Right-wing demagogues

It's incendiary idiots like these that are responsible for thousands of people gathering in D.C. this weekend. Inciting fear. Preying on ignorance. Or maybe they're "praying" on ignorance. "Free speech" can be an ugly, embarrassing thing. When will the first shots be fired?

Top 10 Ridiculous Quotes by Health Care Reform Opponents

By Daniel Kurtzman, About.com

As anyone following the hysterical "debate" over health care reform knows, President Obama and his fellow socialists are trying to create death panels in order to pull the plug on grandma and kill off other undesirables, just like Hitler did in Nazi Germany. Or so the wingnuts would have us believe.

Because we like to chronicle and catalog political insanity, here are the 10 most patently ridiculous quotes about health care reform from the likes of Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Michele Bachmann.

1. "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." —Sarah Palin, in a message posted on Facebook about Obama's health care reform plan, (Source)

2. "Obama's got a health care logo that's right out of Adolf Hitler's playbook … Adolf Hitler, like Barack Obama, also ruled by dictate." —Rush Limbaugh, Aug. 6, 2009 (Source)

3. "People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless." —a July 31 editorial in Investor's Business Daily warning about end-of-life counseling in health care reform. Hawking, in fact, lives in England and has been treated by their National Health Service, which, by his own account, saved his life (Source)

4. "What we have to do today is make a covenant, to slit our wrists, be blood brothers on this thing. This will not pass. We will do whatever it takes." –Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), on what is needed to defeat health care reform, Aug. 31, 2009 (Source)

5. "You have three people in the White House that are in love with eugenics or whatever it is you would call it today. … Please dear God, read history. Please dear God read the truth of what these people have said in their own words, and ask yourself this one question: Do you trust these people enough to give them control over who lives and who dies? Because that's what health care is when you have no other choice but to go to the state." —Glenn Beck, comparing health care reform to Nazi eugenics (Source)

6. "Congress would make it mandatory — absolutely require — that every five years people in Medicare have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner." —Betsy McCaughey, former New York lieutenant governor and originator of the "death panel" lie, July 16, 2009 (Source)

7. There is some fear because in the House bill, there is counseling for end-of-life. And from that standpoint, you have every right to fear. ... We should not have a government program that determines if you're going to pull the plug on grandma." —Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Aug. 12, 1009 (Source)

8. "We're gonna have a government rationing body that tells women with breast cancer, 'You're dead.' It's a death sentence." —FOX News Channel's Sean Hannity, June 19, 2009 (Source)

9. "That's why people need to continue to go to the town halls, continue to melt the phone lines of their liberal members of Congress, and let them know, under no certain circumstances will I give the government control over my body and my health care decisions." —Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), a pro-lifer who completely missed the irony of using the same slogan as the pro-choice movement (Source)

10. "Exercise freaks ... are the ones putting stress on the health care system." —Rush Limbaugh, June 12, 2009 (Source)