recent letter the editor of Sac Bee

I had to cut a third of this letter out to get it down to 200 words but here is a letter I whipped out last night so I could sleep after reading an idiotic commentary.

Dear Editor,
I just received the viewpoints page from Saturday August 15th in the mail from my grandfather who has subscribed to the Bee for years. I was blown away by the commentary by Rich Lowry regarding what he calls a grass roots populist movement against ‘Obamacare’.
I would like to thank Rich for making a very accurate comparison between the political right and left in this country. He said, “The same distrust of power that had the left-wing activists spinning feverish theories about George W. Bush’s eavesdropping has the right agitated about Obama’s death panels.”
This illustrates the difference between the left and right extremely well. The left protested when Bush spied on Americans. It was a real policy, which the left had serious intellectual issues with (like the fact that it was illegal and against our Bill of Rights). Now the right is making a fuss at town hall meetings over death panels, which do not exist. The idea of death panels is a complete lie invented by the right wing to control the uneducated in this country, using their old stand by: fear. (They used fear to explain why they had to eavesdrop on Americans as well).
The idea of death panels grew out of an amendment to include end of life counseling for people that was introduced by a Republican senator in fact. Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, and Michael Steel have all supported this lie.
So the left was upset for things the Republicans actually did and the right is upset over what the Republicans untruthfully say the Democrats are doing.
Thank you Rich for pointing out the difference between the activists at either end of the political spectrum. Now if only the rest of what you said had a grain of truth in it.

Danny Boyer
Half Moon Bay, CA