Posts tagged Sarah Palin

Living with Death Panels

31
1 year ago
by Monotreme in

Two years ago, as Con­gress was engaged in heated debate over the leg­is­la­tion that would even­tu­ally become the Patient Pro­tec­tion and Afford­able Care Act (PPACA, also called, dis­parag­ingly, “Oba­macare”), ex-​​half-​​Governor and failed Vice Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Sarah Palin weighed in with her view: the leg­is­la­tion would include, in her famous phrase, “death panels”.

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 [cur­rent Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel]. 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.’ 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.’

Unfor­tu­nately, the ensu­ing debate over end-​​of-​​life issues and the financ­ing of health care for all Amer­i­cans was char­ac­ter­ized by an increas­ing amount of heat (“You Lie!”) and very lit­tle light from that point forward.

Was Sarah Palin right? (more…)

Pick Your Flavor

7
1 year ago
by filistro in

Gallup released a rather sig­nif­i­cant lit­tle poll yes­ter­day,  inter­est­ing in that it asked an open-​​ended ques­tion of Repub­li­cans and Republican-​​leaning inde­pen­dents about their choice for a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date in 2012. In this poll, respon­dents were asked to sup­ply a name, rather than respond to a list of cur­rent can­di­dates for the nom­i­na­tion. Mitt Rom­ney and Michele Bach­mann led the field with 13% and 9% respec­tively, with all oth­ers (includ­ing peo­ple like Rick Perry and Sarah Palin who have not yet announced) in the low sin­gle dig­its. But the star­tling result was that 58% of respon­dents offered no name at all. This is a very high level of dis­in­ter­est at this point in a pres­i­den­tial cycle.

(more…)

Reëlection Watch: July 2011

19
1 year ago
by Michael Weiss in

This is the third in a series of arti­cles we pub­lish at least once every month between now and the gen­eral elec­tion. As we get closer to Novem­ber, 2012, the fre­quency will almost cer­tainly increase.

Each time, we take a look at the var­i­ous fac­tors that typ­i­cally influ­ence elec­tion out­comes, and com­pare them to the pre­vi­ous month.

Let’s look at how things are shak­ing out this month.

(more…)

Pass the Popcorn

11
1 year ago
by Logarchism.com in

I should admit right up front that I’m a huge fan of Sarah Palin. I’m aroused by her car­niv­o­rous­ness, which is almost equal to my own. And I get really turned on when she talks about dead fish. (Don’t tell any­body, but I have this Palin pinup on the wall of my habi­tat. OOOHHH! Sha-​​ZAM!)

Okay, tak­ing a moment to com­pose myself…

So, imag­ine my excite­ment when I obtained a pirated copy of the new movie, Sarah Palin: The Unde­feated which pre­mieres in Iowa this week. I have it queued up right now, and I’m watch­ing it as soon as I leave here. I know it will be enthralling, and I also hope it helps me to work out the sig­nif­i­cance of the title. Does it mean quit­ting is the same as win­ning? You can’t lose if you don’t run? 2008 never actu­ally happened?

Well, I guess I’ll find out. Right now I have a movie to watch, and I need to whip myself up a nice big bowl of pop­corn shrimp.

Related arti­cles

Platypus Ponders Political Power

1
1 year ago
by Logarchism.com in

The doc­u­ment dump of Palin email is being combed though as we speak, and will con­tinue to be for some time. But apart from some tit­il­lat­ing tid­bits about tan­ning beds and such, and many heav­ily redacted pages con­cern­ing the role of “First Dude” Todd Palin, as well as the details of the Troop­er­gate inves­ti­ga­tion, there doesn’t appear to be much “there” there.

In fact the absence of incrim­i­nat­ing data is intrigu­ing to Pauly, a polit­i­cal platy­pus who per­pet­u­ally pon­ders the perks and pit­falls of power.

The emails writ­ten before Palin was tapped to be John McCain’s run­ning mate tend to show an active, engaged gov­er­nor, inter­ested in the func­tion of her office, sup­port­ive of her staff, pro­tec­tive of her fam­ily, and sur­pris­ingly admir­ing of McCain’s cam­paign oppo­nent at the time, Barack Obama. (more…)

Palinlands

13
1 year ago
by Logarchism.com in

Sarah Palin: Offen­sive or Merely Stupid?

The Platy­pus loves movies, and one of his favorites is Shad­ow­lands, based on the writ­ings and life story of C. S. Lewis. It details Lewis’s rela­tion­ship with Amer­i­can divorceé Helen “Joy” David­man Gre­sham (played by Debra Winger). Gre­sham became Lewis’s wife in 1956 when her bone can­cer was appar­ently in remis­sion, but it returned to kill her in 1960. She was only 45. A bril­liant mind from a middle-​​class Bronx fam­ily, and Hunter Col­lege grad­u­ate, she made an imme­di­ate impres­sion on the lonely and reclu­sive Lewis. Intro­duced to an intel­lec­tual blowhard at a party, she lis­tens to him opine on the inher­ent infe­ri­or­ity of women, then stops him and asks:

Are you try­ing to be offen­sive, or merely stupid?
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We could ask the same of Sarah Palin.

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