The REAL Death Panel

So, does everyone remember the big health care debate our mighty nation endured just a few short months ago?

Or were we just watching Dancing with the latest American Idol?

As you may recall, there was a portion of the proposed health care bill that provided for end-of-life counseling for those who were facing the inevitable.

The vaunted and lovely Sarah Palin, the one who is the alleged Republican front runner for the 2012 Presidential election, and highly paid shill under contract with Fox News, said that this amounted to "death panels."

Now we all know that this was a gross exaggeration on her part.

We do, right?

The Huffington Post reported in August of '09 that former Gov. P's opinion of our impeding doom was this:

"...government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. 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 is also a Jan Brewer fan.

Ahem.

In yesterday's New York Times, I learned that in Arizona (Brewer Country to you and me,) there actually ARE death panels:

"Effective at the beginning of October, Arizona stopped financing certain transplant operations under the state’s version of Medicaid. Many doctors say the decision amounts to a death sentence for some low-income patients, who have little chance of survival without transplants and lack the hundreds of thousands of dollars needed to pay for them."

"Organ transplants are already the subject of a web of regulations, which do not guarantee that everyone in need of a life-saving organ will receive one. But Arizona’s transplant specialists are alarmed that patients who were in line to receive transplants one day were, after the state’s budget cuts to its Medicaid program, ruled ineligible the next — unless they raised the money themselves."

So, let's review: In Arizona, if you are poor and in need of a life-saving transplant, you will die.

Since the most recent mid-term elections, Republicans have been screaming that the American people have firmly spoken and that there is now a mandate (see Republican agenda) that needs to be adhered to.

This is how far we have fallen.

So it goes...

the electoral college and middle east progress

It is very refreshing to see that President Obama has taken on the Middle East "issue" (which consists of several issues, actually) with such vigor and conviction.

I was reading an article by Roger Cohen, a New York Times opinion writer, and he had written a very good article about the ramifications of Obama's interview with the Al Arabiya news network based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and what it means in terms of U.S. interests. Essentially, the President has stated that the ways of the old Bush regime are over and that America is going to reclaim its position as a respected nation that can be followed as an example.

Doesn't that sound nice. Nice words. Nice rhetoric. Just. Very. Nice.

We've heard a lot of idealism from Obama and his team. A lot of talk. A lot of words. A lot of rhetoric.

In fact, it seems we've been hearing it constantly. From the early primary campaigns to the general election in November. That was the platform. The idea of change. The President was very meticulous in his approach and tactics, and that is what won him the presidency in the end.

Many people say that he really didn't win by a landslide, as the talking heads in the media generally espouse. He received 52% to McCain's 46%. Not so large. However, he trounced in the Electoral College with 365 votes (only need 270). So even though the country remained, and remains, deeply divided, his planning and his clear vision on what it was going to take to win landed him the election quite handily.

So what does this have to do with the Middle East and terrorism and Islamofascism and all that jazz? Plenty, I'd say.

Cohen sums it up very well, at the beginning of his article, when he says that the war on terror is over, and that what we are really up against are terrorist organizations. It’s not about who's the good guy in the white hat (probably living in Crawford, Texas at this point), and the bad guy in the black turban anymore. That's way too simple of a notion. It always was. It will take talking and listening and negotiating and making mistakes and solving problems. It will take time. It will take perseverance. It will take meticulous planning, much like figuring out how to get the 270 votes in the midst of great ideological division. His strategy in terms of seeing the prize and then getting it has paid off greatly. It is this type of focus that will spark real progress and change in the Arab world.

So it goes...