Ride for your lives, Dutch ladies! Ride like the wind!
You know all the GOP palaver about how President Obama has wrecked America’s place in the World Cup of Global Domination and Awesome?
Here’s what people in the Netherlands are talking about these days, when they talk about America:
Rick Santorum’s invocation of a nightmare of mass murder of the elderly in the Netherlands has provoked a storm of incredulity and criticism in the Western European country, where the local press say his statistics are wildly inflated.
“Rick Santorum Thinks He Knows the Netherlands: Murder of the Elderly on a Grand Scale” is Saturday’s headline in the daily newspaper NRC Handelsblad.
“Rick Santorum is an arch conservative. The most conservative of all candidates in the Republican primaries. He loathes abortion and euthanasia. So now he loathes the Netherlands. Because in the Netherlands we kill the elderly like there’s no tomorrow,” reads the story, according to a translation provided by BuzzFeed’s Low Country correspondent, and author of a Dutch blog on American politics, Bertine Moenaff. The story quotes Santorum, before concluding: “This man is really imaginative. It would be a laughing matter, if he weren’t in the race for the Republican nomination to take on Barack Obama in the race for the presidency of the most powerful country in the world.”
This is in response to a discussion with James Dobson (clip below), in which our good friend Rick told an audience that a) old people in the Netherlands wear bracelets that read “don’t euthanize me” because b) 10% of deaths in Holland are a result of euthanasia and c) half of those are involuntary.
The truth?
The Dutch public broadcaster Radio 1 described Santorum’s remark as “fact-free politics,” and the comments have gotten wide play, leading this evening’s broadcast of the country’s popular current-event’s show De Wereld Draait Door and drawing reports all over the national media.
The Dutch sources estimate that legal euthanasia is the cause of what the Christian paper Nederlands Dagblad put at 3.2% fo deaths at the most liberal estimate, and others put around 2%. Public statistics, which have been reported since the practice was legalized in 2002, cite 3,136 reports of euthanasia out of a total of 136,000 in the Netherlands in 2011, a bit more than 2%.
The Dutch were also flummoxed by Santorum’s claim that Dutch elderly wear “Don’t Euthanize Me” bracelets.
Dude’s a crazy-pants liar, or he’s just crazy-pants, but either way, every single time you hear a Republican complain that our President is too French-y? Remember how we sound to the Europeans.
Sigh.
h/t BuzzFeed
Crossposted at Emily L. Hauser In My Head.
I seriously believe that Rick Santorum is psychologically messed up. He’s had a horribly tough row to hoe with the catastrophic health issues of a couple of his kids, and it’s understandably damaged him. The fact that he’s on the presidential campaign trail and being regarded as a serious candidate, rather than in a mental health clinic getting the treatment he needs, speaks volumes for this nation, and absolutely none of it good.
A Republican making crap up about liberals and Europe? No, Parish the Thought, Emily!!!
I find it hilarious that other nations can seeing we are blatantly avoiding, the Republican primary slate is dominated by crazy people who wouldn’t know facts if the were beaten with an Encyclopedia set.
To quote a commentator on Buzzfeed:
“”Actually, we care for our old by providing them with universal healthcare and a good pension system. Something completely alien to the US. And when someone is in a vegetative state or has to endure excruciating pain, they can opt to end their lives. More people die due to lack of access to basic healthcare in the land of the free.