Why Does Sarah Palin Hate the American Soldier?

The last time I noticed Moosepants Barbie holding forth in public, she was chastising The Media. Sing along; you know the words by now.

So how about in honor of the American soldier, ya quit makin' things up?

Because that is a job that, apparently, is Sarah Palin's and Sarah Palin's alone. Sarah Palin also wants you to leave her kids alone, and the new Alaska governor's kids alone, because no one trots out Sarah Palin's kids as cheap political props except Sarah Palin. Particularly when she's busy makin' things up that are so brazenly untrue and fear-mongering that even our jaded jaw dropped through the floor this morning upon reading her very thoughtful thoughts on healthcare reform:

"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," the former Republican vice presidential candidate wrote.

"Such a system is downright evil," Palin wrote on her page, which has nearly 700,000 supporters.

I am Sarah Palin! And my children are off-limits! By the way! Did you know Obama wants to kill my special-needs baby, Trig? Yeah, that one over there. No, on the right. That's Trig, and he is special-needs! And you media goons need to stop talking about him. Why is the media always talking about him? Trig, I mean, the special-needs one. Oh, and Obama's evil, and you guys in the media like make shit up all the time, and that's why I didn't quit being governor but just decided to not be governor any more in case there might have been a lame duck thing goin' on a couple years down the long long Arctic road with cold and geese and sourdoughs. And quit talkin' about my kids, one of which is special-needs, and is named Trig, that's him over there, and Obama wants to kill him! Socialism! Shut up and leave me alone already! Would you like to be my Facebook friend?

*pant pant* Yeah, anyway, uh, no. No "death panels" or "encouraged euthanasia" are in the offing, unless by "euthanasia" you mean "Medicare coverage for end-of-life counseling when the patient desires it."

The allegation appears to be based on a provision of the House bill that would require Medicare to pay for end-of-life counseling sessions, on a voluntary basis, for beneficiaries who want the service. Medicare already covers hospice care. And legislation passed by Congress in 1990 requires that patients be asked if they have a living will.

Obama addressed the controversy during a July 28 AARP-sponsored town hall.

"Nobody is going to be forcing you to make a set of decisions on end-of-life care based on some bureaucratic law in Washington," he said.

Palin's conflation of providing information to a patient with forcing procedures on them is, of course, a complete reflection of the anti-abortion mindset that would love to prevent doctors from giving pregnant women accurate information about abortion, or from giving teenagers information about contraception. And in this instance that mindset is taken to a maniacal extreme.

A government-funded healthcare plan providing coverage for an hour or two with a counselor going over a living will and explaining all the options falling on the continuum between extreme life-maintaining measures and a DNR order? Sarah Palin has transmogrified that into a horrific scene of old folks and developmentally disabled babies shuffling up to a star chamber tribunal to plead for their lives, probably getting cricks in their necks as a result of peering up at the imposing dais, and being summarily denied and executed on the spot.

And 700,000 people are lapping it up on Facebook and being stirred into a frothy frenzy they're ready to unleash on their representatives and anyone who has the misfortune to show up at the same town hall meeting they do. Stirred up by lies, shrieking about euthanasia, screaming NaziNaziNazi at the tops of their lungs, doing their best to derail a reform process that can only help them and the tens of millions of other people in the country who can't afford healthcare.

Because Sarah Palin won't quit makin' stuff up.