Kill panels.

Any of you ever have an elderly parent enter the hospital? How about spending time in a hospital yourself? Well, I've had that experience (as millions have) and one of the first things you do is fill out paperwork designating a health care proxy, establishing medical directives (i.e. resuscitate or not), and so on. Basically routine stuff that the hospital needs to know when a loved one is receiving care and may not be able to speak for him/her self at a crucial juncture. Pretty scary, eh? What.... aren't you scared of that? Because that's what Sara Palin (a.k.a. the Wassila brain trust), John Boehner (pronounced "boner"), Chuck Grassley (a.k.a. his own grandmother), Newt Gingrich (a.k.a. Captain Yesteryear) and others are trying to make you afraid of: a routine consultation that proposed health care legislation might end up providing coverage for. Not some new federal power to cull the herd. Just funding for the kind of meeting people have with their doctors all the freaking time. Be afraid!

The fact is, your grandma need fear Obama only if she lives in Afghanistan, or maybe Iraq. The only "death panel" we've got is the gaggle of advisors who keep these wars going year after year. Just this morning NPR reported on the expanding war in "strategic" Helmand Province, leading with reports of the many pains taken to avoid civilian casualties, including a British air strike called off at the last minute to spare civilians, then proceeding into an interview with a Major General Michael Flynn that talks about a new "focus" on the population, rather than the enemy - looking to understand what they want... after nearly eight years of the U.S. war. Unaddressed in that interview was the issue of what happens if the people of Afghanistan want something other than what U.S. policymakers want, such as, get your military the hell out of my country. Might have been a good question to ask the general, inasmuch as he and his colleagues are taking such pains to determine what's in the hearts and minds of the people that are suffering as a result of this blinkered policy.

When I see the air time allotted to the immensely ill-informed protesters at various Congressional town hall meetings, I feel grateful that we live in a nation that allows a voice to dissent... until I recall that, in the run-up to both the Afghan and the Iraq wars, very very few voices of articulate dissent were allowed on the airwaves, and almost as few have been heard from since... even though, in the case of Iraq particularly, the claims of the anti-war movement have been borne out to an extent that no one would have thought possible six years ago. Seems that only those dissenters who are aligned with major corporate interests can expect to be heard from loudly and clearly. Not that they seem all that appreciative. Hell, here they are at a public forum that allows private citizens to comment, participate, and even debate political leaders, and they act as though they're being squelched, even though they are, in fact, squelching the opinions of those who disagree with them.

It almost seems like that's the whole point. Hmmmmm....

luv u,

jp