Sixtyplus Place

By Madeleine Kolb

Like millions of you, I’ve been watching those disturbing videos showing angry crowds, disrupting Town Hall meetings on health care reform. In one,  Republican Congressman Todd Akin refers to Democratic congressmen going to meetings in their own districts being “just about lynched”—a remark which evoked loud applause and laughter in the audience. 

Other videos show an angry crowd inside a Town Hall meeting, pushing and shoving and drowning out a Congressman or woman–attempting to speak–by shouting, booing, or chanting. Meanwhile, an angry crowd outside is pushing, shoving, and banging on the door.

The images are alarming:  we’ve probably all seen the man in his fifties whose shirt has been mostly torn from his chest. Even more disturbing are videos linking President Barack Obama and health care proposals to Hitler’s Final Solution. 

But it gets worse. This morning Sarah Palin weighed in on Facebook, suggesting that her parents and her baby with Down Syndrome “will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective view of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care.” She concluded that “Such a system is downright evil.” (more…)