1. While the term "death panel" is perhaps a bit strong, few people with a brain are naive enough to believe the day of rationing is not in the cards, i.e. old folks who're "going to die soon anyways", will no longer continue receiving life prolonging treatments.
2. Why is rationing for a larger social/fiscal good more of a threat under a public vs. private system? For starter because while you can sue Humana or Blue Cross or United Health for contractual violations you cannot sue the Federal Government.
3. Vis a vis' Palin: Even her sharpest critics up in Alaska concede that she's a sharp cookie. Obviously she entered a national campaign without being properly briefed on complex global issues but those who extrapolate from the Couric interview etc that she's not intrinsically intelligent probably aren't overly bright themselves. To wit, she more than held her own in the VP debate with lawyer trained, silver tongued, three decades in the Senate, on the campaign trail for President a few times himself, Joe Biden.
4. It's funny and duplicitous how the Left accuses every conservative Republican of being a dim bulb. George Bush who had better grades and a higher estimated IQ than both Kerry and Gore must really be the ultimate idiot savant. Acording to libtards, Bush who graduated from Yale, received a Harvard MBA, made a $100,000,000 owning the Rangers, is a trained pilot, bi-lingual, stole a couple of elections, conspired to create 9/11, started an illegal war, made his oil buddies rich, yet was a certifiable moron. We should all be so stupid.
The same with Reagan. A generation of American's heard little more about him from the leftest media other than he was a "B" movie actor who co-starred with a chimp. Forgotten of course was Reagan's demanding stint as President of the Screen Actors Guild (an elected post) and his weekly radio addresses in California where his authorship was unquestioned, as opposed to JFK who never wrote or read an unghostwritten word.
Meanwhile the left nods like lemmings over Obama's academic achievements without a scant, transparent trace of a college treanscript, admissions report or IQ test score.