Say Anything: Is Sarah a Socialized Medicine Hypocrite? Not Really.

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Rob Port on the latest Palin non-scandal:

The Washington Post reports, as though it were news, that Palin refers to an instance where her brother was, in the 1960’s, once taken to Whitehorse (in Canada’s Yukon province) to get a burned foot treated.

This is supposed to be news because Sarah Palin is an outspoken opponent of government-run health care systems including Canada’s. So, you know, how could she.

Well, here’s the most immediate problem: Sarah Heath, who was to one day become Sarah Palin, was born in 1964 in Idaho. Her family moved to Skagway, Alaska while she was an infant. At the most, she would have been 6 years old when her brother was taken to Canada to get treated for his burned foot.

I don’t think the six-year-old Sarah was calling the shots on where her family got health care.

[...]

Once again, the media’s hatred for all things Palin trumps logic, reason and fact.

Read Rob's full post at the Say Anything Blog.

- JP

How Citizen Sarah Stopped The Socialized Medicine Express

Our friend from the days when Warner and I pounded our keyboards for RedState.com, Mark Impomeni, has an important article posted at Pajamas Media crediting Sarah Palin for "her timely intervention that put the Democrats off their game and turned the debate around" on health care reform. Here are some excerpts from Mark's op-ed:

For an uneducated, unsophisticated rube and former governor from a backwater state, Sarah Palin sure can drive a debate. With prospects for passage of his sweeping overhaul of the American health care delivery system fading with every speech, President Barack Obama is making it increasingly clear that Palin will be recognized, for good or ill, as perhaps the most prominent single political figure responsible for stopping it in its tracks.

It’s a remarkable story. A failed vice-presidential candidate and resigned governor — unfairly viewed by many as a cruel joke – reached from beyond the political grave her elitist critics prematurely dug for her and her political future to thwart a popular president prematurely regarded by the same elite that shunned her as perhaps the most gifted politician this nation has ever produced. If Sarah Palin were a sitting governor, a failed presidential candidate, or even a state legislator, her influence in the health care debate would not be as unexpected. It is the fact that she is a private citizen, completely out of politics save for a small political action committee, that makes this story unique.

How did she do it? That’s where the story gets even more remarkable.

There were no public appearances or speeches, no glitzy ad campaigns, no publicity tours, no interviews in the mainstream press or any new media outlet. Sarah Plain killed health care reform with a posting on her Facebook page, an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, and an exquisite sense of timing.

That's just the first few paragraphs. The full opinion piece is here for your edification and enjoyment.

Also, be sure to read the comments, especially this one from Eternity Road's Francis W. Porretto, which we have also excerpted:

It’s been clear for a while that the Democrats are terrified of Citizen Sarah and will do anything they can to marginalize or delegitimize her, just as they’re struggling to do with the 9/12 demonstration in Washington. But it’s now imperative that concerned conservatives ask the next question:

Who else is terrified of Sarah Heath Palin?
– Establishmentarian Republicans;
– The Establishment-supporting Punditocracy;
– Insiders to the "Rotarian Socialism" system of subsidies and genteel rake-offs the Establishment has perpetuated.

[...]

Conservatives who would love to see Sarah Heath Palin become the GOP standard-bearer should be thinking hard about what it will take to carve a path to the 2012 presidential nomination for her. It won’t be the Democrats, or their Old Media lapdogs, who put up the stiffest resistance to that.

- JP

It's not crazy to stand with Ronald Reagan and the founders

At American Thinker, Villanova emeritus law professor Howard Lurie addresses the liberal charge that Sarah Palin is crazy for warning about death panels:

The absence of specific language in the Constitution or a statute doesn't mean that something isn't there. There is no language in the Constitution guaranteeing a right to abortion, but that didn't stop the Supreme Court from concluding that such a right exists. The right to an abortion arose out of the right of privacy that also lacks any textual support in the Constitution.

[...]

If the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is subordinate to "a compelling state interest," one could reasonably fear that the Amendment's guarantee that no person should be deprived "life, liberty, or property" without due process of law is likewise subordinate to "a compelling state interest." Arguably, the preservation of dwindling government health care dollars is "a compelling state interest."

[...]

I hasten to remind the reader that it was not too long ago that, in the interest of the greater good, states were forcibly sterilizing the mentally retarded. "It is better for all the world" said the eminent jurist Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. speaking for the Supreme Court in Buck v. Bell (1927), if "society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Three generations of imbeciles is enough."

Professor Lurie reminds us that over one million abortions a year are performed with the full sanction of the president and the Supreme Court, many of them merely for the convenience of the mother, and concludes:

If the burden of the unwanted justifies their extermination prior to birth, it is not unreasonable to wonder whether the burden of the unwanted ill and infirm elderly would constitute a justification for their early exit from this world. Will some number of ill and infirm aged be "enough"?

There are but a few steps between government mandated end-of-life counseling, and the "better for all the world" ending of life by government mandates.

Sarah Palin is not crazy.

Blogger Mark Epstein, a pro-life libertarian, concurs:

If there’s an undergirding insanity in the body public, it’s not Sarah’s beliefs, but those who abhor her.

Anyone who doubts that there are many who call themselves Republicans but neither support nor agree with the principles stated in the Grand Old Party's platform, should look no further than the anti-Palin faction of the GOP. These Vichy Republicans are not only anti-Palin, but they have turned their backs on the very principles which Ronald Reagan so effectively preached and practiced to become the most successful GOP presidential candidate in modern history. Sarah Palin has embraced Reagan's principles. Epstein touches on two of them, family values (including standing for life) and fiscal restraint:

While the left uneducatedly screams about separation of church and state, the Republicans see acceptance of abortion as a political means to an end. Sarah takes issue with both and, since the majority of Americans oppose abortion, it would seem Palin is more in touch with the citizenry than either of the two major political parties.

[...]

Now that America is suffering a more than 16.8% real unemployment rate, the corporate thieves have made off with taxpayer money, and the country stands on the precipice of hyperinflation, Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama era policies are coming home to roost. Obama’s answer? Pass the largest pork-laden generational-theft act in history, whose only result will enslave future Americans to the federal government for generations to come. Sarah has a problem with this and so do most Americans.

[...]

Of all the politicians in America, Sarah "gets it" with respect to the God-ordained role of the family — the very same God who grants Americans their inalienable rights.

Although not cited by Epstein, Sarah Palin stands strong for Reagan's other two principles. The first of these is national security, not only through a strong military, but through her advocacy of replacing imported oil and gas with our abundant domestic resources to achieve true energy security. The other is limiting the growth in the size of the federal government, a Palin position which has won her the support of many libertarians.

In conclusion, Epstein warns that unless the GOP turns away from its "royalist" ways (we know the Democrat Party won't), the Republican Party could be marked for extinction:

Glenn Beck is leading the charge in this area and his ratings reflect a disenchantment with both political parties. Americans are energized and they want real change, regardless of party affiliation. At this point, Sarah Palin could conceivably run as an Independent and trounce both parties combined. Why? Given the public’s disaffection with Obama’s Pravda (mainstream media) and its loss of viewership combined with crumbling newspapers, Beck and bloggers are rapidly becoming the option for real news “choice.” And the choice is clear: Throw ALL the bums out of Washington.

If the GOP goes the way of the dodo, it need look no further than the Vichy Republicans of the Tom Ridge and David Frum school and spineless "conservatives" who lack the courage to fight for not only the principles which Ronald Reagan stood for, but for which our founders pledged "our lives, our fortunes, our sacred honor."

Related: Read Bill Quick's "Control and the Young Lions" at Daily Pundit.

- JP

Glassing the beast known as HR 3200

For those who have never heard of “Glassing”, it is a stalking hunting tactic in which you stand downwind (hopefully without the wind changing direction) on a slight slope or in a tree stand and have a decent pair of binoculars or a spotting scope and scan the range for animals in which you are hunting. It is a very normal practice for hunting anywhere in the world, and with patience for the possibility of many hours spent waiting, you will spot the animal in which you are hunting for.

Sarah Palin has been doing just that, standing quietly downwind, and glassing the bill/animal. Many thought she would be stagnant and sit on her laurels, just passing the time away hunting and fishing. It is too bad they didn’t see this coming, as most animals are unaware they are being hunted. This includes the New York Times, Miami Herald and the rest of the government-controlled print media. The same applies to their electronic cousins, the alphabet soup of the legacy media, from which CNN and MSNBC seem to be squawking the loudest from deep inside the pockets of the Obama Administration -- especially Zeke Emanuel.

Dr. Emanuel knows the beast he created was trapped, fair and square. Like all animals, it struggles to free itself from the inevitable, at the hands of a superior predator. It can howl, scream, and try to rationalize its way out of its own demise, but the doctor's words are on the record and have been made public in Sarah Palin’s Facebook expose. We know that most of you have been reading it and have seen the evidence presented in the footnotes. Dr. Emanuel's creation was caught red handed in a trap of his own construction. His end-of-life provision, which we were told was not a part of the beast, was, as Sarah Palin pointed out, dropped from the measure.

Though this was only the first shot fired by the huntress, it is not the silver bullet which will end the monster's life. Sarah Palin, her shot partially obstructed by the ground cover, has only wounded the beast, and now it is frightened and on the run. The huntress will have to track the animal, following the trail of blood spots, a bent shrub or tree limb, until she circles it in. This is usually when the creature is most aware or its surroundings and becomes even more aggressive. The beast is in the fight of its life. Good thing the huntress was taught well by her father and doesn’t believe in wanton waste or letting the animal suffer needlessly.

She will take it out with a killing shot. We hope you will join her hunting party and help her finish off this werewolf of a bill and send it on to the taxidermist. Sarah will appreciate your help and has ammunition to spare.

-u