One Day, Mickey Kaus Is Going To Die

Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich -- national punchlines to 71% of the country and heroes to 29% -- are standing united against Obama's health care plan and have apparently started using Mickey's favorite hobbyhorse: the clear and simple fact that Obama is plotting to kill you.

But you can just tell that those two don't really feel it ... and not only because each of them has previously addressed the same end-of-life issues either in the exact same manner or by going even further than Obama. No, it's because they're clearly using "death panels" as a means of scaring old people and using "government takeovers" as a means of riling up the black helicopter crowd ... pretty much the standard right-wing "The Paranoid Style In American Politics"-as-a-playbook maneuvers.

Not Mickey, though. Sure, Mickey is doing the same kind of arguing in bad faith, making the same completely loony logical leaps, and is still presuming that the great and good American public is right behind him ... but there's something more to Mickey's lamentations. The volume of posting, the passionate intensity of his raging lies, the way he's constantly taking on his younger, more accomplished, full-head-of-hair-having blogging rival ... it's as though Mickey is channeling all of his issues with his impending mortality into his blog, with Peter Orszag playing the role of the Grim Reaper. It'd be sad, if it didn't have so many links to Tom Maguire.

So, please allow me to scare the pants off of Mickey [Not the pants! -- ed.]:

“[Health care reforms] don’t address the underlying problem, which is the cost of the last few months of life. We’re often not prolonging the quality of life, we’re just prolonging life. You’re accused of demagogy if you even approach the subject; but if it’s unlikely that you’ll enjoy a decent quality of life, doctors should send patients home and allow them to die what used to be called the ‘old man’s death,’ usually from pneumonia, the way most people used to die in this country.”

Is that Peter Orszag? Ezra Klein? Barack Obama?!? Nope, it's a prominent Republican, high-level McCain advisor, and the man who legally stole billions from the Chinese ... ladies and gentleman, Pete Peterson!

You know what this means? The quest to kill Mickey is totally bipartisan. Sleep with one eye open, Mickey!