Robert Gibbs' Transparent Hedge: "Death Panels... Not in the Bill"

I am watching the White House press conference, now, and Robert Gibbs. His performance is strikingly revealing, to a careful observer of rhetoric and human behavior.

Pardon my paraphrasing, but Gibbs just said the following.

I am quite offended by those who speak of "death panels," because it is simply "not in the bill." [And then in the following statement] "...it is not in the bill."

For a professional political communicator, this is glaringly telling. It shows he does full well know that death panels are in the plan for the use of this bill, by the assignments and Trojan horse provisions in it (and that the potential energy of an overarching death panel has already been established in the Marxist wrought "Stimulus Act"). ^{1, 2}

By the principles of rhetoric, if this were not an established fact for him, he would not have said death panels are "not in the bill," then searched for further words to underscore this assertion, only to weakly resort to repeating this talking point, "not in the bill."

The use of this morbid propogandistic device is a verbal act of "sleight of hand."

big half-truth, cum big lie

'Ration' - the Dictionary Definition

From dictionary.com, emphasis in red by I.O.

ra·tion

–noun

1.	a fixed allowance of provisions or food, esp. for soldiers or sailors or for civilians during a shortage: a daily ration of meat and bread.

2.	an allotted amount: They finally saved up enough gas rations for the trip.

3.	rations, a. provisions: Enough rations were brought along to feed all the marchers. b. Chiefly South Atlantic States. food or meals: The old hotel still has the best rations in town.

–verb (used with object)

4.	to supply, apportion, or distribute as rations (often fol. by out): to ration out food to an army.

5.	to supply or provide with rations: to ration an army with food.

6.	to restrict the consumption of (a commodity, food, etc.): to ration meat during war.

7.	to restrict the consumption of (a consumer): The civilian population was rationed while the war lasted.

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Origin:
1540–50; < class="ital-inline">ratiōn- (s. of ratiō); see reason

Synonyms:
1, 2. portion, allotment. 1, 3. See food. 4. mete, dole, allot.

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.

Word Origin & History

ration

1550, "reasoning," later, "relation of one number to another" (1666), then "fixed allowance of food" (1702, often rations, from Fr. ration), from L. rationem (nom. ratio) "reckoning, calculation, proportion" (see ratio). The verb meaning "put (someone) on a fixed allowance" is recorded from 1859; sense of "apportion in fixed amounts" is from 1870. The military pronunciation (rhymes with fashion) took over from the preferred civilian pronunciation (rhymes with nation) during World War I. Rationing is from 1918, from conditions in England during the war.

Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper



Ration book image from "The Hardship of Rationing,"
homesweethomefront.co.uk

Whatever supply one begins to control, one begins to ration.