posted August 17, 2009 07:27 PM            

Aug. 10: I just had a phone call where someone said Sarah Palin's web site had talked about the House bill having death panels on it where people would be euthanized. How someone could take an end of life directive or a living will as that is nuts. You're putting the authority in the individual rather than the government. I don't know how that got so mixed up.

posted August 19, 2009 10:35 AM            

August 19, 2009
Hello ObamaCare, Goodbye Grandma
By Stuart Schwartz

Oh, look! See Ezekiel. See Ezekiel Emanuel. Zeke is in charge of health care policy for the Obama administration. Policies are the official thoughts that guide the relationship of government and health care. Zeke thinks health care thoughts for the president and congressional leaders. Hello, health care policy.

Oh, look. See Zeke think. Zeke has not run a hospital. He has not run an insurance company. He has not run a medical practice. He has not worked in the pharmaceutical industry. Zeke has spent more than twenty years in education and government... thinking.

See Zeke think. Zeke specializes in thinking about "social policy" and medicine. Social policy is government management of services. Zeke heads a government department that thinks about who gets what health care treatments and when. He is the White House health care czar. And he has a medical degree and doctorate in social policy from Harvard, where brilliant people think. Think, Zeke, think.

President Obama, a Harvard Law graduate, shares Zeke's thoughts. Congressional Democrats praise Zeke's thoughts. Mainstream journalists and commentators praise his thoughts. Zeke's thoughts are their thoughts. Zeke thinks great thoughts. Hello, great thoughts.

Think, Zeke, think. Think and write. See Zeke write. His resume packs more than a fifty page list of articles, speeches and books. Read the articles, know Zeke. His writing provides the foundation for Zeke's "complete lives" approach to health services. Hello, complete lives.

Zeke created the "complete lives" approach to health care. A complete life is one that contributes in thought and action to the "instrumental value principles" of the greater community. Complete lives "prioritizes younger people" and lifestyles that are likely to contribute to the "common good." Hello, instrumental values. Hello, government.

Zeke thinks health care should contribute to the common good. The community, led by the government, determines the common good. Zeke thinks about community. Zeke is an active "communitarian." Communitarianism is a cross between communism, socialism, atheism and new age. Hello, communitarianism. Hello, Marx, both Groucho and Karl.

Zeke the communitarian believes that health care should promote the public good, and develop "reasoning skills" that contribute to a "just society." In "A Communitarian Health-Care Package," Zeke asserts that "community-minded" leadership must make medical decisions for "more passive individuals." Communities should have the "power of exclusion" from health services over those who do not share their view of the common good. Think, Zeke, think.

See Zeke think. Community good must influence medical treatment. Some groups "whose notions of the good are rooted in the denigration of others" should be excluded from some medical resources. Government may deny medical services to an individual who is a "hostile adversary" of community good and groups that are "noxious weeds which gain their strength" by vehemently opposing community goals. Hello, government priorities.

Think, Zeke, think. Medical care is a means to encourage "healthy participation." Healthy participation means acceptance of community goals, structure, and policies. Hello, acceptance. Hello, healthy participation.

Health care is to be provided through "a process of interpretation and judgment" by state and federal "Health Oversight Boards." A fundamentalist Christian, for example, who believes "certain sexual orientations" are wrong is "a noxious weed" in the green fields of community, and may be denied certain health services under certain circumstances. Hello, health oversight boards.

See Zeke think. Zeke thinks the ideal "instrumental values" of a community determine the "level of justice" that health care must provide for society. Zeke thinks medical services should provide incentive for individuals to fit in with the community. Zeke thinks individuals must be conformed to "shared conceptions of the good." Hello, shared conceptions of the good.

Think, Zeke, think. Zeke thinks individuals and doctors often use "irrelevant values" when making decisions. Irrelevant values include physician notions of responsibility to the patient, the Hippocratic Oath, and individual and family concerns. Such concerns may not "affirm common conceptions of the good." Hello, affirmations of public good.

Zeke thinks spirituality is not an "instrumental value." Zeke has thought long and hard about religion. As a result, he describes himself as a "practicing atheist." He thinks religious communities that put God ahead of the larger community do not contribute to the greater good. Hello, atheism.

Thus, Zeke concludes, patient and physician values and behavior must be changed. Government, on behalf of the community, must remake them as individuals. And, as he asked at the "2004 Communitarian Summit" at George Washington University, "What Is Wrong with Remaking Human Nature?" Hello, remaking physicians. Hello, remaking citizens.

Think, Zeke, think. Too many physicians and citizens do not understand the priorities inherent in a complete life. Therefore, Zeke thinks, we need universal, compulsory government-run health care. He thinks "more taxes" must "be required." He thinks only government can provide "just allocation of health care resources." He thinks government should make choices for physicians and individuals. Think, think, think.

See Zeke think. Zeke thinks your health care choices are selfish. Therefore, government, on behalf of "community," must force "involuntary" "outcomes" on those whose values and behavior conflict with the principles underlying government health care policies. Hello, involuntary outcomes. Hello, government force.

Zeke thinks universal, government-run healthcare must allocate medical services so as to exclude from some treatments those who do not contribute value to the community. Zeke proposes that smart people in government who understand the way your lifestyle and medical treatments "promote the continuation of the polity" should decide who gets what medical treatments, and when. He calls these "principles of allocations." Hello, principles of allocations.

Zeke thinks government must assure "distributive justice" You think you are just eating cheesecake. However, to Zeke, eating cheesecake is an act that either does or does not contribute to the "communitarian" good. He links individual health choices to community goals and government. Link, Zeke, link.

See Zeke link. He links medical treatment of those who are unable to live "complete lives" to government health care decisions. Zeke thinks those less able to live complete lives include the mentally and physically handicapped, the elderly, those with crippling illnesses, and those with "noxious" thoughts. They contribute less to community. Link and think, Zeke, link and think.

Zeke thinks health care must be rationed according to the value of the community to which an individual belongs. Valued communities include those with appropriate "instrumental" values, community activists, young and healthy persons, and favored racial and gender groups. Those of less value may not have the potential to "be or become" a "participating citizen." This group includes those with crippling medical problems, the elderly, the disabled of all ages, and infants too young to have received substantial "community investment."

See Zeke think. Think, think, think. Hello, Obama health care. Hello, social usefulness. Hello, government allocation of health services.

Goodbye, noxious weeds.

Goodbye, handicapped.

Goodbye, grandma.

Goodbye, grandpa.

posted August 20, 2009 06:34 PM            

He's said what he's said and what he's said is reported accurately...from his own writings.

Get with the program acoustic and pull your head out of your rear ead.

posted August 20, 2009 06:58 PM            

quote:

---

He's said what he's said and what he's said is reported accurately...from his own writings.

---

Reporting what someone said outside of the context of which it was said lends a false impression, and that's all Conservatives have done. They've willfully created a false impression, a lie. You applaud the liars; I encourage people to discover for themselves. This is a highly respected scholar, and even a little bit of homework is going to confirm that I'm right on this.

posted August 20, 2009 07:08 PM            

Sarah Palin says "Death Panel" and O'Bomber wets himself. So do all the little grubby Socialist planners who planned to pull more than half a trillion dollars out of Medicare by denying health care to those on Medicare.

They planned to help balance one of the governments biggest budget items by denying life saving drugs and other medical treatment to seniors. And what a great help that would be for Social Security. Social Security checks are for the living. How wonderful to be able to eliminate the deficits by just saying "Die Baby, Die".

Further, provisions in O'BomberCare puts any review of the patients rights under the plan beyond judicial or administrative review. Those handed a death sentence by O'Bomber's Death Panel bureaucrats are just supposed to die and not make any waves.

In our society, even mass murderers have the right to judicial review of their cases...right up to and including the US Supreme Court. But there was to be no review from O'Bomber's Death Panel decisions.

Palin was perfectly right and you acoustic don't have the intellectual firepower to call anyone an empty intellect.

Now, let's talk about the "Death Book" which O'Bomber has resurrected for veterans.

The Death Book came out during Kommander Korruption's administration and it's use was instituted at the VA...remember, in Kommander Korruption's own words...I despise the military. That puts Clinton right in the same phew as other leftists who also hate those whose jockstraps they aren't fit to carry.

Bush suspended the use of the Death Book during his administration.

O'Bomber re-instituted it's use.

This book encourages veterans to give up and opt for euthanasia.

What a gross, disgusting, contemptible policy to throw at anyone and especially veterans who depend on the VA for their health care. But that's O'Bomber for you; a gross, disgusting, contemptible, corrupt Marxist Socialist empty suit.

The Death Book for Veterans
Ex-soldiers don't need to be told they're a burden to society.
By JIM TOWEY

If President Obama wants to better understand why America's discomfort with end-of-life discussions threatens to derail his health-care reform, he might begin with his own Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). He will quickly discover how government bureaucrats are greasing the slippery slope that can start with cost containment but quickly become a systematic denial of care.

Last year, bureaucrats at the VA's National Center for Ethics in Health Care advocated a 52-page end-of-life planning document, "Your Life, Your Choices." It was first published in 1997 and later promoted as the VA's preferred living will throughout its vast network of hospitals and nursing homes. After the Bush White House took a look at how this document was treating complex health and moral issues, the VA suspended its use. Unfortunately, under President Obama, the VA has now resuscitated "Your Life, Your Choices."

Who is the primary author of this workbook? Dr. Robert Pearlman, chief of ethics evaluation for the center, a man who in 1996 advocated for physician-assisted suicide in Vacco v. Quill before the U.S. Supreme Court and is known for his support of health-care rationing.

"Your Life, Your Choices" presents end-of-life choices in a way aimed at steering users toward predetermined conclusions, much like a political "push poll." For example, a worksheet on page 21 lists various scenarios and asks users to then decide whether their own life would be "not worth living."

The circumstances listed include ones common among the elderly and disabled: living in a nursing home, being in a wheelchair and not being able to "shake the blues." There is a section which provocatively asks, "Have you ever heard anyone say, 'If I'm a vegetable, pull the plug'?" There also are guilt-inducing scenarios such as "I can no longer contribute to my family's well being," "I am a severe financial burden on my family" and that the vet's situation "causes severe emotional burden for my family."

When the government can steer vulnerable individuals to conclude for themselves that life is not worth living, who needs a death panel?

One can only imagine a soldier surviving the war in Iraq and returning without all of his limbs only to encounter a veteran's health-care system that seems intent on his surrender.

I was not surprised to learn that the VA panel of experts that sought to update "Your Life, Your Choices" between 2007-2008 did not include any representatives of faith groups or disability rights advocates. And as you might guess, only one organization was listed in the new version as a resource on advance directives: the Hemlock Society (now euphemistically known as "Compassion and Choices").

(***Note, the Hemlock Society is a bunch of euthanasia enthusiasts. That's what they're pushing and always have pushed.***)

This hurry-up-and-die message is clear and unconscionable. Worse, a July 2009 VA directive instructs its primary care physicians to raise advance care planning with all VA patients and to refer them to "Your Life, Your Choices." Not just those of advanced age and debilitated condition—all patients. America's 24 million veterans deserve better.

Many years ago I created an advance care planning document called "Five Wishes" that is today the most widely used living will in America, with 13 million copies in national circulation. Unlike the VA's document, this one does not contain the standard bias to withdraw or withhold medical care. It meets the legal requirements of at least 43 states, and it runs exactly 12 pages.

After a decade of observing end-of-life discussions, I can attest to the great fear that many patients have, particularly those with few family members and financial resources. I lived and worked in an AIDS home in the mid-1980s and saw first-hand how the dying wanted more than health care—they wanted someone to care.

If President Obama is sincere in stating that he is not trying to cut costs by pressuring the disabled to forgo critical care, one good way to show that commitment is to walk two blocks from the Oval Office and pull the plug on "Your Life, Your Choices." He should make sure in the future that VA decisions are guided by values that treat the lives of our veterans as gifts, not burdens.

Mr. Towey, president of Saint Vincent College, was director of the White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives (2002-2006) and founder of the nonprofit Aging with Dignity.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204683204574358590107981718.html

posted August 20, 2009 07:33 PM            

quote:

---

They planned to help balance one of the governments biggest budget items by denying life saving drugs and other medical treatment to seniors. And what a great help that would be for Social Security. Social Security checks are for the living. How wonderful to be able to eliminate the deficits by just saying "Die Baby, Die".

---

posted August 20, 2009 07:53 PM            

The people O'Bomber has surrounded himself with have viewpoints which support what I said..that health care can be withheld involuntarily from some people..depending on their value to society..which includes the elderly, the handicapped and the mentally slow...and the very young...those in whom society has no investment.

You continue to lack reading comprehension acoustic. They've laid it all out chapter and verse..without actually calling it what it really is.

posted September 02, 2009 08:20 PM            

Two words and Palin nukes O'Bomber's Socialist O'BomberCare initiative.

It's not the first time Palin nuked O'Bomber.

Immediately after news Palin was chosen as McCain's VP running mate, O'Bomber put out an insulting press release referring to Palin as "A Mayor from a small town in Alaska".

Palin paid O'Bomber back in spades when she spoke at the RNC convention and said...

I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a "community organizer," except that you have actual responsibilities. I might add that in small towns, we don't quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren't listening.

Payback baby and it highlighted the fact O'Bomber's Executive experience is zip, nada, zilch..none...and also the elitist snobbery of O'Bomber.

Palin nailed O'Bomber again for his phony pretentious Greek columns and medieval stage set.

This is a man who can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting, and never use the word "victory" except when he's talking about his own campaign. But when the cloud of rhetoric has passed ... when the roar of the crowd fades away ... when the stadium lights go out, and those Styrofoam Greek columns are hauled back to some studio lot - what exactly is our opponent's plan?

Now, Palin has nuked O'Bomber again...with only 2 words..."Death Panel".

Palin also went after David Letterman and forced Letterman and CBS to back down.

Letterman, after hemming and hawing and attempting to skate by with a phony apology finely threw in the towel and apologized.

Palin called Letterman a "Dirty Old Man"..and implied he's not safe to be around young girls.

So acoustic, you simply don't know what the hell you're talking about...which is the usual with you.

You are not equipped to understand how deftly Palin uses words to create an image.."imagery"..or the fact Palin is and has been using leftist tactics against them.

No one is ever going to forget the words "Death Panel" or fail to associate the words with O'Bomber's Socialist O'BomberCare.

posted September 03, 2009 12:00 AM            

But, in the real world Zeke Emanuel is an immoral, unethical, leftist boob in favor of killing the elderly, the infirm, the disabled and those who disagree with Socialist social policy...oh yeah, and babies who have not lived long enough for society to have much of an investment in their lives.

Palin's nuke was right on target.

Zeke Emanuel is exactly what my grandfather would have called an educated fool.

September 02, 2009
Sarah Palin vs. Dr. Death
By Stuart Schwartz

Ezekiel Emanuel is upset. The president's health care czar sees the growing resistance to his vision, to his brave new world of government-run "communitarian" health care in which politicians and bureaucrats control one-sixth of the economy and 100% of our bodies. He doesn't quite understand how it all came apart on him, but he does know who started the unraveling: Sarah Palin.

Where does she get off attacking him? Sarah Palin, it seems forever Sarah Palin. And he wonders, as have so many others, what it takes to put a stake through her heart? People should listen to him, not Sarah Palin. He is the philosopher king of Democrat health care. And he went to Harvard, you know.

One day he was vacationing in the Italian Alps, a top-level government bureaucrat and Democrat insider enjoying the fruits of his labors on behalf of the common good. Government health care was cruising and Zeke was the guy Time magazine predicted will build the most "equitable and ethical" health care system north of Cuba. Marty Peretz, his friend and publisher of The New Republic, described him as quintessential Harvard, "very impressive" and stuffed with "gravitas."

And then he got the call: Sarah Palin had done the unthinkable. She had read the health care bill. Mainstream journalists hadn't read the bill. Congress hadn't read its own bill. But Sarah Palin did. Sarah Palin! He has a medical degree and doctorate in political philosophy from Harvard. The only Harvard she's knows is the chunk of ice off Prince William Sound, Harvard Glacier.

Then she writes something on Facebook -- Facebook, for Obama's sake! -- and suddenly the president, congress, the media, and everyone who is anyone inside the beltway is scurrying for cover. Palin wrote that she wanted nothing to do with Obama's "death panel," the collection of bureaucrats who Zeke was so proudly putting together to assess the "level of productivity" that would determine individual access to medical care

They went after her, but...it was over. Everyone was talking death panels. Sarah Palin had let people know: if you're old, if you're sick, if you're disabled, they're targeting you. It became Mrs. Mom vs. Dr. Death, the governor vs. the terminator.

She cut through the rhetoric, the academic jargon, and adoring press to the truth: Ezekiel Emanuel and Barack Obama and the Democrat-led Congress are putting in place a health care system that will control the lives -- and deaths -- of citizens to an extent never seen in this republic. Her reaction:"we're saying not just no, but hell no!

And Zeke is upset. A slam-dunk had been transformed into an epic battle and, as an American Thinker commentator put it, ObamaCare turned into a "sick joke." That's not how it's supposed to be -- he went to Harvard, you know.

Ezekiel Emanuel "abhors" what she's done. She read his articles, which "even well-educated people" would have a difficult time understanding. And she's certainly not well educated. She's a graduate of the University of Idaho, where they probably write doctoral dissertations in crayon. And she only has a bachelor's degree -- in communications, for Obama's sake!?

It's as if the waitress at the Harvard Faculty Club had, instead of a check, taken out a baseball bat and cold-cocked him. Or the ball girl at the tennis event sponsored by the Harvard Club of Washington DC had reared back and smacked a Dunlop A-Player right into his groin. This is not supposed to happen -- he went to Harvard, you know.

This is crazy! People are packing town halls in protest. They are listening to Sarah Palin and not Zeke, who has been a fellow at Oxford -- the one in England, not the suburb of Fairbanks. And he has written nine books, almost a dozen chapters in other books, and more than 225 other pieces on bioethics and morality. And certified as a genius by The New York Times, which hired him as a book reviewer for its Sunday newspaper

And yet, this, this... this Facebook writer described his thinking as "downright evil." And demanded that he explain why he's trying to put in place centralized health care that "would refuse to allocate medical resources to the elderly, the infirm, and the disabled who have less economic potential."

Evil!? Sarah Palin called him evil!? She said "death panels," he didn't. Hey, some lives are worth more to society than others. Therefore, health services cannot be guaranteed for individuals like Trig, Palin's baby with Down Syndrome, who are "irreversibly prevented" from contributing to the public good. There is a subtle difference.

Sarah Palin simply does not understand. No nuance. She did not go to Harvard, nor is she a board member of Princeton University's Center for Human Values, where Zeke provides support for philosopher Peter Singer. Singer is best known for the view that fetuses and many disabled have less of a right to live than, say, fully functioning humans and "adult gorillas and chimpanzees." No, Zeke believes that those who know better, who understand morality, should make decisions for those less able to do so.

Like Sarah Palin. Like Trig. Like your grandma. And this is because he cares. Just ask him: "I hope at the end of the day I can make things better for people, especially vulnerable people." As an original member of the academic "communitarian" movement, he has pledged to establish "just" health care by means that are "nondemocratic or practice discrimination." A just society doesn't simply happen, he explains. You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs... so to speak.

So when Sarah Palin says she doesn't want her "baby with Down Syndrome" to stand in front of his medical panels... that shows just how unsophisticated her thinking really is. She has already made the anti-social choice of giving birth to a child with a severe disability, who will never be able to live the "complete life" outlined by Zeke on behalf of the government.

Therefore, it is the responsibility of a health care system that operates in the public good to deny Trig -- or grandma, for that matter -- health services that are better used elsewhere. Sarah Palin, not the government, is to blame. She chose to have Trig. She forced a situation that provides her with, as Zeke puts it, "bleak choices."

And so government, for the sake of the common good, may deny Trig medical care. And may do the same with the elderly, the severely disabled, and others who fall low on the "complete life" value scale. It is the best way, the moral way, the smart way.

posted September 03, 2009 12:25 AM            

quote:

---

Now katatonic...acoustic..et.al, if you don't want to talk about Sarah Palin

---

Who doesn't want to talk Sarah Palin? You must be as stupid as she is to think that I or anyone else on the Left would be afraid to take on your average moron, Sarah Palin.

Here you go:
An incomplete response to the nonsense that is Sarah Palin as written by me:

So we've heard the “common sense” argument from Sarah Palin, and it's been widely discredited. Frankly, I don't think “discredited” quite conveys the weight of the facts against it, nor the common sense argument against such ideas. “Discredited,” to me, sounds as if it was a battle of opinion, one opinion against an opposing opinion. I think there is a reality to Advanced Care Planning Consultations that is not in line with the imagined outcome Sarah Palin put forward.

First, it's important to know that these consultations aren't anything new. Up until now they were not considered controversial in the slightest. Doctors are currently compensated by insurance companies for the very same conversations. Euthanasia is illegal in 48 states, and should not be considered the goal of these consultations.

Sarah Palin quoted a liberal op-ed columnist from the Washington Post in defense of the idea that euthanasia will be pushed as a cost-cutting measure. It's easy to see why someone might think that, but is that where your consideration of the issue should end? Could there be a cost savings derived from these consultations that isn't derived from convincing people to pull the plug on themselves?

One should consider who gets to make the decisions about your health care in the absence of a living will.

If you don't have a living will and a health care agent, a person other than your family member may decide what kind of care you receive. A decision may be made by a doctor who doesn't know you, or it may even be made by the courts. In some states, you need to make clear and give permission in your advance directive that you don't want to be fed through a tube or receive other kinds of life support.
Cigna
Sutter Health

In states where you must specify that you allow them to pull the plug on you, they will have to keep you alive indefinitely regardless of whether you ever regain the ability to speak for yourself. In this scenario, the patient doesn't have the facility to live a meaningful life ever again. The uncomfortable truth is that treatment is a waste by any rational measure. It's worth mentioning that there is no freedom, and no choice involved in this scenario.

In states without that requirement, a doctor could be making the decisions regarding your health care. The doctor gets paid by the insurance company. Is the insurance company going to be more or less cost-effective than the government? If you believe private industry is more efficient than the government can ever be, then the answer is that private insurance will make decisions that are more cost-effective. That patient will die, and the family will not have had a choice in the matter. How's that for rationing? I'd feel remiss if I didn't mention that there was no freedom involved in this scenario either.

If it's a court decision, I can only imagine what might occur. Does the family get a voice in the court? Would the family have a unified voice in the matter? How much time and money will be spent on treatment for a patient that may be subjected to a court-ordered pulling of the plug? How much time and money will be spent hashing it out with the lawyers, family members, and the court? What is the likelihood that the patient's freedom and choice will be respected?

_______________________________

posted September 03, 2009 12:33 AM            

"Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists would be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is often the only protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy."
-- Senator Ted Kennedy

"And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. 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. Such a system is downright evil."
-- Governor Sarah Palin

The story is about Winston Churchill.

The British statesman was a guest at a dinner in a private home. The dinner hour arrived and the guests made their way to the dining room. Churchill moved to a chair along the side of the table. Mortified, the hostess was quickly at his side, gesturing to the empty chair waiting for him. "Mr. Churchill," she said, "your seat is at the head of the table." To which Churchill responded in typical Churchillian style. "Madame," he said, "wherever I sit is the head of the table." And with that -- the Great Man sat down where he was.

The story comes to mind as Senator Ted Kennedy is laid to rest amid praise that he was the "Lion of the Senate," a man of whom it is said that when he spoke, a nation listened. Neither the Senate nor the nation necessarily followed -- but they did listen.

Whatever one's view of the late Senator, it would be hard to dispute this assessment. The famous statement he made within minutes of President Ronald Reagan's nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court is perhaps a classic example of this. Conservatives assailed Kennedy at the time -- and it has been cited all over again in recent days as one of his less glorious moments as a senator.

Yet in fact this criticism of Kennedy's Bork statement misses a very Churchillian fact.

Whether you liked what Ted Kennedy said that day or hated it, whether you loved Ted Kennedy or couldn't stand him -- millions of people paid attention to him when he said it. In fact, in that instance for better or worse, depending on one's politics, Kennedy's statement signaled not just that Bork would have a difficult time being confirmed. His blunt remarks from the Senate floor set the stage for Bork's outright defeat, something initially considered impossible at the time. After all, Ronald Reagan was a popular president and Robert Bork was commonly considered by even opponents to be a legal giant. With his startling speech from the floor of the Senate, the sheer power of Ted Kennedy's personality and rhetoric changed the course of history.

This is precisely what Churchill meant when he (perhaps rudely) told his hostess the obvious truth of the evening. Winston Churchill was dining in her home, and no matter where he sat, no matter whether he was in office or out, no matter the other guests, he quite indisputably would have the attention of everyone else at the table. He was, after all, Winston Churchill.

This is a rare quality in political leaders. In reality it's a human trait, not a political one. Your Aunt Sally could possess Churchill's "head of the table" characteristic and not your Uncle Jim. Yet in the rarefied world of politics, where there is by definition a handful of nationally prominent politicians at any given moment, possessors of Churchill's "head of the table" trait stand out.

They possess, as did Winston Churchill, an unquantifiable capability that can not just electrify a room full of supporters but send them into passionate fits of ecstasy -- while simultaneously sending opponents into a furious, foaming rage. If these politicians master the art of using this quality, they can instantly play a huge role in anything from a winning political campaign to driving a piece of legislation across the legislative finish line. Or stopping it.

By now, a year after her emergence on the national scene, it is crystal clear that former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has this "head of the table" gene in spades. She is, in a remarkable way, the real heir -- make that heiress -- to Senator Kennedy. She is charismatic, she has a decided point of view and she is a lightning rod for controversy. Just as Kennedy managed to sink a once sure-thing Supreme Court nomination with his famous Bork speech, Governor Palin has managed to explode Section 1233 of the ObamaCare House bill with her vivid description of "death panels," severely damaging the President's entire legislative priority in the process.

Ted Kennedy was in fact always one of 100 senators at any given moment in his senatorial career. Any one of the other 99 could have been a star at the same time. In fact, only a handful had any lasting impact over the decades, most simply treading water in the historic body leaving nary a footprint behind. Sarah Palin is one of a number of nationally prominent Republican leaders, a field that includes senators, congressmen, governors and party officials. Most Americans had trouble at any moment from 1963 until this past week identifying more than a handful of U.S. Senators -- but everybody knew Senator Kennedy. So too is Sarah Palin an instant standout among her Republican leadership peers, most of whom are unidentifiable to the vast American public.

It takes nothing away from Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee or Tim Pawlenty and others who may be presidential candidates the next time around, all of whom have had criticism of ObamaCare, to say that it was Sarah Palin almost single-handedly who has dealt a once hugely popular president a stunning defeat on a major aspect of his key legislative program. A feat accomplished she accomplished with a simple Kennedy-esque "Robert Bork's America" style posting on her Facebook page.

In an article applauding Kennedy's Bork speech, written after the Senator's death, legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin says in the New Yorker that Kennedy's speech "was crude and exaggerated, but it galvanized the opposition as nothing else, and no one else, could"

Toobin, a liberal, is applauding the result -- keeping Bork off the bench -- because he agrees with it. What he overlooks here is that what Kennedy also launched that day was a way of speaking in the television soundbite age that might be labeled as visual shorthand. Toobin describes it exactly, however -- a "crude and exaggerated" portrait of the issue at hand. The one word Toobin left out was effective, which Kennedy's Bork speech most certainly was. Like Ted Kennedy, Sarah Palin has demonstrated her mastery of this political skill. Have liberals taken offense at her death panel description? Are you kidding? They are beside themselves with anger. But in true sauce for the goose and the gander style, if this "crude and exaggerated" technique can be used by Ted Kennedy to keep Robert Bork off the Supreme Court, Sarah Palin is well within the boundaries of acceptable political dialogue to describe the Obama health care plan as promoting the use of "death panels."

Yet as Toobin also importantly noted about Kennedy's Bork speech, it could only galvanize because "no one else" other than Ted Kennedy was capable of giving those words such an impact. In other words, this kind of language has to be used by a "head of the table" personality to have any serious impact. For anyone of less political heft than Kennedy to have tried the Bork speech would have resulted in, well, not much. There were plenty of liberals in the Senate in 1987, but it was Ted Kennedy who had the Churchill-sized clout. There are plenty of Republican leaders out there right now -- a few saying some version of Palin's words -- but it is Palin with the Churchill-style "head of the table" clout who makes people sit up and pay attention.

Ironically, Ted Kennedy has bequeathed a modern televised style of rhetoric that has been used with considerable effect by Palin against the very plan that Kennedy spent a political lifetime championing. NPR's Julie Rovner said of ObamaCare opposition that "opponents used fear as a key weapon in their arsenal." If this is in fact what this kind of rhetoric is -- and certainly there would be plentiful disagreement on the subject -- is this not what Ted Kennedy was doing when attacking Judge Bork? Rovner and NPR's memory seems to be remarkably short on the subject of Ted Kennedy dishing out what they themselves seem to define as fear.

One can only imagine that were he here now alive and well, the fabled old Senate lion would have heard Palin's words and wasted no time burning some phone hours to Alaska.

None of this means Governor Palin is the inevitable Republican nominee for 2012. None of it means she will necessarily ever be president. Ted Kennedy was never president. What it does mean is that figuratively speaking, wherever Sarah Palin sits at the national political table, like Churchill or Ted Kennedy, that is the general location of the head of the table.

This is a quality that has appeared often enough in American history -- and outside America as well. Senators like Ted Kennedy have been prominent before, bearing names like Henry Clay or Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, Robert Taft, Barry Goldwater and Hubert Humphrey. Governors like New York Republican Nelson Rockefeller or Alabama Democrat George Wallace. A Congressman like Jack Kemp. Non-office holders like Martin Luther King in the United States or Mohandas Gandhi in India or Nelson Mandela in South Africa (who later became president of his country) can, through sheer force of personality, come to dominate the political scene of the day without ever bearing a single official title.

The Churchill case is particularly instructive. Here is a man whose career took off like a rocket from his youth, partially in a drive to prove himself to a brilliant yet cold father whose own career was cut short, allegedly by a fatal bout of syphilis. Young Winston used his role as a low-ranking Army officer to turn himself into a famous war correspondent and, eventually, a young Member of Parliament. As what would be a fifty-year career progressed, he established the Churchill reputation that enamors the world to this day -- brilliant, insightful, witty, colorful, resilient, a literary giant with fearsome rhetorical skills. In the process he drew the intense dislike of any number of jealous rivals of the day. By the 1930s, now in his late fifties and early sixties, with his Conservative Party once again in power, he was famously cast out into the political wilderness by his two scheming Conservative Party rivals, the back-to-back prime ministers Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain. Neither man could hold a candle to Churchill -- which both knew, providing a further sense of rage.

Why?

Churchill's "head-of-the-table" factor was at that point so glaringly obvious both men had all they could do just to control him. He was belittled, ignored, attacked, maneuvered against -- all, in the end, to no avail. And it should be noted, that for most of this time when he wasn't lecturing around Europe or America, Churchill was relegated to one of two places -- the back benches of Parliament or his equivalent of Wasilla, Alaska: Chartwell, his country manor in rural Kent. Neither place presented much opportunity for leadership on the surface. In point of fact, lots of British MPs of the day were back benchers with country homes. But they carried nowhere near the invisible aura of clout that moved with Churchill wherever he seemed to go.

So too was this true with Ted Kennedy. In Kennedy's case, as has been frequently noted in the last week, his worst enemy was in fact himself -- specifically with an inability to get control of a serious drinking and womanizing problem. Both of these personal problems eventually denied him the White House. Yet even then it could not extinguish Teddy's "head-of-the-table" quality. It was that quality that made Americans love him, hate him, lavish praise on him and ferociously attack him. All of which was in its own way a testament to the fact that when Ted Kennedy spoke, people listened. Republican direct mail fundraisers throughout the land knew that if they wanted a sure-fire way to raise bucks all they had to do was holdout the specter of Teddy Kennedy and the dollars would roll in.

Are there other Americans on the political scene like this right now? Yes indeed, with some having one-word name identification with most Americans. Hillary and Newt would be two in this rarified crowd. Former vice presidents Dick Cheney and Al Gore are another two, making headlines regularly, both out of office with the presidency in each case seemingly never in the cards.. This is not so with former vice presidents Dan Quayle or Walter Mondale, both of whom have faded without a title to hold onto.

It is particularly interesting that presidents don't always fit here. By definition a sitting president can rule the roost. But once receding into the mists of history, their clout can fade as easily as the last strains of Hail to the Chief. The obvious measure of this is to take a look at the former presidents living and dead who have captured the popular imagination -- and still do. Of 43 men and 44 presidents, the list of "head of the table" types is small. Washington, Jefferson and Jackson were clearly early "head-of-the-table" personalities, all three recorded multiples of times dominating situations long before they held office. Abraham Lincoln and the two Roosevelts are similarly notable for receiving attention long before holding the presidency, and in TR's case long after. So too with Reagan, who held attention for almost three decades before his presidential election. These were men who moved the nation around them with no title whatsoever, and would have that potential in office or out until their last breath.

In the case of Lincoln, Kennedy, the two Roosevelts and Reagan they are, long dead, still motivating Americans in one direction or another. Teddy Kennedy's entire career derived from the initial push he received as JFK's little brother. The latter fact is particularly telling, since JFK died in 1963. Only Teddy himself could have carved out the rest of his career, the political careers of relatives of famous presidents frequently having a short shelf life. Theodore Roosevelt's famous son Ted Jr. fizzled in politics, as did Franklin Roosevelt's namesake son Franklin Jr. The name can get you in the door. After that it's up to you.

This is what really drives Sarah Palin's critics nuts. She sits up there in Alaska with Todd and the kids, taps out a few words on her Facebook page -- and presto! ObamaCare has a torpedo amidships! Without doubt this causes Palin's rivals, just as it once did with Churchill's and Teddy Kennedy's, to fret and fume if not foam.

Can you imagine how you must feel if you are an in-state rival like Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski? Who? Exactly. No one in Washington much less the rest of the country is huddled in a corner whispering -- "what did Lisa say?" Nor does America take much notice of Palin's potential 2012 rivals like Romney, Huckabee or Minnesota Governor Pawlenty. The New York Times isn't wasting ink being catty about Ms. Murkowski because, with no disrespect intended to Senator Murkowski, like most of her Senate colleagues her "head of the table" factor is exactly zero. There are no thundering editorials of disapproval for Romney, no Maureen Dowd snipes at Huckabee, no Keith Olbermann tirades about Pawlenty. It's Sarah Palin they can't stand, and it's visceral -- an immediate tip off to her Kennedy-like "head of the table" status.

There are a zillion talk radio hosts in America these days. I need not mention the "R" word for everyone out there to know who is, instantly, understood by all to be "talk radio." This is Churchill's head of the table factor on radio. She may be quiet over there in the State Department at the moment, seething about her treatment in the White House or elsewhere, but there isn't an American awake who doesn't know Hillary is there, plotting, planning --well, something. This is Churchill's head of the table factor momentarily setting up shop in the State Department. America has former Speakers of the House all the time, two past Speakers in the moment. Is anyone gnashing their teeth over Republican Dennis Hastert or Democrat Tom Foley? Of course not. There is only one who has a first name acquaintance with Americans, who simultaneously, like Teddy Kennedy or Churchill, causes people to applaud with zest or tempers to rise through the roof at the mere mention of his first name. Newt is Churchill's head of the table factor personified.

If you have this capability, what do you do with it?

It is clear looking back this last week that Teddy Kennedy found himself in exactly that spot, and for a considerable period simply didn't know the answer. Let Mayor Daley push his name forward at the 1968 Democratic Convention -- an action that surely would have ended with Teddy at 36 at the top of the ticket or as Hubert Humphrey's number two? Get elected to the Senate Majority Whip job? Run for president in 1972, 1976, 1980, 1984? All of these options, some taken, others not, played out against a not so private canvass of heavy drinking, serious womanizing and family problems. Some of which doubtless resulted in Kennedy trying to cope with things he had not bargained for -- patriarch status for his assassinated brothers' kids and torch bearer for the Jack and Bobby legacy, whatever he imagined that to be.

Churchill had this problem as well, setting out to prove himself to a brilliant but soon dead father who was once expected to be prime minister. Never once was he able to turn to that cherished figure in the flesh and receive the paternal acknowledgment of success he is said to have craved. Thinking his career finished by the 1930s, Winston too was known to love the champagne and brandy life. But in the end he got himself under control, the rise of Adolf Hitler electrifying him, focusing his enormous talents to finally give him the prime minister's office denied his father.

None of these "head of the table" types have gotten where they are without some considerable personal struggle along the way. One has no idea at this moment what that might be for Sarah Palin, beyond knowing those things that are already well-out there on the public record.

But like Ted Kennedy, Sarah Palin has a gift. An ability to make Americans focus on the issue of the day -- and likewise the head of the table ability to lead the country in a specific direction. In fact, she just did it on health care, making her sentiments plain with a Kennedy-style "Robert Bork's America" pronouncement. No other losing vice-presidential candidate in American history has drawn this kind of attention -- whether the passionate applause or the enraged disdain -- as Sarah Palin. Every time her enemies disparage her it only serves to underline the point, just as Ted Kennedy's enemies did the same with him.

She may be President of the United States. Or like Ted Kennedy, she may never be President of the United States.

But without doubt, Sarah Palin has demonstrated that she has exactly the opportunity that Ted Kennedy eventually found for himself in the United States Senate. The ability, whether she receives applause or scorn, to get the American people saying:

Did you hear what Sarah Palin said today?

posted September 03, 2009 12:37 AM            

quote:

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But, in the real world Zeke Emanuel is an immoral, unethical, leftist boob in favor of killing the elderly, the infirm, the disabled and those who disagree with Socialist social policy...oh yeah, and babies who have not lived long enough for society to have much of an investment in their lives.

---

This is just a load of crap. It's completely dishonest, and really pure partisan nonsense.

posted September 03, 2009 12:43 AM            

Palin is putting all that Aquarius to very good use.

You need to face the fact you're not in Palin's league acoustic. Palin is Major League and you're still in Little League.

posted September 03, 2009 12:52 AM            

He's a boobish, immoral, unethical leftist twit who's intent on killing off those he thinks don't measure up to HIS standards.

Zeke Emanuel doesn't measure up to my high standards and if his game is to kill off those in certain demographic categories in America...then my response is Zeke first and all those who think like Zeke.

To think of Zeke as moral or as an ethicist is a major attack on the English language...not to mention logic and reason; 3 subjects you don't know much about.

posted September 03, 2009 01:02 AM            

Regarding your second post, you're still demonstrating that you have no concept of the man or his work. It doesn't take a lot of digging to learn about what's really true about him. I know the only work you like to do is cutting and pasting from your favorite opinion journals, but I make the challenge for those with slightly higher initiative and intellectual capacity.

posted September 03, 2009 09:44 AM            

"According to a new poll, 42% of Americans say they would vote for Sarah Palin for president in 2012. They also said they'd support her decision to step down in 2013." --Conan O'Brien

"As I watched the press conference, I realized finally we have a candidate for the people who loved George Bush's certainty but were bothered by his rationality and executive experience." --Jon Stewart, on Sarah Paling's resignation

"In a recent study, the United States was ranked the 114th happiest country in the world. Then Sarah Palin stepped down. Now we're at 17." --Conan O'Brien

"President Obama right now is in Russia. Obama went there because from Russia you can actually see Sarah Palin cleaning out her office in Alaska." --Conan O'Brien

"Over the weekend Sarah Palin shocked the country by resigning as governor of Alaska. Yeah, Republicans aren't sure who is going to fill her role in the party, but they are in talks with several of the Real Housewives of New Jersey." --Conan O'Brien

"Well, according to a new post-election survey, people want Sarah Palin to run for president in 2012. It says she's been getting thousands of calls from people pleading with her to run, all Democrats." --Jay Leno

posted September 03, 2009 09:54 AM            

There are people in our society I wouldn't step over the crack in the sidewalk to hear speak and I bemoan the killing of a single tree to have their idiocy reduced to print.

Those people would include but are not limited to; Zeke Emanuel, Noam Chomksy, Ward Churchill, Nicholas De Genova, Nancy Pee-Lousy, Van Jones, Bill Ayers, Harry Reid, Pat Leahy, Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin, Barbara Boxer, Maxine Waters and a cast of other leftist twits like Barack Hussein O'Bomber.

Fortunately, there are masochists among us who have heard these twits speak and researched their writings.

It's undeniable Zeke Emanuel has said exactly what I've posted here. The postings come directly from his writings which have been posted.

What I haven't posted here is that Emanuel is a$$hole buddies with a guy who posits that babies up to 2 years old can be killed...infanticide, and it's clear Emanuel includes babies when he says some segments of our society can be denied health services so they will die...those in whom society has a low monetary investment..along with those who don't meet his standards of remaining worth to society.

For that reason and others, Zeke Emanuel is immoral, is unethical, is a useless collection of inferior tissue cells and he got nuked by Sarah Palin.

posted September 03, 2009 10:04 AM            

However, there is a point in your favor. You didn't include the "dirty old man", David Letterman.

Or