Studies suggest he has a 50/50 chance of dying in office if elected.
Gage Skidmore
Alongtime reader who was a senior official government in a previous Democratic administration sent me this:
I’m sorry if this question strikes people as impolite. A 78-year old man who had a heart attack less than five months ago and refuses to release his complete medical records is the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination. If Bernie Sanders is nominated and elected president, what are the odds he can complete a full term? The answer is about 50-50.A team of nine cardiologists recently published a study in the Journal of the American Heart Association that can help answer that question.Their study tracked the expected mortality and life expectancy of people who survive a first heart attack (myocardial infarction) at ages 65 and older. The scientists’ data are comprehensive, covering what happened to 22,295 heart attack patients admitted to U.S. hospitals from October 2004 to December 2006.Their analysis provides two ways to estimate a person’s expected mortality and life-expectancy based on age and cardiac history. Both methods produced nearly identical results. The likelihood that a person of Senator Sanders’ age and heart history will die within one year – that takes us through September 2020 – is 25 percent. Further, the median period of survival for those patients is about five years, so the likelihood that someone of Senator Sanders’ age and heart history will survive through the next presidential term is about 50-50.This is far from typical. According to the CDC, the odds that a 78-year old American will die within one year are just over 4 percent, and the odds over five years are less than 23 percent. Moreover, 45 people have served as President of the United States, and four of them died in office from natural causes. The historical likelihood that a president will die in office for medical reasons, therefore, is less than 9 percent.The analysis of Senator Sanders’ prospects could be more precise than 50-50, if we knew a common indicator of his current cardiac status, called the “the left ventricular ejection fraction.” This measures the blood volume a person’s heart pushes out with each heartbeat. According to an interview by NBC News with the president of the American College of Cardiology, Dr. Richard Kovacs, the results are closely associated with a patient’s expected mortality rate. By this measure, the normal blood volume level is 60 percent. At 40 to 50 percent, the functioning of the heart’s left ventricle is said to be mildly impaired; at 30 percent to 40 percent, moderately impaired; and at 30 percent or less, severely impaired.It is certainly reasonable that voters know those results for a 78-year old potential nominee with a heart condition. Thus far, Senator Sanders has refused. If he persists and is nominated, voters will have to consider very carefully his choice for vice president, since the odds that a vice president would succeed a President Sanders for medical reasons during his first term will jump from an average 9 percent to 50 percent.
The inferences the writer draws from the sources he links to seem sound to me. But I’m not a physician, and neither is the writer. So I’d be curious to get feedback from readers who are medical doctors—especially from cardiologists.
In Vermont, "that giant sucking sound" is not jobs moving to Mexico — it is jobs being concocted in
Montpelier. Of course, Governor Scott shields illegal
immigrants working in Vermont, and Vermont provides
driver's licenses to them. The capital
city also grants non-citizen residents the right
to vote. It is no surprise that Vermont is #1 in the country
for illegal
northern border crossings.
Bernie
Leads His Party to Open Borders
In Vermont, "that giant sucking sound" is not jobs moving to Mexico — it is jobs being concocted in
Montpelier. Of course, Governor Scott shields illegal
immigrants working in Vermont, and Vermont provides
driver's licenses to them. The capital
city also grants non-citizen residents the right
to vote. It is no surprise that Vermont is #1 in the country
for illegal
northern border crossings.
Bernie
Leads His Party to Open Borders
Some 100
members of an American Mormon community in northern Mexico, nine of whom --
women, children, toddlers -- were massacred a week ago on a lonely stretch of
highway, just crossed over into Arizona.
Other
family members who have lived there for decades will follow.
The
atrocity was the work of one of the cartels battling for control of the drug
traffic into the United States.
In
Mexico's Sinaloa state in October, an arrest of Ovidio Guzman Lopez, son of
"El Chapo," who sits in a New York prison, brought a military-style
cartel attack on the state capital, Culiacan, followed by a surrender to the
cartel gunmen by national guard and army troops, and a release of the captive.
"Is
Mexico a failed state?" asks The Washington Times. Its editorial describes
"Another Blood-Soaked Year in Mexico" where 17,000 people were
murdered by July and the 2019 death toll is expected to reach 32,000.
USA Today
reports: "Through August of the current fiscal year, the Border Patrol
apprehended 457,871 migrants arriving as 'family units' ... a 406% increase
compared to the 90,554 family unit apprehensions during the same period the
previous year. Migrant families from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador made
up almost 92% of the total."
With
cartel battles escalating into a war that Mexico City has no stomach for
fighting, and a record number of migrants from Central America crossing Mexico
to flood into the USA, what is the Democratic Party's policy for halting the
rising tide?
Democrats
are moving toward an "open door" policy on the U.S. border, an open
borders embrace of any and all who wish to come.
America,
apparently, does not belong to those who live here and love the country.
America belongs to anyone who chooses to come. America belongs to the world.
Consider
Bernie Sanders' immigration proposal, outlined the week of the massacre of
Mormon women and children.
On Day
One, President Sanders would declare a moratorium on deportations and offer a
"swift pathway to citizenship" for all illegal migrants who have been
here for five years.
Bernie
would break up ICE. Border-jumping would cease to be a crime and become a civil
offense like jaywalking. The "Muslim ban" would be abolished.
President
Sanders would back sanctuary cities that refuse to work with U.S. law
enforcement. Asylum seekers would not have to wait in Mexico as their claims
were processed but would be welcomed into the USA.
Family
separations would end. Trump's wall, which Bernie calls "racist,"
would be history. The administration's treatment of illegal immigration
"as a criminal and national security matter is inhuman, impractical and
must end."
Migrants
who enter illegally would qualify for federal health care and the same social
welfare benefits as U.S. citizens. Immigrant officials say Sanders' proposals
would create an irresistible magnet for millions of migrants from all over the
world to stampede into the USA.
The
Nation magazine calls Sanders' plan "one of the boldest immigration plans
any major politician has put forward in years, and comes amid a campaign season
that has seen a major shift to the left among Democratic candidates on
immigration.
"With
calls for a total moratorium on deportations, abolishing ICE and providing a
path to citizenship for undocumented migration, the plan serves as a road map
for what a fair and just immigration can be."
From
another standpoint, Sanders' proposal is a surrender to the reality that a
leftist regime lacks the conviction or will to stop an endless stream of people
from migrating here.
Americans
troubled over what is happening on the Syrian-Turkish border, or
Ukrainian-Crimean border, might take a closer look at what will happen at our
own border, and to our own country, if Democrats win the presidency and throw
open the doors to unrestricted immigration.
The
federal budget, already running trillion-dollar deficits, and state budgets,
too, will see huge increases in the cost of social programs, without the
commensurate income tax revenues to pay for them.
Even at
present levels, illegal immigration is bringing in millions of people without
the work, education or language skills to compete and assimilate rapidly in a
first world, Western economy.
These
migrants pay virtually no income taxes, yet, would qualify for the same
benefits as U.S. citizens. The inevitable result: another run-up in an annual
deficit already running $1 trillion in the red.
Politically,
so massive a migration of peoples who, once they become citizens, vote 70%-90%
Democratic means an end of the GOP as a truly national party.
If we
open the borders, how do we stop the drugs from coming in? How do we stop the
cartels from following MS-13, which is already here?
Socially,
this country is as splintered as it has been since the 1960s.
Will a
barrage of migrants add to its diversity, or deepen the ethnic, racial and
cultural divides that are turning us into two, three, many Americas?
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of
"Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and
Divided America Forever." To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read
features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website
at www.creators.com.
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