Palin's Red Menace (Is Palinism the new McCarthyism?)

More McCarthy paranoia, when we have a dictator in the White House.

The media and the administration are a lot more “McCarthyist” than Palin. Palin is a pribvate citizen who holds no political office for crying out loud.

“Speak truth to power” has become “speak power to truth”

I believe McCarthy was mostly correct. Communists were infiltrating the State Department, Universities, Hollywood, and the media ...
Given where we are today, I believe he had things pretty well pegged...

Mr. Cohen ... “ not one of them suggests a “death panel” empowered to withhold medical services from the aged or those with disabilities. To suggest that one exists is reprehensible. To state it outright is either boldly demagogic or just plain loopy ...”

Why do you deny this?

He’s easy to ignore and marginalize. Sarah, apparently, is not ;-)

Isn’t this article “McCarthyism” by it’s own definition?”

She’s a private citizen WOW libs are pooping themselves..Sarah is just sitting back and watching the train wreck which is the Democratic party slowly fall apart. She goes hunting alright...for LIBS

The “Posties” are so bourgeoisie ~ tacky, tacky, tacky

Wisconsin liar, demagogue and drunk

He was also a patriot and correct.

uk-fay ooo-yay ichard-ray, ooo-yay arxist-may ouchebag-day

Poor Richard, he looks like a “short bespectacled minority”

Yeah, I tend to agree that McCarthy gets a bum rap. While not perfect, he wasn’t the raving paranoid that people seem to assume.

Pelosi calls those who speak out at townhalls “Unamerican.” Reid calls them “evilmongers.” Libs in the state-run media and dem office holders say Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, et al. engage in “hate speech.” It’s pretty well known that in the entertainment industry, you have to pass several communist litmus tests to get work.

Where is the McCarthyism here?

boy, for one little private citizen with a Facebook page, they sure are scared of her

McCarthy has been vindicated.

And Palin is right about the “death panels”. It goes beyond some verbiage somewhere about some stupid “end of life” consultations. It is the logic embedded in the entire bill.

Cost-benefit analysis will be applied to the dispensing of medical care. If you do not meet their guidelines, then certain treatments are simply not available to you.

They are already doing this, both medicare and private insurance companies, but it is still somewhat porous; you can still get the treatment you want if you have money of your own, if you have a doctor who is willing to go to the mat for you.

Once Obamacare kicks in, bypassing the guidelines becomes much tougher, perhaps impossible. Some geek somewhere decides what treatment options are available to you, and your doctor chooses from that menu. All the incentives discourage him from bucking the system.

A profile of Richard Cohen from Moonbattery.com:

Profiles in Moonbattery: Richard Cohen - When it comes to moonbattery at its most treacherous, no one tops WaPo's Richard Cohen, who has openly sided with the Islamic terrorists laying siege to our democratic ally Israel. Squeaks Cohen:

"The greatest mistake Israel could make at the moment is to forget that Israel itself is a mistake."

What an astonishing statement. But Cohen backs it up — with sheer idiocy, of course.

If you look at history in the funhouse mirror that serves Cohen as a mind, Muslim terrorism over the last 100 years is a result of the dumb idea of "creating a nation of European Jews in an area of Arab Muslims (and some Christians)."

Inconceivably, Cohen seems not to be aware of the profound ties Jews have with their homeland, going back thousands of years.

Here's how Cohen feels about terrorists:

" There is no point in condemning Hezbollah..... And there's not much point, either, in condemning Hamas."

You see, they're "zealots." That means they get to behave like savages, while civilized societies are morally obligated to cease existing for their sake.

Cohen's derangement extends to policy:

"Whatever happens, Israel must not use its military might to win back what it has already chosen to lose: the buffer zone in southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip itself."

After recounting the reasons why withdrawing from these regions produced Israel's current predicament — Gaza openly run by Hamas terrorists, Hezbollah showering Israel with missiles from southern Lebanon — Cohen gibbers that reoccupying these territories would subject Israel to "having the world look on as it committed the inevitable sins of an occupying power."

In other words, Israel would be subjected to hostile propaganda by pro-terrorist moonbats like Cohen, who dominate the MSM.

But like America, Israel will be subjected to hostile propaganda from liberals no matter what it does. That's the price you pay for being the good guy.

So what should Israel do, according a sage like Cohen? Withdraw further, absorb the blows, wait to die. Here's how Cohen puts it:

"The smart choice is to pull back to defensible — but hardly impervious — borders. That includes getting out of most of the West Bank — and waiting (and hoping) that history will get distracted and move on to something else. This will take some time, and in the meantime terrorism and rocket attacks will continue."

Clearly Cohen is not the sharpest tool in the shed, but he could hardly be dumb enough to think that Muslims would ever "get distracted and move on" so long as Israel exists.

To "hunker down," as he puts it, and wait until Muslims grow bored with rocket attacks, kidnapping and suicide bombing would mean acquiescing until the last Jew in the Jewish homeland had been murdered.

What this appalling little creature is calling for is willful submission to genocide.

[ Palin's Red Menace (Is Palinism the new McCarthyism?).. ]

My GOD... I hope so...

Say what you will about any of the health-care proposals, not one of them suggests a "death panel" empowered to withhold medical services from the aged or those with disabilities. To suggest that one exists is reprehensible.

Richard Cohen, you lying, malicious slut.

But I'm sorry, you're above such vulgarity. After all, you are practicing civil discourse, and deserve to be treated in a likewise manner. Just because you're civilly arguing for the deaths of millions, doesn't mean you shouldn't be treated with all due respect - right?

Well it's too much of a job for me to stomach. Instead, why don't I let Sarah Palin herself rebut you. The following is from her Facebook page, which you must have missed while doing all of the big-brain research behind your McCarthyite smear on her:

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Sarah Palin: Yesterday President Obama responded to my statement that Democratic health care proposals would lead to rationed care; that the sick, the elderly, and the disabled would suffer the most under such rationing; and that under such a system these “unproductive” members of society could face the prospect of government bureaucrats determining whether they deserve health care.

The President made light of these concerns. He said:

“Let me just be specific about some things that I’ve been hearing lately that we just need to dispose of here. The rumor that’s been circulating a lot lately is this idea that somehow the House of Representatives voted for death panels that will basically pull the plug on grandma because we’ve decided that we don’t, it’s too expensive to let her live anymore....It turns out that I guess this arose out of a provision in one of the House bills that allowed Medicare to reimburse people for consultations about end-of-life care, setting up living wills, the availability of hospice, etc. So the intention of the members of Congress was to give people more information so that they could handle issues of end-of-life care when they’re ready on their own terms. It wasn’t forcing anybody to do anything.” [1]

The provision that President Obama refers to is Section 1233 of HR 3200, entitled “Advance Care Planning Consultation.” [2] With all due respect, it’s misleading for the President to describe this section as an entirely voluntary provision that simply increases the information offered to Medicare recipients. The issue is the context in which that information is provided and the coercive effect these consultations will have in that context.

Section 1233 authorizes advanced care planning consultations for senior citizens on Medicare every five years, and more often “if there is a significant change in the health condition of the individual ... or upon admission to a skilled nursing facility, a long-term care facility... or a hospice program." [3] During those consultations, practitioners must explain “the continuum of end-of-life services and supports available, including palliative care and hospice,” and the government benefits available to pay for such services. [4]

Now put this in context. These consultations are authorized whenever a Medicare recipient’s health changes significantly or when they enter a nursing home, and they are part of a bill whose stated purpose is “to reduce the growth in health care spending.” [5] Is it any wonder that senior citizens might view such consultations as attempts to convince them to help reduce health care costs by accepting minimal end-of-life care? As Charles Lane notes in the Washington Post, Section 1233 “addresses compassionate goals in disconcerting proximity to fiscal ones.... If it’s all about alleviating suffering, emotional or physical, what’s it doing in a measure to “bend the curve” on health-care costs?” [6]

As Lane also points out:

Though not mandatory, as some on the right have claimed, the consultations envisioned in Section 1233 aren’t quite “purely voluntary,” as Rep. Sander M. Levin (D-Mich.) asserts. To me, “purely voluntary” means “not unless the patient requests one.” Section 1233, however, lets doctors initiate the chat and gives them an incentive -- money -- to do so. Indeed, that’s an incentive to insist.

Patients may refuse without penalty, but many will bow to white-coated authority. Once they’re in the meeting, the bill does permit “formulation” of a plug-pulling order right then and there. So when Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) denies that Section 1233 would “place senior citizens in situations where they feel pressured to sign end-of-life directives that they would not otherwise sign,” I don’t think he’s being realistic. [7]

Even columnist Eugene Robinson, a self-described “true believer” who “will almost certainly support” “whatever reform package finally emerges”, agrees that “If the government says it has to control health-care costs and then offers to pay doctors to give advice about hospice care, citizens are not delusional to conclude that the goal is to reduce end-of-life spending.” [8]

So are these usually friendly pundits wrong? Is this all just a “rumor” to be “disposed of”, as President Obama says? Not according to Democratic New York State Senator Ruben Diaz, Chairman of the New York State Senate Aging Committee, who writes:

Section 1233 of House Resolution 3200 puts our senior citizens on a slippery slope and may diminish respect for the inherent dignity of each of their lives.... It is egregious to consider that any senior citizen ... should be placed in a situation where he or she would feel pressured to save the government money by dying a little sooner than he or she otherwise would, be required to be counseled about the supposed benefits of killing oneself, or be encouraged to sign any end of life directives that they would not otherwise sign. [9]

Of course, it’s not just this one provision that presents a problem. My original comments concerned statements made by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a health policy advisor to President Obama and the brother of the President’s chief of staff. Dr. Emanuel has written that some medical services should not be guaranteed to those “who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens....An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.” [10] Dr. Emanuel has also advocated basing medical decisions on a system which “produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated.” [11]

President Obama can try to gloss over the effects of government authorized end-of-life consultations, but the views of one of his top health care advisors are clear enough. It’s all just more evidence that the Democratic legislative proposals will lead to health care rationing, and more evidence that the top-down plans of government bureaucrats will never result in real health care reform.

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[1] See http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/08/president-obama-addresses-sarah-palin-death-panels-wild-representations.html.
[2] See http://edlabor.house.gov/documents/111/pdf/publications/AAHCA-BillText-071409.pdf
[3] See HR 3200 sec. 1233 (hhh)(1); Sec. 1233 (hhh)(3)(B)(1), above.
[4] See HR 3200 sec. 1233 (hhh)(1)(E), above.
[5] See http://edlabor.house.gov/documents/111/pdf/publications/AAHCA-BillText-071409.pdf
[6] See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/07/AR2009080703043.html].
[7] Id.
[8] See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/10/AR2009081002455.html].
[9] See http://www.nysenate.gov/press-release/letter-congressman-henry-waxman-re-section-1233-hr-3200.
[10] See http://www.ncpa.org/pdfs/Where_Civic_Republicanism_and_Deliberative_Democracy_Meet.pdf
[11] See http://www.scribd.com/doc/18280675/Principles-for-Allocation-of-Scarce-Medical-Interventions.

What this appalling little creature is calling for is [Israel's] willful submission to genocide.

He's supports it in America through healthcare, too - that's why he's attacking Palin, for exposing the real death agenda he and his masters so desperately crave.

“Participating citizens” re: “Useless Eaters”