There’s a fair amount of casual racism in the emails I receive from Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller But Nobody’s Answering, C’mon, Pick  Up, I Know You’re There!, but every once in awhile the blurb writer stretches himself and reaches for a bit of blanched poetry:

Okay, so I’ll spot ‘em “great white northern parts of Europe.”  Fine.  But “Islamic extremism is a blindly consuming melanoma on the beautiful face of western civilization, and that is why Al Qaeda tried to blow up Norway” is not only a classic of the racial code word genre, it’s also a very salable action movie pitch.  I suggest attaching Leni Riefenstahl to direct.

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The RNC Chairman’s blog, from the new GOP.com, which seems to react to the slightest traffic much the way a fainting goat reacts to stress.

h/t Elizabeth

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Erick Erickson is “a Deacon at Vineville Presbyterian Church and maintains his bar license.”  He’s also the “managing editor” of Redstate.com, a small-time Georgia ward-heeler, and a scion of the cherry small cigar empire.  But more than that, he’s a magician who can conjure outrage out of thin air, much as a chronic masturbator can summon an orgasm at will.

No links, except to Valerie Jarrett’s Wikipedia bio.   So how do we really know that “Ms. Jarrett’s flight had an Army Private in uniform on the plane” and that “she clearly saw him”?  Because the Georgia Peach told us so.  And you can trust him too, because Erick (Small Cigar) Erickson once saw Jim Nabors standing in line at the Cinnabon in the Hartsfield-Jackson Airport and went out of his way to thank the man for his service in the United States Marine Corps.

Speaking of small cigars, here’s proof that in the 70s looked like a porn film.

In other news…When we last looked in on the Astute Bloggers, they were having trouble grasping the concept that summer in the Northern Hemisphere means winter in the Southern Hemisphere, and lovers of low comedy will be happy to hear that they’ve now brought the same neutron star-like density to their thoughtful analysis of health care.

Liberals love to make the following argument: “Europeans spend half what we do per year – per capita. And they live longer.  We spend twice as much – and have 46 million uninsured.”

Hm, no link again.  So is that a quote, or is it just an “air” quote?

They say this to promote SOCIALSM and the takeover of 1/7th of our economy.

Exactly.  From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.  And apparently, one of those working class parasites needed an extra “I,” so SOCIALSM had to make the sacrifice.

It’s WRONG; it’s based on errors, fallacies and lies.

And lions, tigers and bears, which leave Reliapundit feeling bewitched, bothered, and bewildered.

ERROR 1 – conflating health insurance with health care.Every person in the USA is entitled to healthcare in a hospital regardless of his ability to pay – IT’S FEDERAL LAW. All hospitals which accept federal tax dollars for support – and almost every single one does – must treat EVERYONE. LIBERALS ARE WRONG OR LYING WHEN THEY SAY OR IMPLY AMERICANS AREN’T GETTING HEALTHCARE.

Lack of insurance doesn’t mean lack of care.

It just means no care unless you’re hemorrhaging from a gunshot wound — it’s such a great loophole it’s a wonder more people don’t go without health insurance!  After all, whenever you do show up with, say, blood in your stool from that ulcer you’ve been ignoring because you can’t afford to see a doctor unless you’re dying, they’ll promptly treat you after five or six hours of waiting because you’re possibly dying.  And then they’ll bill you — or your survivors — thousands of dollars for it, ensuring that everyone — not just middle class people who think they have adequate insurance — can go bankrupt and lose their homes due to medical bills.  That, my friend, is a little thing we like to call “equality.”

ERROR 2 – conflating per capita/per year spending and average life-spans with efficiency of public health.

People die.

Every single one.

Sooner – or later.

If the French health care system is so great, how come they’re not immortal?  How come people in England still die?  Huh?

Okay, admittedly some of their Scottish Highlanders don’t die, but you can still kill them by cutting their heads off, and I bet the NHS doesn’t insure against “loss of Quickening.”

This doesn’t always have to do with healthcare.

Sometimes it has to do with jumping out of an airplane with an improperly packed parachute, or going hunting with Dick Cheney.

(AND IT DOESN’T HAVE TO DO WITH HEALTHCARE INSURANCE COMPANIES REAPING HUGE PROFITS BY CHARGING A LOT AND DENYING CARE – AS THE LIBERALS WOULD HAVE YOU BELIEVE! THEIR PROFITS ARE ONLY ABOUT 2%!)

Actually, it’s 2 to 10%.  “The top five earning insurance companies averaged profits of $1.56 billion in 2008 and reported spending an average of “more than 18 percent of their revenues on marketing, administration, and profits.” That year, CEO compensation for these companies ranged from $3 million to $24 million.”

Length of years has a lot to do with OBESITY AND DIET. And VIOLENCE.

We don’t need health insurance.  We’re fat and violent, we’re doomed anyway!

A group of people which has MORE fat people with bad diets who shoot at each other will have shorter life-spans than a group of people who are slimmer, eat better and shoot each other less.

Exactly.  Insuring morons like us is like playing Russian roulette with five loaded chambers.

(ALSO: The USA counts extreme preemies who die within months as DEATHS where in many European nations they do not; they call them failed pregnancies. This makes our nation’s infant mortality rate higher and average life-span shorter.)

Of course, if you count “under five” survival rates, we’re still 33rd in the developed world, behind Iceland, Cuba, and Cyprus.

And a group of people which cares more about its health and is MORE NEUROTIC about its health and appearance will spend more on its healthcare OVERALL – BY PURCHASING MORE SERVICES – than a group of people who do not, OR WHO CANNOT BECAUSE THEIR HEALTHCARE IS SOCIALIZED!

It only seems like we pay more for health care because we buy so many more boob jobs than Slovenia.

WE SPEND MORE IN PART BECAUSE WE CAN!

I thought about getting a new radiator so the car would stop overheating, but finally decided I’d really rather spend the money on subsidizing a new Blue Shield call center in Lahore.

• Error 3 – We spend more per capita per year than Europeans because of the unbridled greed of unbridled insurance companies and unbridled pharmaceuticals.
  

Liberals are essentially arguing that we spend more because a lot goes into the pockets of insurers and not to doctors and nurses or actual care.

This is a lie.

As I wrote above, insurance companies do not make very large profits. That’s just a plain simple truth.

As one can see from your extensive links and documentation.

And pharma companies spend BILLIONS developing a SINGLE drug and many do not pass muster. To pay for the research which leads to life-saving and life-extending medicine, they need a high return on the drugs which do pass muster.

After Pfizer developed Viagra, Eli Lily had to spend billions to create Cialis, or they would have been left holding the short end of the stick.

Killing Big Pharma would NOT kill greedy capitalists; it would be committing GENOCIDE against people who need new drugs to be developed.

Remember:  More people with health insurance means fewer people able to afford drugs.

• Our healthcare system is great.

• Our doctors and nurses are the best.

• Our pharmaceutical industry is fantastic.

• REPEAT: Our healthcare system is great.

Hey!  That one guy in the back isn’t repeating the slogans!  Beat the crap out of him!  Then he can see how great our healthcare system is firsthand.

We mustn’t let the Democrats and the vultures and parasites they represent destroy it.

When your child asks, “what did you do in the war against health reform, Daddy?” you can look her in the eye and say, “Honey, I protected insurance company profits, and the erectile dysfunction drugs of tomorrow.”  And then you can explain to her that her underpants are full of blood because — even though she’s only six years old — the milk she drinks is laced with hormones thanks to Big Pharma, so it’s probably just the onset of menses, and there’s really no reason to go down to the E.R. and wait twelve hours to get misdiagnosed by an exhausted intern.  Instead, let’s just…

REPEAT:  Our healthcare system is great.

Ahhh…I feel better already.

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Over at FoxNews, the sylph-like Neil Cavuto explored whether Surgeon General nominee Dr. Regina Benjamin was too fat to serve her country, by interviewing a former gym owner sporting a “No Chubbies” t-shirt.  The segment aroused a considerable amount of public ire, which the network attempted to assuage by issuing an apology to Dr. Benjamin, and extending an offer for her and her family to winter in Bill O’Reilly’s dewlap.  ABC News then picked up the scent, exposing the nominee as “full-figured,” suggesting that photos of her “round cheeks” send “the wrong message as the public face of America’s health initiatives,” and concluding that the only worse possible choice for the post would have been Dizzy Gillespie.

Bloggers at Salon.com speculated that Benjamin is 40 pounds overweight, perhaps a size 18.  The nominee didn’t return calls from ABCNews.com, so there is no information about how much she weighs or her eating and exercise habits.

That’s it?  Whatever happened to hard-nosed investigative journalism in this country?  Why, if Woodward and Bernstein had taken “no comment” for an answer, we might never have discovered the criminal excesses of the Nixon White House, or worse, never learned that the President himself wore a girdle and secretly shopped at Lane Bryant.

So, as usual, the task of sniffing out the harsh truths that the MSM covers up like a cat kicking Fresh Step over its steaming ejecta falls to the relentless bloodhounds of the right blogosphere.  Take it away, Astute Bloggers!

Should We Really Have a Morbidly Obese Surgeon General?

Cavuto raises a good point. Maybe someone who obviously downs sticks of butter all day shouldn’t be telling us how to be healthy and what’s good for us. I would sooner approve of Joe Camel as Surgeon General. He might actually live to see 70. This chick will not. Another seemingly inexplicable Obama appointment.

Yeah, who could gin up an ounce of respect for an undisciplined loser like this:

In 1990, she founded the Bayou La Batre Rural Health Clinic to serve the Gulf Coast fishing community of Bayou La Batre, Alabama, a village of approximately 2,500 residents devastated twice in the past decade by Hurricanes Georges, in 1998, and Katrina, in 2005. Despite scarce resources, Benjamin has painstakingly rebuilt her clinic after each disaster and set up networks to maintain contact with patients scattered across multiple evacuation sites. She has established a family practice that allows her to treat all incoming patients, many of whom are uninsured, and frequently travels by pickup truck to care for the most isolated and immobile in her region…[S]he also plays key roles statewide and nationally, helping others establish clinics in remote areas of the country and serving in leadership positions in such health-related organizations as the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Family Physicians. With a deep, firsthand knowledge of the pressing needs and health disparities afflicting rural, high-poverty communities, Benjamin is ensuring that the most vulnerable among us have access to high-quality care.

At a time when 47 million Americans are without health insurance, and many people are being bankrupted by medical expenses, what can this woman possibly bring to the issue, besides a love of drawstring sweat pants?  Anyway, back to the Astute Ones:

Somebody who looks like this has absolutely no right to tell me how to live my life. None. He clearly picked her because she’s a pseudo-socialist:

Benjamin, 52, is founder of the Bayou La Batre Rural Health Clinic, which serves the poor, uninsured and other underserved patients in Mobile County, Ala.

Benjamin gained acclaim for her determination to rebuild her clinic after hurricanes George in 1998 and Katrina in 2005 shuttered the building. In 2006, a fire destroyed Benjamin’s clinic just after flood damage was repaired. During this period, Benjamin, who often administers medical services to her patients for free, and her staff operated the clinic from a Federal Emergency Management Agency trailer.

Hers is the ultimate commie-shovel story. Followed to its logical conclusion, there will not be a single doctor left in America. This lardass is the only doctor in America who would advocate Obamacare. That’s why he picked her.

“Caring for the poor and sick again, Comrade Jesus?  Well maybe your healing touch can do something for my stomach, because your bolshevism makes me want to puke!”

But hey, she won an award named for a terrorist who married a cannibal.

That would be the Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights, given by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation (AKA the Comintern), and named after a man who spent his life resisting apartheid, thus proving that he was yet another Sonia Sotomayor-style “racialist” with a fixation on identity politics and a determination to keep the White Man down.  And what sort of subversive organization would honor a woman tainted by association with a Nobel Peace Prize-winning terrorist?  Catholic Healing East (“A Transforming, Healing Presence”) which goes by the flagrantly seditious acronym CHE.  Figures.

Now ordinarily, you’d think wingnuts would approve of an organization that describes itself thusly:  “The Hope Ministries is a public juridic person, an entity recognized by the Roman Catholic Church that allows for and facilities the sponsorship of ministries in the name of the Church.”  But according to the Astute Bloggers’ standards, Mother Teresa was also a Red, and the article they link to (“Two New Members Join Catholic Health East’s Hope Ministries”), actually compares Dr. Benjamin to the Blessed Nun of Calcutta:  “Dr. Benjamin…received the National Caring Award, which was inspired by Mother Teresa.”

So if we’re ever going to stop socialized medicine in this country, the first thing we’ve got to do is eliminate Christian charity, because it’s making the poor uppity and interfering with Natural Selection.  Second, beat up some nuns.  Third, sneak into the Department of Health and Human Services and plaster the Surgeon General’s office door with a bunch of No Fat Chicks bumperstickers.

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BREAKING
President Bush interrupted his prepared farewell address Thursday night to warn the nation of a threat from “terrorists who hate us for our freedom to suck them into aircraft engines.”  Noting the forced landing of a US Airways flight, which occurred this afternoon after a collision with what a Department of Justice spokesperson called, “suicidehomicide geese,” the President praised the pilot and crew of the airliner, and expressed thanks that all persons aboard survived the crash.  “At the same time,” Mr. Bush continued, “we must regard today’s tragedy as an act of war.  Intelligence sources indicate that the cowardly attackers who brought down Flight 1549 had recently crossed into the United States from Canada.”

Shortly after the crash, Vice President Dick Cheney made a surprise appearance on Fox News, where he claimed that the downing of the airliner should be regarded as a wake-up call by “both the incoming Administration and the civilized world at large.”  Mr. Cheney noted that geese “can easily fly distances of up to 2500 miles, almost twice the range of an Iranian Shahab-2 intermediate range missile,” and, “they’re extremely hard to shoot down when you’re drunk.”

“Ironically,” the Vice President added, “because the terrorists took down an Airbus, I suspect our European allies will be a lot less eager to criticize us this time.  In fact, the Obama Administration would probably be well advised to seek assistance from the EU when interrogating suspects, because who has more experience torturing geese than the French?”

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ABC NEWS–Press Secretary Dana Perino announced on Wednesday that George W. Bush has scheduled the final defecation of his presidency in the private Oval Office washroom, known as “the Coolidge Crapper,” for Monday, January 19, at 10:35 AM (EST).  The president has requested ten minutes of live network and cable news coverage; 15 minutes if the Fi-Bar isn’t working.

Originally known as the “Taft Thunderbucket” when it was first installed in the East Wing in 1910, the toilet and separate elevated reservoir tank were handcarved from a single, 2000-pound block of Proconnesus marble from the island of Marmara, located in what was then the Ottoman Empire.  In 1923 the commode was ordered moved to a water closet adjoining the Oval Office by President Calvin Coolidge, who found it awkward making small talk at the urinals in the West Wing mens room.

Presidential scholar John Harlington said that despite some early successes, Bush’s performance in the bathroom has been mixed since 9/11, when he repeatedly lost control of his bowels during his efforts to “get out of harm’s way.”  And while top Administration officials have generally praised the president for his “steadfastness and regularity,” Bush leaves office with only a 17% approval rating from the White House cleaning staff.  Two maids, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter, declared “his aim is lousy,” while another added, “You’d think he was trying to write his name on the wall, or shoot down a fly.”

The presidential evacuation will be carried live on ABC, with special team coverage and post-dump analysis on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program.

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Even in !  (Via a tweet from Bill Corbett)

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So who thinks that the next time Bush holds a press conference, all White House correspondents will be forced to remove their shoes before they’re allowed in the Briefing Room?

“That really hurt…!”

Press Secretary Dana Perino reportedly suffered a shiner when a microphone was jammed in her eye during the melee, but Bush escaped unharmed.  Until he returned to his hotel suite in the Green Zone and ordered room service…

“Oh good, it’s my turkey pot — AIIIEEEEEEEEE!”

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Over at the Corner, attorney and former Scalia law clerk Ed Whelan muses that if Roe v. Wade has been decided in, say, 1960, then John McCain wouldn’t be losing the election right now, because Obama’s mother would clearly have had an abortion.

Former Fetus Barack Obama   [Ed Whelan] Nearly 48 years ago, a young woman, not yet 18, became pregnant in her freshman year of college.  Living in a time and place in which abortion was generally illegal, she proceeded to marry the father of her child and gave birth to a son.  Perhaps she would have done so irrespective of the abortion laws at the time, even if, say, she lived in a legal culture that celebrated abortion as a fundamental right.

“Hey, I hope you guys are coming to our annual Abortion Celebration tonight…It’s gonna get cuh-RAAAA-zy.  Helen’s bringing hotdish and I hear we’re gonna have Saline the Clown and a piñata shaped like a uterus.  Oh!  And don’t forget to sign the card before you leave; it’s Cindy’s Partial Birthday tomorrow.”

Very possibly not.  (I haven’t found any statistics on the percentage of pregnant college freshmen who abort their pregnancies, but indirect indications suggest that it’s very high.)

And these indications are strongly supported by Ed’s Magic 8-Ball, which said, “Signs Point to Yes” the third time he shook it.

Barack Obama may actually believe, as he stated yesterday, that Roe v. Wade “was rightly decided.”  But it may be very lucky for him, as the son born of that woman, that it hadn’t been decided a dozen or so years earlier.

Ed’s basically making the same point as those t-shirts which read, “Smile!  Your Mom Chose Life,” except his Cafe Press merchandise designed specifically for men with a touch of the tarbrush (octaroons and above) who were conceived out of wedlock and born prior to 1973 would read: “Smile!  Your Mother Had No Choice, Otherwise She Totallty Would Have Aborted You.”

That Obama may owe his very life to a pre-Roe legal regime that banned abortion is, to be sure, not necessarily a reason that he should favor that regime (though I can’t help noting that Justice Thomas’s critics recklessly accuse him of hypocrisy for opposing racial-preference plans that they say he benefited from).

Let me see if I’m following Ed’s logic here…Since young women in their first year of college will sometimes terminate unplanned pregnancies, Obama is only alive because abortion was illegal when he was gestating, so if he adopts a position as President which respects a woman’s right to control her own body, it’s as hypocritical as rich men, like John Edwards, caring about poor people.  But because nobody dies from affirmative action, it’s fine if Thomas benefits from the program, then pulls the ladder up after him and yells “so long, suckers!” to anybody in line behind him.  Because he’s had a libertarian epiphany.

But it ought to lead Obama and others to think more carefully about the valuable role that protective abortion laws play.

“Protective Abortion Laws:  Ruining Women’s Lives Today, While Protecting the Potential Presidential Fetuses of the Future.”

Okey doke, then.  Cafe Press, here we come…

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With all this talk during the debates of Main Street Versus Wall Street, I thought I would pass along this email from my friend [Name Redacted], who has witnessed for herself the triumph of conservative economic principles at the grass roots level.  And while I realize that Jonah Goldberg, K-Lo and the other members of their Day Care group also stoop to padding out their posts with emails, this one at least has the virtue of being real.

As you may have heard, my mom is the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee in the Republican Womens group she belongs to.

However, there’s a problem, because whenever she organizes fundraising events, no one wants to contribute anything above what the event actually costs.  So for a trip to Knott’s Berry Farm (to see the replica of Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell because they are SuperPatriots™) everyone insists on paying only what the trip actually costs.

This means the organization makes no money for next year because no one will put in anything that is not for themselves.

I know you must be astonished by a Republican group who will not spend any money for the benefit of anyone else, or for the future.  So they will have no money next year and won’t be able to do anything or donate any money to any causes (lapel pins?)

It’s shocking.  I hope you were sitting down during that.

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