Keith Olbermann
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/8/10/764748/-Special-Comment:-Town-Halls-And-Puppeteers Have you perchance seen this? (
http://tomdaly.wordpress.com/2009/07/31/hr-3200-a-line-by-line-analysis/)
Here is where the slasher-film-politics of euthanasia replaces the reality of getting insurance to cover the conversation in which you tell your doctor to keep you alive no matter what; where Obama can wire money out of Grandma's checking account supplants authorization of electronic payment to and from the banks of insurers; where ACORN and union thugs replace input from Health Care advocates and where getting an insurer to pay for family counseling morphs into "They will insert government into your marriage."
Here is where Sarah Palin did her research.
Well, here is where whoever mentioned it to Sarah Palin did her research.
If I didn't know better, and I read that handy "line by line analysis" by the same people who brought you "The War On Christmas," I might be at one of those Town Halls, screaming my head off too.
Tonight: a Special Comment on the disruption of the Town Halls, the people behind these disruptions, and the urgency of common sense. Parts of this one are directed to the former governor directly:
There is no 'death panel.'
There is no judgment based on societal productivity.
There is no worthiness test.
But there is downright evil, and Ms. Palin, you just served its cause.
You shouted "fire" in a crowded theater -- a hot one -- and then today tried to roll it back with "no, no, sorry, not fire, I meant flashlights."
Too little, too late, too obvious.
Madam, you are a clear and present danger to the safety and security of this nation.
Whether the 'death panel' is something you dreamed, or something you dreamed up, whether it is the product of a low intellect and a fevered imagination, or the product of a high intelligence and a sober ability to exploit people, you should be ashamed of yourself for having introduced it into the public discourse, and it should debar you, for all time, from any position of responsibility or trust in the governance of this nation or any of its states or municipalities.
But it will not.
Because a percentage of America does not want explanations nor serious conversation. It wants panic and the guilty thrill of chaos and an excuse to bash skulls and hang people in effigy.
Or not in effigy.
There are many others to address: Betsy McCaughey, Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs, Senator Cornyn - a laundry list of the manipulators who are so shamelessly and recklessly using fear and ignorance to keep from those who need it most, the reform of our creaking, unfair, bloodthirsty health care system.
But ultimately this is said, in the naive hope that some of them might actually see it, to those being sent to the Town Halls really believing it's that or a Death Panel:
My words of course, are nothing to Mr. Anthem, or Mr. Cornyn or Mr. Dobbs or Ms. Blish or Mr. Scott or the others.
This is a job to them, and since we have placed a pricetag on everything in this country, there is no soul-searching involved. You have a job. If it involves stirring up frightened people to defend the corporation against the citizen, well, you have a salary to earn and a family to feed.
The same rationalization that enables mob hit men to sleep at night.
But somewhere in those crowds of genuinely angry people, people who listen to Cornyn or Dobbs, or fantasize with Beck about poisoning their way to a Democrat-free world, or salivate like Pavlovian dogs at the sound of the shrill whistle from Sarah "Death Panel" Palin, somewhere in those crowds are some actual people with some actual brains still working and thinking and evaluating.
For God's sake, trust your instinct to think.
There are no death panels, there could never be. Were there steps taken towards them, I, and 99.9 percent of the people in this country, from the fiercest liberal to the most apolitical blob, would be standing next to you preventing their creation.
There are no plans to take your insurance away from you.
There will be no rationing of care.
There will be no Health Choices Commissioner and he will not be able to transfer money electronically out of your bank account.
There will be nobody coming into your house and telling you what to eat.
There will be no euthanasia.
And the people to whom you are listening with half an ear, are telling you half the truth -- on a good day!
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