Governor Palin 4 President

Paul Benedict (Libertarian), of NolanChart.com, wrote a very nice piece describing Governor Palin and Governor Reagan. Both were ridiculed and belittled by the press, in a very similar manner, on there way to The White House.

Most of America, via the health care debate, has now been treated to a taste of the derision that Governor Palin has experienced on a daily basis. Though Americans will not soon forget they were fed such bitter fare by their elected leaders, the malicious slander sent their way is a badge of honor. Generation after generation of Americans have walked this same ground and have been scorned from far higher thrones than these. Consider for examples both Governor Palin and President Reagan.

The political elite's caricature of Sarah Palin is remarkably similar to Ronald Reagan's. Perhaps that is why she was invited to speak at the Ronald Reagan library. Both Palin and Reagan have been criticized as unintelligent. Reagan because of his long career in acting rather than in the brainwashing institutes of "higher learning," and Palin because she is the mother of five and simple hearted enough to practice the things she claims to believe. Palin, of course, has had additional elements of her gender thrown into the characterization of her intellectual merits. Despite the academic abuse of the English language, what the effetes criticize should not be confused with a lack of intelligence. Even during his life, Reagan's photographic memory was well known, and despite his collegiate love of football more than books, he could read the newspaper at five (Dutch 27).

[...]

Sarah Palin's distinct accent and disinterest in the citadels of intellectual enlightenment are not disadvantages to the pursuit of American political liberty, they are, if history is to speak, prerequisites. Indeed, every time this mother of five, speaking in colloquial English, topples a tyrant of the intelligentsia with the simple truth, America cheers. We who are of Lincoln's party cheer when she, self-tutored, bests her Stephen Douglas with her Middle American parlance. We love it when with the passion of Fredric Douglas she actually reads a bill and speaks her mind with an insight lost on those of the priests of Egypt who love title more than truth. That is America. That is conservatism. That is the crisp sound of liberty ringing in the morning breeze.

Sarah Palin, unlike Ronald Reagan, is yet largely untested in the greater arena of national politics (until the recent Health Care debate and, like Reagan, only a single phrase was needed). Even as recently as two months ago it was even money whether she had just quit on her role as governor or whether she had beat a strategic retreat. Such things must, of course, look alike. For instance, at the Battle of Cannae, when Hannibal's center retreated, history only understood the Carthaginian's genius by the astounding number of Roman dead. Perhaps the vanishing language on rationing and death panels is only coincident with the voices of the American people. On the other hand, perhaps that distant thunder is, after all, the Nubian cavalry sealing in the reckless ranks of the statist academics and their media sycophants. Time will tell, but the visceral outrage of petty tyrants at an ex-Governor's little Facebook page may just be the first sounds of an historic massacre.

Full Article At:

http://www.nolanchart.com/article6755.html

This is absolutely amazing. It is looking like Governor Palin's efforts have not only put Øbama & team on defense but a total surrender. The Government-Run Health Care option is now 'not essential' or even better off the table according to several sources! As Governor Palin’s first move at a run towards the White House in 2012, she could not have made a stronger showing. I would suggest befriending Governor Palin on her Facebook page to keep up with the latest. She has been getting 20,000 new supporters or friend request a day.

According To James Taranto and The Wall Street Journal:

Palin Wins: If she’s dim and Øbama is brilliant, how did he lose the argument to her?

The first we heard about Sarah Palin's "death panels" comment was in a conversation last Friday with an acquaintance who was appalled by it. Our interlocutor is not a Democratic partisan but a high-minded centrist who deplores extremist rhetoric whatever the source. We don't even know if he has a position on ØbamaCare. From his description, it sounded to us as though Palin really had gone too far.

A week later, it is clear that she has won the debate.

Øbama himself took the comments of the former governor of the 47th-largest state seriously enough to answer them directly in his so-called town-hall meeting Tuesday in Portsmouth, N.H. As we noted Wednesday, he was callous rather than reassuring, speaking glibly--to audience laughter--about "pulling the plug on grandma."

The Los Angeles Times reports that Palin has won a legislative victory as well:

A Senate panel has decided to scrap the part of its health care bill that in recent days has given rise to fears of government "death panels," with one lawmaker suggesting the proposal was just too confusing.

The Senate Finance Committee is taking the idea of advance care planning consultations with doctors off the table as it works to craft its version of health care legislation, a Democratic committee aide said Thursday.

Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, ranking Republican on the committee, said the panel dropped the idea because it could be "misinterpreted or implemented incorrectly." . . .

The Palin claim about "death panels" was so widely discredited that the White House has begun openly quoting it in an effort to show that opponents of the health care overhaul are misinformed.

You have to love that last bit. The fearless, independent journalists of the Los Angeles Times justify their assertion that the Palin claim was "widely discredited" with an appeal to authority--the authority of the White House, which is to say, the other side in the debate. One suspects the breathtaking inadequacy of this argument would have been obvious to Times reporters Christi Parsons and Andrew Zajac if George W. Bush were still president.

[...]

For a wonderful example of such hubris, check out this post from David Kurtz of TalkingPointsMemo.com:

Is there anything quite as unsettling as when the nation's political class (and I use that term broadly to encompass the occasionally political, like the tea partiers) turns its fleeting but intense focus to a new (for them) and complex topic, like end-of-life issues?

It seems like years of painstaking work to nudge our death-denying culture toward a more frank and humane approach to our own mortality and dying could be erased by one misguided national discussion set off by none other than Sarah Palin.

Except that Palin didn't "set off" this discussion; Øbama did by trying to ram through legislation postalizing the medical system with no time for debate or reflection. How to care for dying patients is a serious, sensitive and complicated matter, one with which American families struggle every day

According To Alison Fitzgerald, Timothy J. Burger and Bloomberg:

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said providing citizens with the option of government-run insurance isn’t essential to the Obama administration’s proposed overhaul of U.S. health care.

“What’s important is choice and competition,” Sebelius said today on CNN’s “State of the Union.” The public option itself “is not the essential element.”

Asked if a cooperative plan is a possible replacement, Sebelius said she didn’t know what alternatives Congress would settle on among competing versions of the health legislation now under consideration. The Senate Finance Committee is discussing cooperatives, or networks of health-insurance plans owned by their customers, that would get started with government funds.

Sebelius’ comments suggest that Øbama may be considering backing off its commitment to create a government-run health insurance system to operate alongside private insurers in order to get health legislation passed.

“There are not the votes in the Senate for the public option, there never have been,” North Dakota Senator Kent Conrad, one of the lead Democratic negotiators on health care in the Finance Committee, said on “Fox News Sunday.”

“To continue to chase that rabbit, I think, is just a wasted effort,” he said.

“President Øbama and his cabinet have read the tea leaves,” said Senator Richard Shelby, an Alabama Republican, on the Fox program. The American people “don’t want a government- run program,” Shelby said. Shelby also said that the creation of co-ops, while “that would be government involvement” would be “a step in the right direction.”

According to The Nefarious AP:

Bowing to Republican (Governor Palin) pressure, Øbama's administration signaled on Sunday it is ready to abandon the idea of giving Americans the option of government-run insurance as part of a new health care system.

Facing mounting opposition to the overhaul, administration officials left open the chance for a compromise with Republicans that would include health insurance cooperatives instead of a government-run plan. Such a concession probably would enrage Øbama's liberal supporters but could deliver a much-needed victory on a top domestic priority opposed by GOP lawmakers.

Officials from both political parties reached across the aisle in an effort to find compromises on proposals they left behind when they returned to their districts for an August recess. Øbama had sought the government to run a health insurance organization to help cover the nation's almost 50 million uninsured, but he never made it a deal breaker in a broad set of ideas that has Republicans (Governor Palin) unified in opposition.

Is response to Obama’s uniformed comments about high-quality care in the US. Governor Palin posted this statement from the American College of Surgeons on her Facebook page:

Chicago, IL — The American College of Surgeons is deeply disturbed over the uninformed public comments Obama continues to make about the high-quality care provided by surgeons in the United States. When the President makes statements that are incorrect or not based in fact, we think he does a disservice to the American people at a time when they want clear, understandable facts about health care reform. We want to set the record straight.

Yesterday during a town hall meeting, Obama got his facts completely wrong. He stated that a surgeon gets paid $50,000 for a leg amputation when, in fact, Medicare pays a surgeon between $740 and $1,140 for a leg amputation. This payment also includes the evaluation of the patient on the day of the operation plus patient follow-up care that is provided for 90 days after the operation. Private insurers pay some variation of the Medicare reimbursement for this service.

Three weeks ago, Obama suggested that a surgeon’s decision to remove a child’s tonsils is based on the desire to make a lot of money. That remark was ill-informed and dangerous, and we were dismayed by this characterization of the work surgeons do. Surgeons make decisions about recommending operations based on what’s right for the patient.

We agree with Obama that the best thing for patients with diabetes is to manage the disease proactively to avoid the bad consequences that can occur, including blindness, stroke, and amputation. But as is the case for a person who has been treated for cancer and still needs to have a tumor removed, or a person who is in a terrible car crash and needs access to a trauma surgeon, there are times when even a perfectly managed diabetic patient needs a surgeon. Obama’s remarks are truly alarming and run the risk of damaging the all-important trust between surgeons and their patients.

We assume that the President made these mistakes unintentionally, but we would urge him to have his facts correct before making another inflammatory and incorrect statement about surgeons and surgical care.

About the American College of Surgeons

The American College of Surgeons is a scientific and educational organization of surgeons that was founded in 1913 to raise the standards of surgical practice and to improve the care of the surgical patient. The College is dedicated to the ethical and competent practice of surgery. Its achievements have significantly influenced the course of scientific surgery in America and have established it as an important advocate for all surgical patients. The College has more than 74,000 members and is the largest organization of surgeons in the world.

http://www.facs.org/news/obama081209.html

http://www.facebook.com/posted.php?id=24718773587&share_id=250745755306&comments=1&ref=mf#s250745755306

I join millions of Americans in expressing appreciation for the Senate Finance Committee’s decision to remove the provision in the pending health care bill that authorizes end-of-life consultations (Section 1233 of HR 3200). It’s gratifying that the voice of the people is getting through to Congress; however, that provision was not the only disturbing detail in this legislation; it was just one of the more obvious ones.

As I noted in my statement last week, nationalized health care inevitably leads to rationing. There is simply no way to cover everyone and hold down the costs at the same time. The rationing system proposed by one of President Obama’s key health care advisors is particularly disturbing. I’m speaking of the “Complete Lives System” advocated by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of the president’s chief of staff. President Obama has not yet stated any opposition to the “Complete Lives System,” a system which, if enacted, would refuse to allocate medical resources to the elderly, the infirm, and the disabled who have less economic potential. [1] Why the silence from the president on this aspect of his nationalization of health care? Does he agree with the “Complete Lives System”? If not, then why is Dr. Emanuel his policy advisor? What is he advising the president on? I just learned that Dr. Emanuel is now distancing himself from his own work and claiming that his “thinking has evolved” on the question of rationing care to benefit the strong and deny the weak. [2] How convenient that he disavowed his own work only after the nature of his scholarship was revealed to the public at large.

The president is busy assuring us that we can keep our private insurance plans, but common sense (and basic economics) tells us otherwise. The public option in the Democratic health care plan will crowd out private insurers, and that’s what it’s intended to do. A single payer health care plan has been President Obama’s agenda all along, though he is now claiming otherwise. Don’t take my word for it. Here’s what he said back in 2003:

“I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care plan.... A single payer health care plan – universal health care plan – that’s what I would like to see.” [3]

A single-payer health care plan might be what Obama would like to see, but is it what the rest of us would like to see? What does a single payer health care plan look like? We need look no further than other countries who have adopted such a plan. The picture isn’t pretty. [4] The only way they can control costs is to ration care. As I noted in my earlier statement quoting Thomas Sowell, government run health care won’t reduce the price of medical care; it will simply refuse to pay the price. The expensive innovative procedures that people from all over the world come to the United States for will not be available under a government plan that seeks to cover everyone by capping costs.

Our senior citizens are right to be wary of this health care bill. Medical care at the end of life accounts for 80 percent of all health care. When care is rationed, that is naturally where the cuts will be felt first. The “end-of-life” consultations authorized in Section 1233 of HR 3200 were an obvious and heavy handed attempt at pressuring people to reduce the financial burden on the system by minimizing their own care. Worst still, it actually provided a financial incentive to doctors to initiate these consultations. People are right to point out that such a provision doesn’t sound “purely voluntary.”

In an article I noted yesterday, Charles Lane wrote:

“Ideally, the delicate decisions about how to manage life’s end would be made in a setting that is neutral in both appearance and fact. Yes, it’s good to have a doctor’s perspective. But Section 1233 goes beyond facilitating doctor input to preferring it. Indeed, the measure would have an interested party -- the government -- recruit doctors to sell the elderly on living wills, hospice care and their associated providers, professions and organizations. You don’t have to be a right-wing wacko to question that approach.” [5]

I agree. Last year, I issued a proclamation for “Healthcare Decisions Day.” [6] The proclamation sought to increase the public’s knowledge about creating living wills and establishing powers of attorney. There was no incentive to choose one option over another. There was certainly no financial incentive for physicians to push anything. In fact, the proclamation explicitly called on medical professionals and lawyers “to volunteer their time and efforts” to provide information to the public.

Comparing the “Healthcare Decisions Day” proclamation to Section 1233 of HR 3200 is ridiculous. The two are like apples and oranges. The attempt to link the two shows how desperate the proponents of nationalized health care are to shift the debate away from the disturbing details of their bill.

There is one aspect of this bill which I have not addressed yet, but it’s a very obvious one. It’s the simple fact that we can’t afford it. But don’t take my word for it. Take the word of Doug Elmendorf, the director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. He told the Senate Budget Committee last month:

“In the legislation that has been reported we do not see the sort of fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a significant amount. And on the contrary, the legislation significantly expands the federal responsibility for health care costs.” [7]

Dr. Elmendorf went on to note that this health care legislation would increase spending at an unsustainable rate.

Our nation is already $11.5 trillion in debt. Where will the money come from? Taxes, of course. And will a burdensome new tax help our economy recover? Of course not. The best way to encourage more health care coverage is to foster a strong economy where people can afford to purchase their own coverage if they choose to do so. The current administration’s economic policies have done nothing to help in this regard.

Health care is without a doubt a complex and contentious issue, but health care reform should be a market oriented solution. There are many ways we can reform the system and lower costs without nationalizing it.

The economist Arthur Laffer has taken the lead in pushing for a patient-center health care reform policy. He noted in a Wall Street Journal article earlier this month:

“A patient-centered health-care reform begins with individual ownership of insurance policies and leverages Health Savings Accounts, a low-premium, high-deductible alternative to traditional insurance that includes a tax-advantaged savings account. It allows people to purchase insurance policies across state lines and reduces the number of mandated benefits insurers are required to cover. It reallocates the majority of Medicaid spending into a simple voucher for low-income individuals to purchase their own insurance. And it reduces the cost of medical procedures by reforming tort liability laws.” [8]

Those are real reforms that we can live with and afford. Once again, I warn my fellow Americans that if we go down the path of nationalized health care, there will be no turning back. We must stop and think or we may find ourselves losing even more of our freedoms.

- Sarah Palin

[1] See http://www.scribd.com/doc/18280675/Principles-for-Allocation-of-Scarce-Medical-Interventions

[2] See http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/aug/14/white-house-adviser-backs-off-rationing/

[3]See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hsqzSKuC44

[4] See http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=N2M0ODk0OTNkZjkwNGM4OGMyYTEwYWY3ODUzMzFiOTc=

[5] See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/07/AR2009080703043.html

[6] See http://www.gov.state.ak.us/archive.php?id=1094&type=6

[7] See http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2009/07/cbo-sees-no-federal-cost-savings-in-dem-health-plans.html

[8] See http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204619004574324361508092006.html