Rick Santorum's 'Involuntary Euthanasia' Claim Outrages Dutch

The International Business ^ | February 20, 2012 | MELANIE JONES

[BarnacleCenturion]

Rick Santorum's claim that the Netherlands advocates mass murder through involuntary euthanasia has prompted a furious backlash from the Western European country, with local news sources calling the Republican a "crazy extreme" candidate making up facts to stir up his political base.

"Rick Santorum Thinks He Knows the Netherlands: Murder of the Elderly on a Grand Scale" fumed the headline of the newspaper NRC Handelsblad on Saturday.

The article references an interview, barely played up by the American press, in which Santorum claims that euthanasia makes up "10 percent of all deaths" in the Netherlands," and that many of those people were essentially murdered by the state.

[muawiyah]

Apparently you are unable to MULTITASK. I don’t care for murder and I like high employment figures. Both issues are important.

[FastCoyote]

[Apparently you are unable to MULTITASK. I don’t care for murder and I like high employment figures. Both issues are important.]

Point well taken. Of course that’s not what you implied earlier. So given resources are limited, put a percentage figure on how much time should be devoted to social issues, and how much to economic issues.

[muawiyah]

There’s a URL already on this thread about a society in Nederland that issues the ‘wristbands’ to their members to verify they are not in the hospital to be put to death. You should read the article.

[muawiyah]

Whatever it takes to win ~ remember, even some Democrats still give a darn.

Not everybody is a superannuated harpy out to get some babies to kill.

[b9]

Good grief.

Picture a President Santorum p!$$!ng off world leaders, one by one.

Now picture President Gingrich recruiting allies who can finally trust America again.

[chris37]

Yes, she is obviously a vicious, murdering b*cth despite the adorable new born in her arms.

[FastCoyote]

[Whatever it takes to win ~ remember, even some Democrats still give a darn.]

You claimed earlier that I was some kind of murderer for espousing exactly that same prescription. My gut feeling is that Gingrich has a better balance than Santorum for the long haul.

[TheWriterTX]

Each must vote his or her own way; I respect that.

I was standing up for Santorum because he spoke the truth. The truth is the truth and should be defended.

I've defended Perry in the past, as well, when the smear machine turned against him with half-baked lies and fabrications.

Getting too old to tolerate lies, no matter who's telling them or who they are against.

[muawiyah]

Just a challenge, not a charge.

[Marguerite]

“Picture a President Santorum p!$$!ng off world leaders, one by one.”

Reverend Rick has already p!$$!ed off the Protestants ....

Reverend Rick has already p!$$!ed off Netherlands ....

And it seems that he and Mitt start p!$$!ng off the Jews (me included).

http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenbertoni/2012/02/21/billionaire-sheldon-adelson-says-he-might-give-100m-to-newt-gingrich-or-other-republican/

Sheldon Adelson plays as stubbornly in politics as he does in business. So the criticisms that he’s trying to personally buy the presidential election for Newt Gingrich are met with a roll of the eyes. “Those people are either jealous or professional critics,” Adelson tells me during his first interview since he and his wife began funneling $11 million, with another $10 million injection widely expected, into the former speaker’s super PAC, Winning Our Future. “They like to trash other people. It’s unfair that I’ve been treated unfair — but it doesn’t stop me. I might give $10 million or $100 million to Gingrich.”

[true believer forever]

Exactly. Just like patients in hospitals here, even hospice, are given wrist bands for DNR/DR. Many of them are, at best, confused; otherwise demented, in advanced Alzheimer’s, or totally physically disabled, with no speech.

To make this somehow into an issue where every old person in a hospital in the Netherlands has to protect themselves with a wrist band, lest they be destroyed by the roving kill-the-old-people machine is really abhorrent. If the culture and the physicians are so eager to, illegally and otherwise, put old people to death, which is the picture being painted, a little wrist band is not going to stop them... Most people find it disingenuous at best...And it is the kind of fables and fiction and images Santorum consistently deals with... and some people love it. Others realize it speaks of something fundamentally unsound in the candidate.

I posted two articles, from two recognized journals of medicine, overflowing with statistics and clinical research, you should read them... All science isn’t bad, even the science that doesn’t support one’s preconceived notions...

[muawiyah]

Maybe the wristband does stop them ~ most of them say it does ~ but going to another country would probably be more helpful.

BTW, the DNR (do not resusitate) is supposed to be volutary here ~ but apparently NOT THERE.

The 10% figure turns out to be very correct.

BTW, that should be a 0% figure ~

[muawiyah]

I doubt Santorum would PO the Protestants in America ~ certainly in Nederland but not here. He has their support so far.

I suspect Protestantism in Europe has lost its direction.

[true believer forever]

It’s NOT correct. Did you read the research studies I posted, or even glance at them? I have learned the hard way it doesn’t pay to argue with or try to show a Santorum supporter facts... so have it your way... fine with me.

[Marguerite]

"I doubt Santorum would PO the Protestants in America"

On today’s Up with Chris Hayes, the host unveiled a 2008 talk by Rick Santorum.

The speech is from a 2008 event at Ave Maria College in Florida, where Santorum notes that America was founded upon a Christian philosophy but “the Judeo-Christian ethic was a Protestant one.” “We look at the shape of mainline protestantism in this country and it is in shambles, it is gone from the world of Christianity as I see it”

http://video.msnbc.msn.com/up-with-chris-hayes/46438704#46438704

[Marguerite]

Before Santorum pursues his campaign for the GOP presidential, he should take the time and actually read and digest what is written black on white in the Constitution of the United States of America:

Article Six:

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

The actual crusade he's fighting based on his own religious beliefs it is antonymous to the US Constitution, meaning unconstitutional.

[aruanan]

...but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

The actual crusade he's fighting based on his own religious beliefs it is antonymous to the US Constitution, meaning unconstitutional.

And you're not deeply embarrassed to utter such a non sequitur?

[Marguerite]

Nowhere in the US Constitution is written that the president have to be Catholic or Christian for that matter. Santorum points are irrelevant as far as the religious trend is concerned.

Gingrich, who is also Catholic, claims the right way to put out any controversy: the respect of the Constitution and its First Amendment and Sixth Article.

“Congress shall make NO LAW respecting an establishment of religion, or PROHIBITING the free exercise thereof ....”

Article VI

“NO RELIGIOUS Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

Period.

[muawiyah]

Marguerite, a little history is in order. The state of Pennsylvania prohibited anyone but Quakers (Camisards) from running for public office.

The purpose of this clause was to PREVENT Pennsylvania from restricting the rights of non-Quakers.

It has nothing whatsoever to do with any candidate's own religious beliefs. He is free to say anything he wants about his own religion or his morals. The government, however, may not restrict him from running for or holding office on account of his religion.

Now about that extraordinarily high murder rate you folks have ~ GAD!

[muawiyah]

Another piece of history ~ in the vicinity of Philadelphia, a very large city in Pennsylvania, there is a bit of railroad track called "the Mainline". Philadelphia's rich and powerful people lived along the Mainline and commuted back and forth from the brokerages and industries located in the city.

These people tended to belong to a fixed group of Protestant, or allegedly Protestant churches ~ the Episcopaleans, Dutch Reformed, Presbyterians, that sort. Old money, old families, old everything. Your more ordinary people were Baptists, Catholics, Methodists, Lutherans and so on. They didn't live along the Mainline.

It's the term "Mainline", not "Protestant" that's operative in that particular statement, and it is very true that the Mainline churches which were owned and operated by the very rich are in serious trouble. They're being taken over by homosexuals and non-Christians. Those who can, escape to other up and coming denominations, or even into the Catholic church.

Doesn't PO me at all to hear Santorum criticize the MAINLINE ~ they deserve it. They no longer hold the Mandate of Heaven ~ that's moved on to other more worthy Christians.

BTW, your understanding of American cultural history is just horrid. You could pick up any number of standard textbooks used in universities and get over this. Find one that has MAINLINE in the index, and check and see if that refers to religious bodies or heroin. Big difference eh! But it's a clue.