Death Panels and Stupid People

First, a quick programming note. A few weeks ago I told Pax that one of my upcoming blog posts would be a response to one of his posts. I just wanted to let him know that I haven't forgotten about that, but haven't had the time to write a substantial blog post lately. All I've had time for lately are quick little link-laden and photo-laden blog posts like this one.

OK, on to the business of this post. About 2o minutes ago, I came across the video below. Before watching it considering the following ( If you are in the USA you probably know this stuff already, but if you're not in the USA you may not ):

There is a big debate taking place in the USA about health care reform. President Obama and the Democrats want the federal government to be more involved in health care ( like almost every other industrialized nation in the world ). Republicans are doing everything they can to stand in the way of meaningful health care reform, mostly because they get huge campaign contributions from private health insurance companies ( These companies have a 30% profit margin. Democrats want to provide people with a "Public Option" to private health care. This would presumably force private health insurance companies to compete with the public health care system, which means health care premiums would go down and health care companies would no longer be making a 30% profit. Health care companies have been spending a lot of money to keep this from happening. ). This is not to say there aren't legitimate fiscal arguments to be made against government-run health care, but Republicans have not even attempted to make legitimate arguments. Instead, they have used scare tactics, most notably the "Death Panel" scare tactic. Republicans are basically claiming that government run health care will lead to seniors citizens being denied life-saving medical treatments in order to save money. They are essentially telling people, "If you let the Democrats pass their health care bill, Obama's going to kill Grandma.". For example, Sarah Palin posted the following on her facebook page:

"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."

Keeping all that in mind, watch the following video:



I think it should be clear to anyone with half a brain that this video is very well-done satire. The video is clearly pro-Democrat, pro-Obama, and is completely in favor of meaningful health care reform which includes a public option. However, when you look at the comments on the video, you'll see that a lot of people didn't get that this video is satirical. A lot of folks thought this video was against Obama's health care plan. I was kinda amused and disturbed by this. One astute commenter summed up my feelings pretty well:

shimarlie1 (23 hours ago) Show Hide

I live in Australia and have been following the debate, and I'm confused about this video.From my perspective this looks like a funny Democratic supporter highlighting the outlandish ridiculousness of the Republican scare campaign.

But from the comments, you appear to be saying that this IS a Republican scare campaign.

Nobody sane could believe, even in jest, that Obama is suggesting 'Death Panels'

Someone please set me straight here..I don't want to believe Reps are THAT dumb.

Yes, shimarlie1, a lot of Republicans are THAT dumb.

Rich