Can Sarah Palin See Neptune From Her House?

Forgive me for a moment if this entry veers too far into political territory for your tastes (or the wrong political territory) -- but Sarah Palin is once more providing an excellent example of how astrological transits (specifically, the ongoing presence of Jupiter and Neptune in Aquarius) can really mess with a person's judgement.

Although we don't know what time Ms. Palin was born at (February 11, 1964, Sandpoint Idaho), it's immediately obvious that what's driving her birth chart is her Sun-Mars-Saturn stellium in Aquarius, clustered between 22 and 25 degrees of that sign. That's where Jupiter has been between April and August 2009, and is within range of there again now.

Jupiter brings a lot of bounce and enthusiasm to whatever part of your birth chart it contacts. In Ms. Palin's case, this applies to her Ego (the Sun), her Drives (Mars), and her sense of Order (Saturn). And certainly, it's been a busy, bouncy, enthusiastic time for her. In May, she signed a book deal for a major advance. Then in June she decided to quit her job as Governor of Alaska with a year and a half to go on the job... which is pretty optimistic of her (optimism is a Jupiter thing too). And overall, she's managed to stay in the national spotlight and stay well-loved by her fan base, despite political defeat.

Neptune has also been hovering in that sector of the sky, as it has since December 2007. Neptune has an interesting effect on the birth chart. It rules things like spirituality and higher consciousness. But no planet is an entirely positive thing: Neptune also rules delusion and self-deception. One way or another, Neptune tends to cloud the judgement.

During this same period of time, Sarah Palin has endorsed a virtually-unknown third party candidate "who can't answer some basic questions" about his local politics, thus splitting the right-wing vote and costing Sarah's party a seat in Congress they have held since "jail" was spelled "gaol."

She also continues to publicly rumble with 19-year-old hockey player Levi Johnston, despite his ongoing claims to know some as-yet-unrevealed Palin family secrets that might "get her in trouble and could hurt her." The standard way to handle this sort of thing in politics would be to dismiss the whole matter as the ramblings of a 19-year-old hockey player who is only seeking attention (watch for his upcoming appearance in Playgirl).

But perhaps the most telling sign that Neptune is messing with Ms. Palin's functions? The Death Panel business.

America is currently struggling with the rightness of legislation that would give it public health care, which most of the civilized world already has. For various reasons, most right-wing politicians (who will be the first to declare that America is The Greatest Country On Earth) are of the opinion that Americans having anything better than the 38th Greatest Life Expectancy on Earth while paying The Greatest Health Care Bills On Earth is "socialism"...

...but like I said, this is about astrology, not politics...

Anyway: said legislation contains a provision for covering "end of life counseling." This means that, whereas private insurers will often deny hospice coverage to terminally ill patients (there's little profit to be had from soon-to-be-dead folks), the public coverage wouldn't leave these people on the side of the road to die the old-fashioned way.

Ms. Palin's reading of this provision caused her to announce that "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," despite:

-That's not at all what the legislation says

-Nowhere on Earth with publicly-funded health care has such a thing

-That would require legalizing euthanasia, which the legislation doesn't do

-Private health insurance does exactly that on a de facto basis by sometimes denying life-saving treatment.

Fortunately for the sake of intelligent, civilized discourse, she soon thereafter backed down from her fairly ludicrous statements, saying that "we must stick to a discussion of the issues and not get sidetracked by tactics that can be accused of leading to intimidation or harassment."

But then, mavericky creature that she is, Ms. Palin has recently returned to the mythical Death Panels as a reason to reject public health insurance, thus contradicting both what the legislation actually says and herself.

Like I said: Neptune tends to cloud the judgement.

Of course, I could point out that all this cloudy judgement is simply a more ham-fisted-than-usual example of how certain political stripes have attempted to gain and retain power via overly-simplistic fear-mongering... but I won't. After all, I'm just an astrologer. It's my job to point out the effects of the planets... not to point out the obvious.

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