A conservative Republican congressman from Idaho is drawing criticism for his response to a town-hall attendee’s concerns about how his party’s health-care bill would affect Medicaid recipients.Worse for this challenger to be the Dumbest Fucker on Earth, the comment was caught on video:
“You are mandating people on Medicaid to accept dying,” the woman said.
“That line is so indefensible,” said Rep. Raúl R. Labrador, a member of the influential House Freedom Caucus. “Nobody dies because they don’t have access to health care.”
The boos instantly drowned him out.
That is so contradicted by reality that it was a gob-smackingly stupid thing to say. You will not have to search far, Dear Reader, to find stories of women who didn't get a lump in their breasts looked at because they couldn't afford to. Or people who die of hypertension or other medical issues because they couldn't afford to go to a doctor for a checkup.
Of course, Labrador is whining about how everybody is blasting him for one comment he made. The poor man must have severe organic brain damage, for he clearly doesn't understand the game of politics. If he doesn't have brain damage, then he is a fucking sociopath who allowed his mask to drop.
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In other news, conservatives are proceeding with Operation Butthurt. The last time I looked into things, the percentage of complaints to the FCC that were traceable back to the Parents Television Council were in the upper 90-percentile rage, maybe as high as 99%. In short, the FCC essentially operates as a tool of a wingnut pressure group.
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Condoleeza Rice is making the round to flog her new book, here, on Sunday Morning. She's dropped her Iraq War defense down to "we went with what we knew," which was pretty much "we went with the lies that Dick Cheney's stooges told up." The historical record is revealing that Bush-43 and his team were focused on Iraq before the smoke had stopped rising from Ground Zero. They knew what they wanted and they were not willing to give credence to any contrary information. They saw what they wanted to see, heard what they wanted to hear, and there were plenty of people, including an alleged Iranian agent, willing to give them what they wanted.
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The French Nazi Party is going to have yet another makeover. Le Pen didn't get trounced as badly as her father did fifteen years ago. But she is little more than a pretty face masking the same old antisemitism, Holocaust denialism and xenophobia that has always been a hallmark of her party.
The thing about the "always be lying" approach to partisan politics is that you have to be careful of your immediate audience or you might get called out by someone who doesn't buy it and could be smarter than you, and/or have reason to forcefully oppose the particular lie.
ReplyDeleteHealthcare lies are particularly dangerous that way, as there's no way to screen for close relatives or friends who may have been treated badly by the healthcare system, or may be vulnerable to great harm by its policies.
Since literally everyone uses the healthcare system at some point or other, you can fairly count on all but the very most self-selected crowds to have at least a few of these sort of people lurking like land mines in the path of your best healthcare lies.
Among the pundits, this is easily remedied by never exposing yourself to pesky liberals who might remember inconvenient things about your speech, writing, or behavior and be ill-mannered and crass enough to ask you about them in public (see also: Brooks, David), but for politicians that's not really an option. Or it didn't used to be. Now it seems as if the Republicans are taking a "how dare you do to us what we did to you in 2010" approach to town halls, and just refusing to show up for them.
We'll just have to wait and see if it's a winning strategy or not.
-Doug in Oakland
I think it's great that Democratic representatives are volunteering to hold town meetings to explain the GOP health care vote since the Republican cowards refuse to be held accountable. Only 7% of the repug representatives have scheduled meetings since they remember what happened in the last ones.
ReplyDeleteI heard Condi on NPR this am. I hate listening to that much stupid in the morning.
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