Sarah Palin And Not Seeing Beyond Your Own Nose

Lots of people in right wing politics are working for this award. It will be given in the dozens by Rush himself.

If this is what we can expect as reasoned discourse from a Sarah Palin, who no longer has any responsibility to any for anything she says (except to those who pay her to say it), Americans are in for a long haul. She is the front runner for the Rush awards ceremony.

"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."

Sarah must have had good health insurance from somewhere. I hope she can afford her Cobra coverage because once she loses it she may find out just how many of us face "death panels" in the existing system. Kathleen Reardon addresses this point in the following article from Huffington Post. Kathleen is not in the running for the Rush award.

"When insurance companies deny coverage to critically ill patients because of what they deem "pre-existing conditions," they sentence those people to misery and often death. And that has nothing to do with proposed health care reform. This travesty exists now. (This is also very operative in who gets life saving organ transplants. Maybe Sarah isn't aware of the fact that Downs syndrome automatically disqualifies her son from consideration for a heart transplant. Democrats had nothing to do with policies which mandate no heart transplants for Downs patients.)

When acutely and chronically ill people are unable to purchase medicine because of exorbitant prices, pharmaceutical death panels have spoken. And again, this has nothing to do with universal health care proposals. (It does have everything to do with the kind of unregulated capitalism Sarah is so fond of telling us is so good for us.)

When an infant is stillborn because of inadequate or nonexistent prenatal care, a cancer patient forgoes or is denied treatment because of costs, a family is forced to decide whose medical needs will be met -- whose postponed, don't tell me somewhere a death panel isn't at work.

Sarah Palin is supposedly worried that people are going to die if health care reform occurs. They're dying now! Right under our noses! (Maybe Sarah can't see under her nose because it's somewhere else.)

Instead of what could be, let's talk about what is. Instead of fiction, let's discuss reality. And instead of President Obama responding to wild attacks from fabricators as if deserving of reasoned responses, let's hear him describe the death panels we have now and how much worse it is going to get if only the lucky and the wealthy have health care.

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According to reports, the Secret Service is ramping up the security surrounding President Obama's town hall meeting in New Hampshire. Principally because of fears of vast numbers of out of state agitators. People I think of as professional tea partyers. Wow it's great to see "grass roots" democracy at work.

Kathleen Reardon is right though, PO and the democrats shouldn't be wasting time responding to fabrications and out right fear mongering. Not with reason anyway. That's wasted effort. It's time he presented his case to the vast majority of Americans who want health care reform and past time he ignored the professional tea partyers--who hardly represent the American majority anyway.

Sarah isn't the only one who can't see what's under her nose, and not the one in the running for a Rush award. Many are 'normal' tea partyers. I think here of a man of my acquaintance who thinks the sun rises and sets on Rush Limbaugh. It is not unusual to hear him go on about welfare and taxpayer support for illegal immigrants, immoral single mothers, fascist liberals and blah blah blah.

Under his nose, he cant' see that tax payers are paying for the juvenile criminal justice system which is now raising his addicted daughter, or that the tax payer funded educational system is providing the drugs and therapy needed by his son for his ADHD and subsequent acting out behavior. In his mind he's a go it alone kind of American guy. Why can't everybody suck it up and be like him and take care of their own? Why do people think the government needs to bail them out?

I can't help but wonder how many of the tea partyers are like my acquaintance. Folks who are taking all kinds of services from the government while deluding themselves that they are going it alone. People with their noses glued to Rush, whose own nose is glued to people higher up the revered rightwing ranks. Glued directly to the people who really want to force most of us to go it alone because it means way way more for them.