The claws are being bared.| I'm going to have a shot at it, but I'm sure y'all can better my efforts. Take your mark, get set, go! |
I'm not sure the man who popped off ...
| ... that's the first problem MoDo has, a man popping off ... |
... and tweeted that Sonia Sotomayor was a "Latina woman racist" is the best Henry Higgins for the Eliza Doolittle of Alaska.
| Because being governor of Alaska is no different than selling violets on the streets of London during the Edwardian period. |
But Newt Gingrich was a professor. And he does know something about pulling yourself up by dragging down others and imploding when you take center stage -- both Palin specialties.
| Center stage is for MoDo, all the time, her and her select friends, none of whom are in relationships ... |
Besides, he agrees with Sarah -- who fretted that her parents and son Trig might be in danger from Obama "death panels" -- that we should be very wary about trusting government with end-of-life decisions.
| Ms. Dowd has no children, as I recall, so needn't worry about the government being untrustworthy. Besides, she goes to dinner parties with those people, who will take care of her because of her charm and insight. |
| So how's Michael these days, MoDo? Oh right, he ran off with that woman who gave him kids so as to keep him home at night. Perhaps you can get her kids in front of a death panel? |
So Newt took it upon himself to become Palin's Pygmalion.
| I thought he was Henry Higgens? All these identity thefts are making me quite dizzy. |
He told Politico that the out-of-work pol should write a book; take a commentator gig on TV; get a condo in D.C. or New York to use as an East Coast base; and prepare three types of speeches -- one "to make money," another to "project her brand" before universities and interest groups, and a vivid campaign stump speech to use for Republican candidates in 2010.
| A fair bit of that advice is classic Reagan, who wrote a book, wrote newspaper columns, got out on the rubber-chicken circuit, and did ads for GE. Look where it got him ... |
Most important, he advised, the dizzy Palin has to be "clear in her own head what she wants to do."
| As opposed to sitting in a small office all afternoon trying to think of something to write ... |
At the moment, what she wants to do is tap into her visceral talent for aerial-shooting her favorite human prey: cerebral Ivy League Democrats.
| No doubt that could be twisted into a death threat if only MoDo were a Pub ... |
Just as she was able to stir up the mob against Barack Obama on the trail, now she is fanning the flames against another Harvard smarty-pants -- Dr. Zeke Emanuel, a White House health care adviser and the older brother of Rahmbo.
| Just out of curiosity, does anyone know where Governor Howard Dean took his degrees? Of course, he's not a Friend of Barry, so it's not as critical. |
| Howie did Yale. Zeke is no smarter, and he's practiced medicine only slightly longer than Howie ... |
| Now, now, Dr. Steve -- you're sounding like an elitist. Just because they went to the wrong schools and don't have enough experience to know what they're talking about doesn't mean the two physicians don't know what they're talking about. America is all about what we make of ourselves, not where we came from, after all. |
She took a forum, Facebook, more commonly used by kids hooking up and cyberstalking,
| Ms. Dowd is behind another curve, poor dear. All the grandparents I know got on Facebook/MySpace to keep up with their grandkids, and then discovered their high school classmates. Even Mr. Wife joined up today, and already found one classmate, a cousin, and made his mother happy with an uploaded photo. |
and with one catchy phrase, several footnotes and a zesty disregard for facts, managed to hijack the health care debate from Mr. Obama.
| Well gosh, it sounds like Governor Palin is pretty good at being a politician. How very odd for someone whose career is politics. |
| If that's all it takes then it says something about Bambi's health plan -- or lack of one -- in the first place, eh MoDo? |
Sarahcuda knows, from her brush with Barry on the campaign trail, that he is vulnerable on matters that demand a visceral and muscular response rather than a logical and book-learned one.
| He is vulnerable on the logic and book-learnt response side, too, so long as the listener is not already in the throws of passion. But, although entirely too common, psych0sexual perversion is a topic we shall not address here. |
| It's a strange defense: our guy can't be visceral, he can only be logical. Who did we elect as president, Spock? |
Mr. Obama was charming and informed at his town hall in Montana on Friday, ...
| ... well, he was charming ... |
... but he's going to need some sustained passion, a clear plan and a narrative as gripping as Palin's I-see-dead-people scenario.
| All areas where our president sadly lacks talent, as his predecessor was so ineffective at public speaking. |
| He sure didn't polish those skills in the Illinois Senate ... |
She has successfully caricatured the White House health care effort, making it sound like the plot of the 1976 sci-fi movie "Logan's Run," about a post-apocalyptic society with limited resources where you can live only until age 30, when you must take part in an extermination ceremony called "Carousel" or flee the city.
| Except Downs' babies wouldn't be given until age 30, they'd only get to the middle of the second trimester ... |
Painting the Giacometti-esque Emanuel as a creepy Dr. Death, ...
| ... which seems to be about right given what Zeke advocates ... |
... Palin attacked him on her Facebook page a week ago, complaining that his "Orwellian thinking" could lead to a "death panel" with bureaucrats deciding whether to pull the plug on less hardy Americans.
| Which is about what Section 1233 endorses, reading only slightly between the lines. Imagine you're old and seriously ill. You get admitted to the hospital and first thing that happens, a gummint agent reads you your end-of-life rights. And you thought the hospital was where you'd get better, huh? |
Never mind that Palin herself had endorsed some of the same end-of-life counseling she now depicts as putting Grandma down.
| Except that in Alaska it was voluntary and patient-initiated, a subtle distinction that our Mid-Town Nag misses ... |
As the Democratic National Committee pointed out, ...
| ... which MoDo is happy to channel ... |
... Palin put out a 2008 proclamation for Healthcare Decisions Day "to raise public awareness of the need to plan ahead for healthcare decisions, related to end of life care ... and to encourage the specific use of advance directives to communicate these important healthcare decisions."
| Again, patient initiated, and done to ensure that people understood their rights, as opposed to putting Granny out on an ice floe to save some money ... |
Consistency was long ago sent to a death panel in Palin world.
| Please, O Editors of the New York Times, help Ms. Dowd. You are her only hope! |
Sensing traction, she took more shots against Dr. Emanuel, quoting the bioethicist's past writing that some medical services might not be guaranteed to those "who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens. ... An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia."
| Which is spot-on for Sarah. The demented -- and such a wide range of diagnoses with obvious potential for political chicanery -- are usually one of the first classes of people to be deemed "less worthy" when it's time to triage who lives and who dies. |
"Dr. Emanuel," she wrote ominously, "has also advocated basing medical decisions on a system which 'produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated.' "
She crowed that she had him on the run, and the White House felt that the doctor, who was being portrayed as a proponent of euthanasia, needed to get out there and explain his opposition to euthanasia.
| Which is going to be a neat trick since a fair bit of what he writes is at the very least sympathetic to the idea. |
So he interrupted his hiking vacation in the Italian Alps to give a raft of phone interviews saying he was taken out of context and calling Palin's charges "completely off the wall."
But, much to Sarah's delight, he also conceded to The Washington Times that his "thinking has evolved" on the "very vexing" issue of deciding who gets treatment and who doesn't.
| So even MoDo has to concede that Sarah has Zeke pegged ... |
"When I began working in the health policy area about 20 years ago ... I thought we would definitely have to ration care, that there was a need to make a decision and deny people care," he told the paper, adding that he now feels that if we get rid of expensive "unnecessary care" that "we would have absolutely no reason to even consider rationing except in a few cases."
| Of course, defining 'unnecessary care' sounds a lot like saying, "you demented folks? And you cripples? And you elderly farts with the arthritic hips? Your care isn't necessary." |
A few cases? Sounds like another Facebook entry for Sara
| Hope so, sounds like she can roll Bambi ... |
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