about government mandated spanking of kids for things? I'd consider that a huge abuse of power.
I’d agree that government mandated spanking, like pretty much anything outside of basics, is an abuse of power. My concern is that once it’s ok for a third-party to legally take a life (sure, they can say it’s at the request of the person being euthanized but what about the mentally ill, unstable, depressed, etc.). how far is the next step for government to argue that euthanasia should be mandated under certain circumstances (mostly when the cost of continued treatment is “determined” to be too high?
That's a legitimate concern. It ABSOLUTELY IS a slippery slope. I would say also tho that I think it's currently legal in....maybe 10 states -- for a doctor to give you drugs to administer to yourself to kill yourself if you're terminally ill and in pain. This seems like a pretty small step beyond that, but one that would make a huge positive difference for a lot of people.
Fair point, although too frequently decisions made for “some people,” “a few people,” or a “lot of people,” have unforeseen circumstances negatively impact everyone else and society as a whole. That being said, I do see your point.
I used to think that American in general would never sway too far from our moral foundations and thus I was all for assisted suicide with adequate controls. Since Trump ran for President, I completely lost my belief in that, and now I am more on the side of keeping it as is, generally illegal, to prevent the moral hazard "progress" that would likely occur from the rent seeking money looters and the bizzarro left cult. Look what these cretins did during Covid. Look at what they have done with gender ideology and children. Look what they have done with illegal immigration vs citizen welfare. We simply cannot surf the logos waves with so much pathos and ethos power threatening to wipe us all out. We have to play defense and suffer some sub optimization for what would otherwise be an improvement based on reasonable moral arguments.
The good news is that today there is a path to what is really assisted suicide. It goes like this... Someone dying ends up in hospice care, and hospice can continue with increased doses of morphine to combat pain until the patient's heart stops beating. That is how my mother left this world two years after being diagnosed with a stage-4 glioblastoma tumor. Thank God for that hospice professional that saw her through to her starting her journey to the lord's house.
I am with you on the tariffs and not trying to solve income inequality by taking it from the people on top. Wary of the euthanasia idea. Too many other people have a vested interest in someone else's demise. And maybe your pain on earth counts toward your purgatory time?
This "purgatory time" of which you speak; this is a Middle Ages invention of the Catholic Church to sell indulgences, wasn't it? My KJV bible doesn't have any scripture about it, at least not that I've ever seen. I guess the Catholic bible is different, though, I mean they contend that Mary died a virgin and thus Jesus had no brothers, right? Or were they adopted or a product of more angelic conception? Thanks for your interesting comment!
I had somewhat forgotten about what you went through in 2024. Hoping you have fully recovered and will keep you in my prayers.
I appreciate that and I am fully recovered with no long-term consequences other than losing a little bit of oblique muscle that I have fully compensated for once I was able to get back to training.
John, this is a tough subject, one that I wish I had the option to decide, even for myself, frankly. As someone has already commented, you're going to catch hell about interfering with God's timing. But I'm mentally adept enough to understand that with modern medicine, we typically greatly prolong people's lives beyond where they would have been had we let nature take its course. I remember when you almost died, and I was very happy that you survived. If you had refused that treatment, you probably would have died, yes? But the Bible talks about only God knowing the number of our days, and of course the Church has taken a very strong position against suicide. I don't want to f-up my eternity just to bail out of a really bad situation. So, I'm conflicted. And would I trust a government bureaucrat to make that decision for me? I'd have to be crazy to do that. My compromise is to rely a lot on the power of the Holy Spirit to heal me, but if that doesn't happen, to pray alternately that the angel of death comes quickly and that I get to go home a little sooner than I had "planned." Pray about it, and make your decision based on what you hear back.
I don't want a government bureaucrat making that decision either, but I also don't consider paying a private company to administer a lethal dose of poison suicide.
To me, the whole concept of a hospice seems unnecessary in 2026. We have the tech to put someone in a permanent coma or to quickly and painlessly end their life. When life has turned into nothing but suffering and there's nothing left to do but wait to die, I think the right thing to do is to give people a choice about whether they would continue on. Some of them would. Others wouldn't. I don't see anything morally wrong with saying, "My run is over and there's nothing but pain left, so I'm ready to let it end."
Those decisions are effectively made in hospitals all the time. People choose to stop treating things, knowing that the consequence is death. Whether the death occurs in a week or after six months of torment seems like something I think should be left to the person and if it can be done without having them make a moral choice they feel uncomfortable with, I think that's much better.
I WHOLLY agree with euthanasia, whether self-inflicted or shopped out. But, I expect you're going to catch hell from the God Pod of your readers.
I, for one, do not plan to let death catch me dying.