Hush! Hush! Sweet Sarah!

"The America that 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 subjective judgment, of their "level of productivity in society", whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil."

Sarah Palin
from her Fascism....I mean, "Facebook" page. 
 
The question is literally screaming to be posed: Can this woman possibly get any stupider? I really shouldn't be too hard on her. Sarah Palin has made my life a gut-busting delight and my work so much easier. When one has made his or her name doing what I do - mining the streams of American politics for those choice nuggets of unintentional humor - the former governor of Alaska is the gift that just keeps giving and giving. I really should not get any credit for writing the piece you are now reading. Truth be told, it is writing itself. I am also getting a good deal of aid from my brother, Jeff (photo above).

In a piece that was printed this morning in the Times Herald-Record of Middletown, NY, Richard Cohen made an excellent point - as Richard Cohen has an uncanny habit of doing. He wrote that the term "McCarthyism" should be updated by renaming it "Palinism". Joe McCarthy died in 1957 - seven years before Sarah Palin was born. The dictionary definition that old Joe gave to American politics should be updated because, essentially, he and Sarah are doing the same thing. The only difference between the two is the fact that Sarah, as far as we know, is not a drunk. Said Richard Cohen:

"Palin, as wholesome as McCarthy was not, is ready-made for television. Still, she has gone from a 57 percent favorable rating soon after McCain picked her as his running mate to a current 39 percent - a negative landslide of justifiable proportions. Before she fades into fringedom, she will do one bad thing and one good thing - hurt the very people she supposedly champions and expose the appalling opportunism of the Republican leaders."

I have to take issue with something Mr. Cohen wrote in that otherwise excellent piece: I do not want Sarah Palin to fade away into "fringedom" or any other "dom" for that matter. I don't want her to ever go away. Are you kidding me? She is the walking, talking personification of how the Republican party, once the party of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, has been taken over by lunatics and morons. As someone recently remarked, it is no longer a political party, it's a cult.

NOTE TO THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT:

When Jesus healed the sick, He did not disqualify anyone because of a "preexisting condition". A little something I think you might want to ponder.

HELP!! THE DEATH PANELS ARE COMING!!! You've got to give a tip of the old hat to the American people. What could be the explanation for our positive genius for falling prey to the most blatant and obvious propaganda? I have a possible theory if you're interested in hearing it:

We're idiots.

That is the general consensus among the rest of the world. The fact that an imbecile like Our Miss Sarah can "twit" (an appropriate word if ever there was one) about something as ludicrous as "Death Panels" and within hours it is a serious part of the national dialogue shows you that something is...umm..."amiss", shall we say? I think it is almost touching that so huge a segment of the American people are so susceptible to such nonsense - touching but hardly surprising. Let's not forget that these are the same people who just nine years ago were hypnotized into believing that sending a half-witted frat boy like George W. Bush to the White House was a perfectly fine and dandy idea. Are you surprised that most of the American public are swallowing the bait hook, line and sinker? You shouldn't be. You really shouldn't.

For the first time in our history, we are within grasp of the type of national health insurance that has worked beautifully in merrie old England for over sixty years. Don't let them try to fool you into believing that it hasn't worked Over There. It has. If the British health care system is so bloody awful, why has it been adopted by every other nation (but ours) in the industrialized world? And here's another tasty little question to munch on: why is it that the English live, on average, two years longer than we do? Can it be the fish 'n' chips? I kind of doubt it.

To listen to Sarah Palin and the bloviators on the right put it, Canadians and Europeans despise their health care system. Oh, really? My brother Pete has lived in Toronto for a decade. "Not true", says he. Brother Jeff has lived in Europe for almost twenty years. "Not true", says he. He went into a little more detail exclusively for you lucky Rant readers. Like his older brother, he's a tad long-winded. In Jeff Degan's own words: 


HELL CARE

"As an American who has been living in Europe for most of the last 20 years, one who has visited doctors numerous times in four different countries, whose two children were brought into this world in European hospitals (France and England), who has himself spent a week in a public British hospital, and who underwent an operation in a private British clinic, I think I can say a thing or two about health care in Europe.

"Our out of pocket expenses for the births? Zero. Even though in France my wife spent 5 days in the hospital after the birth of our first daughter, which is standard by the way.

"During the three years we lived in England, we never once paid for medicine for our children. Children get drugs for free in the UK. Visits to the GP are free for everybody.

"My expenses for the week in the NHS hospital? Zero.

"The cost of the operation in the private clinic? Zero, it was covered by my work insurance, as was the post-op physical therapy I needed.

"In Western Europe you would never be forced to sell your home in order to pay for your medical bills, as happens all too often in America when catastrophic illness strikes and the insurance company decides that your condition was 'pre-existing'.

"The quality of the care? Mostly good. French hospitals are excellent, even the food is decent. The food at the NHS hospital was beyond awful, but then again most English food is pretty bad (though they do have great Indian food). At night, they were understaffed, but I am guessing that, apart from that place where Dr. House works, most American hospitals are understaffed at night, too.

"In short, in the US, you pay more, get less, and die younger than we do in Europe. What part of that don't you understand?

"My fellow Americans, you have nothing to fear except those who would use fear to keep you enslaved to the myth of the might of the American health care system."

Jeff Degan

What can I tell you? The guy is a Communist. Not only does he live in France, he actually likes it there. An eternal shame to the good name of the Degan family. Let us boil down his seven paragraphs to their juicy essentials, shall we?

HEALTH CARE IN THIS COUNTRY SUCKS. 

Here is (Excuse me, I meant to say, "Here was") a golden opportunity for real reform and the idiotic Americans are screaming about socialism. Is it any wonder that we have become the laughingstock of the Western world?

In the mean time, our gal Sarah will continue to twit away. That is as it should be, I suppose. She really is doing us a great service when you think about it. She is aiding and abetting her party's complete and utter spiral into irrelevance.

YOU GO, GIRL!

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
tomdegan@frontiernet.net

AFTERTHOUGHT:

The photograph to the left of this column is of my French-loving, Pravda-reading brother, Jeff. Note the Vladamir Lenin goatee. Shameful.

SUGGESTED VIEWING:

SICKO a film by Michael Moore

For more recent postings on this hideously subversive site, please go to the following link:

"The Rant" by Tom Degan

What kind of Americans are you people for even reading this commie propaganda???

Cheers!