So. I really meant to come back and comment further on the meaningful news of the day, but, well, death panel.
Death panel? DEATH PANEL!?! Really, Sarah Palin? Here's what she posted today on noted news site Facebook (emphasis added):
The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's "death panel" so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their "level of productivity in society," whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.
"The Death Panel is coming! Save me, Sarah Palin!"
The second is that Sarah Palin truly believes this. If that's true, well, I'm glad she's taking to the series of tubes, as they call the Internet in Alaska, to tell the world. What troubles me is that she and thousands of her followers seem able only to forward messages like these to their closest associates, but are not able to direct these same energies toward searching out the veracity of the rumor itself. For all of these people, and for those who love them despite getting their my-head-is-going-to-explode e-mails, I would like to introduce/remind you of two of the best inventions on the Internet: Let Me Google That For You and Snopes. If you have crazy and/or conservative relatives, I cannot recommend bookmarking these two sites enough. They provide quick, easy solutions to the problem of lack of thinking for oneself that seems to completely encapsulate the strategy of the GOP and their e-mail chains.
The last I'm stealing from my boyfriend: "Maybe she's just bat-shit crazy." Occum's Razor does point me in this direction, because how far divorced from the reality of our current society must you be to believe that the current president is about to institute DEATH PANELS via a system designed to improve health care availability. Please, Mrs. Palin, point to a place on Earth with a government-managed health system where something like this has happened. And if you've been using the BBC as your source, well, make sure it's BBC News, not Drama, that you're watching (and message me if you want to know the difference).
Run, kiddies! Evil Obama-led Socialism is coming!
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Catherine Forsythe
Writer to the Stars
Emily Holleman
Iron Skillet
Leslie Harpole
old new lefty
Salon.com
Comments
I'm glad you wrote about this. I wanted to, but the story just left me feeling simultaneously angry and listless.
Maybe I'll check out "Torchwood" after I finish up the second season of "Mad Men"!
P.S. Regarding Snopes, the newest tactic is to claim that it is a partisan website. Our dear friend DJohn did this recently. It is a convenient excuse to ignore inconvenient facts.
Jeanette, I wondered how long it would take before the old tactic of "the truth is just more lies!" started up. Sigh. Snopes is so reliable, too.
And JLee -- I need to see Series 1 & 2 of Torchwood, still, but I really enjoyed (that's not quite the right word) "Children of Earth."
or, those much-beloved politicians could spread it around as incentive pay for better politicking.
Poor Sowell. Even as shameless as he is, it has to hurt when his name gets associated with Sarah's.
I have watched TORCHWOOD from the beginning, but the "Children of Earth" series was just stunning. I was numb at the end. The character of Frobisher and his family...so many real "civil servants" or "functionaries" with just that sort of misplaced loyalty. We have seen so many "heavy lies the head that wears the crown" stories over the years, but this series looked at the man who carried out the decisions issued from on high. Chilling. And finally seeing the true function of the push for standardized testing was a WOW moment.
I received conservative talking points by e-mail this week. The e-mail - from a well-educated friend - claimed that the government plan advocates euthanizing the elderly.
The e-mail did do a favor, though - it provided the link to the bill and page number references for the wild claims. Thus I could read for myself how they're taking reimbursement for "advance care planning," and the portability of living wills, and turning it into euthanasia hysteria. My husband and I have living wills. When he suggested it, I didn't think he was planning on doing away with me. And we paid our lawyer to draw it up. Don't see how consulting with your doctor, and paying him for his expertise, amounts to euthanasia.
lmgtfy cracks me up, every time I see it, it makes me smile
Oh, and I have been watching Torchwood since the beginning and I half love it, half hate it. The Children Of Earth was good. Seasons 1&2 were exasperating - they'd have some good ideas but they tried too hard to sex it up and it started to get old.
Thanks for finding a working computer to jump on this.
On my last trip up to the Sixth Floor Museum, I was struck by all the hatred spewed and recorded in local newspapers about JFK from the conservative wingnut base of the day. It was vile, and filled with lies intended to inspire those too ignorant or too unwilling to suss out the truth into their own spirals of hatred. I wonder how in that atmosphere that a an unbalanced lunatic would gain some delusions of heroic deeds about himself and kill the President.
I can only hope that decent, clear thinking citizens are taking note of all the bullshit.
It just makes people uncomfortable to say.
For example, take an end stage breast cancer patient.
Should society really pay for a bone marrow transplant with a .2 probability of life plus eight months for $250,000?
Someone's care gets rationed, and given Social Security and Medicare, icebergs may look good in the future.
As to disability, Sparta.
But whether or not Palin has the ability to successfully emulate Coulter over the long term, Coulter has shown that you can make a very successful living by taking arguments as far as the facts will go, and then pushing beyond to the point of parody. Palin is not so stupid as to have missed that point.
Strip away the over-the-top, paraonid rhetoric, and what Palin said wasn't entirely crazy. At some point, America will have to place limits on what healthcare is provided. We can't provide the level of care that people with unlimited funds or outlier insurance receive to everyone. Rationing and public boards prioritizing which illnesses receive what funding occurs in all systems: it's called management.
The problem is that Palin either doesn't realize or purposely ignores that rationing/prioritization will happen regardless of who runs healthcare in America. Nor does she express any understanding that for far too many Americans, basic healthcare is either unavailable, or available only in limited terms through overloaded public providers. For an ex-governor, that is appalling.
Every time a claim is denied, what do people think is happening? The insurance company is “rationing” healthcare, saying the claimant is not eligible for or worthy of that treatment. And then the insurance company deposits that claimant’s premium payment into its bank account where it is turned into greater profits for the company.
The level stupidity that exists in this so-called healthcare debate is astounding to me. The only debate taking place is about how to preserve profits for greedy corporations.
She's batshit crazy like a fox.
Unfortunately, the drooling, self-lobotomized Palingerers (I just made that word up) will follow her runaway-derailed train of thought anywhere.
By the way, your question is not an either-or. The answer to the first part is obviously "Yes", and the answer to part two may be the same.
And, comments.
Now I have to run,
because something Just
Juli said reminded me that I
have Redbox movies to return.
But she's out done herself this time.
http://open.salon.com/blog/greer_mcvay/2009/08/15/decisions_decisions