Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich defended the bizarre claim by former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin that the president's health care plan would result in a "death panel" that could kill her Down Syndrome son.
"You are asking us to trust the government," Gingrich declared on ABC's "This Week." "You are asking us to decide to believe the government should be trusted."
"Communal standards historically is a very dangerous concept," he added.
Reminded by host George Stephanopoulos that there was no such thing as communal standards in any health care bill -- just language that would allow for optional Medicare consultations on end of life decisions -- Gingrich grew a bit flummoxed.
"The bill is a thousand pages of setting up mechanisms," he said. "You are asking us to trust turning power over to the government, when there are clearly people in America who believe in establishing euthanasia, including selective standards."
On Friday, Palin posted a message on her Facebook account warning that "death panels" would be set up to encourage euthanasia -- a wild and baseless complaint that has grown popular in conservative circles.
"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," Palin wrote. "Such a system is downright evil."
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Points to consider:
1. Sarah Palin is crazy.
2. Newt Gingrich is crazy. And scary.
3. So excuse me if I'm wrong here, but Mr. Gingrich is telling us not to trust our government. I mean, after 8 years of Bush I don't really think anyone in America trusts their government anymore, but aren't we all, like, programmed to trust our government from 2nd grade? I mean, I did the Pledge of Allegiance every day until middle school. We held our own presidential elections with the students picking who they wanted to win. We had our own Gulf War hero, who pen pal-ed with us in Iraq and came to our school. We are taught all throughout, up until high school, that the US has this infallible and undisputed place in the world, and there are no faults taught, at least in my US History, not even in Vietnam. And that we are goddamned Americans and proud of it! I didn't even know that the US might had a questionable past until I took a current events class in my senior year. Granted, my education in the country might have not been the top in the nation, but still. And the education that I received is probably comparable to most suburbs that don't have tons of money pouring into them and have to question their arts programs with every budget revisal. My point being that, it should be alarming to most Americans that a politician, that has been elected into a position of government at least at some point in his career is blatantly telling the American public not to trust him. I mean, is he going to run for an office again where we can quote him and tell him that we should not trust our government? So there is no hope whatsoever, and even electing him would be like shooting ourselves in the foot from the get go? I really hope that someone brings up this quote during the midterm elections, and the republicans are scrambling and probably fighting an even dirtier campaign that the 08 election, and we have Mr. Gingrich telling us not to trust our government. I'm sure that will do wonders for one of the GOP's "unofficial leaders."
4. The thing is though that we shouldn't trust our government at all, but Americans are too stupid and lazy and ignorant to how the system works, which every politician like Mr. Gingrich benefits from. The founders set up the government so that the American people could take steps to check the government in place to ensure it wasn't corrupt. It's not really surprising to see that as Americans got less-educated and took less time to be informed, it wasn't that long before the corporations in a capitalist society yanked the reigns away from the people and took it themselves. And now, Americans are too stupid, lazy and committed to comfort to realize that as consumers they STILL hold all the power I take this time to point your attention to an essay by Bill Mahr who calls us all stupid with much more skill than I can hope to achieve. Yes we are stupid, and we can get indignant and insulted all we want, but the fact remains true.
5. Alas, that brings us away from the initial point. And that was that Sarah Palin is crazy. And most definitely stupid, just like the rest of us.
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