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Let's get this straight: If you honestly thought, after reading it, that Section 1233 of the health care reform bill was about creating Sarah Palin's fictional "Death panels," you should not to be allowed out in public unsupervised.
This was a provision that allows coverage for end-of-life counseling - the kind of thing we all need one day, whether or not it's paid for by our insurance.
Feverish fantasies extrapolated from this - that evil Democratic euthanasia panels would determine who lives and who dies - is a literally insane idea. It's not even worth discussing. It's only worth mocking.
Let me reiterate: If you can look yourself in the mirror and say, "I genuinely believe Obama and the Democrats in Congress want to set up mandatory euthanasia for old people," you're looking at a crazy person.
Sadly, Max Baucus, the Blue Dog in charge of the Senate Finance Committee (God only knows why) just decided to agree with the crazy people, the incoherent screamers who can't be bothered to actually read the damn thing. He is going to leave Section 1233 on the cutting room floor as "controversial."
While it is really only as controversial as the idea that we all, yes, will die someday, this turn of events will give the screamers some extra ammunition. They'll say (or scream at the tops of their lungs), "If it wasn't about putting babies and old people to death, why would they remove it?"
Why indeed? I hope Senator Baucus has a better explanation for why, because "it was controversial" doesn't cut it when the only people who found it controversial were nutcases. Here's to hoping it gets put back in before the final vote.