Real Patient-Dumping

This is heartbreaking. I'm damn lucky this isn't how we operate in the US or I might be dead right now twice over at the least. Including just yesterday ffs! (Not that they didn't try, mind you - they love to discharge people without really finding out what's wrong; only here you can have something to say about it, and if you're lucky, others, like paramedics, will take up for you.)

Via FaithFreedom.org: The newspaper Asr-e Iran reported that passersby spotted two patients in a field outside of Tehran. The two patients were hospitalized in the state funded Khomeini Hospital. Despite being public and allegedly free, they were loaded in an ambulance and dropped in a field for not having the money to pay the bills.

Isn't that just lovely? Stay tuned for Michael Moore's documentary about the superiority of Iran's health care system to ours. After all, it's free.

PRICELESS!!

False predictions - $10 bil

Erasing evidence (badly) - $50 bil

Spreading New False Predictions - $150 bil

Handing the UN their asses on a plate - priceless.

Fools! Seriously, read the whole thing; it keeps getting better!

While you're at it, here's a great song parody - The "Squanderer", set to "The Wanderer." If you play the music while reading the lyrics, you'll realize she's really good! Here

Good News and Bad News

So Olberdouche is GONE - just like that. In a surprise announcement, he says "Ok folks, that's it, sayonara, nice knowin' ya'! His new job as The Worst Person in the World begins after a brief sabbatical. Who we're going to get to scream and yell at us to be civil after this, I don't know. But good riddance to bad rubbish. That's the good news.

The bad news is that they're moving some other douche up to his slot, leaving a slot open for Cenk effing Uygur. I don't know if you know the guy, but he's on "The Young Turks", a far-left youtube show that has often debated Lee Doren of Bureaucrash, a bona fide original grassroots Tea Partier from the early days who has made it pretty big (and more power to him, I say. His links are on my sidebar; DO check him out; he shreds bullshit with no profanity and no incivility and nothing but cold hard fact - great stuff.) Anyway, I had just been happening to look into this supposed controversy where Sarah Palin was being castigated for not screaming at Ann Coulter.

Ok from the beginning, then, for clarity. I see a post somewhere about Sarah Palin supposedly constantly calling her own son "My retarded baby" (source of this alleged info? Levi Johnston during his happy fun tour.) Which led me to a controversy wherein Ann Coulter posted a link on twitter to a video of "A retard interviewing a Republican". It turned out the "retard" was Cenk Uygur, who I happen to be familiar with. Well Cenk wrote an angry article for the Huffington Post wherein he demanded to know WHY Sarah Palin was not making a public statement condemning Coulter for using the word "retard". Now mind you, I don't care whether she does so or not - it's not Palin's job to police everything everyone says, and she's eaten enough shit sandwiches for ten grown men already, and no matter WHAT she does they're going to crucify her so if she says nothing I couldn't care less. But Cenk was convinced that if Palin didn't condemn Coulter it would forever make her a hypocrite. As if they don't already think she is. Duh.

So I'm wondering, well maybe it wasn't a very nice thing for Ann to say that - perhaps she should have chosen a different word, etc. etc. which led me to look up the interview in question. And THEN I got pissed. Because the interview she was referring to was one in which Cenk was interviewing the head of the GOProud, the Gay Republican group. Apparently CWA (Concerned Women for America) and the Family Research Council are boycotting CPAC (the biggest conservative convention) because the GOProud is going to be there for the second or third year in a row. Well, fuck them - they can boycott; I don't like the LaHayes or Dobson anyway. For YEARS Dobson's been a one-trick pony, and that trick is teh gays. I have my own personal opinions and my own personal religious beliefs, but I don't prefer to mix them up with government - government can stay out of my damned personal business so I'm sure it can stay out of gay people's business too. I don't see anything in the constitution about policing people's sex lives anyway. (Please don't say it; I know being gay is about more than sex; but it's the sex that they have a problem with and we all know it.) At any rate, being a Tea Partier, the more the merrier - so long as they want what I do - a constitutionally limited government, free markets, common law (gov't exists to protect people from direct harm to persons and property) and liberty, climb aboard. (For that matter, the first specifically black Tea Party meeting is taking place in Houston and won't that make lefty heads 'splodey? Haha!) And those Last Days books suck. They're poorly written, the theology blows, and all Bev LaHaye cares about is teh gays too. So if they don't think they want or need the help of people who have likeminded views on government or who are conservative just because they're gay, screw them.

So, back to the interview. Cenk is interviewing the head of GOProud, and the guy is very intelligent and articulate and I sure would have liked to hear more from him but Cenk just couldn't let up for a second. Which brings me back to where I got really pissed off. He starts right off attacking the guy, asking how he can POSSIBLY be a Republican. So the guy makes a distinction right away; he says, actually I'm a **conservative** Republican, emphasis on conservative. Because it's really not all about party, now, is it? We've had so many RINOs for so long that we kind of HAVE to make these distinctions now, don't we? Which this guy does. And Cenk starts challenging him asking how he can POSSIBLY align himself with conservatives when conservatives hate him. The guy TRIES to explain that since the formation of GOProud they have been welcomed to CPAC and that he feels more welcomed as a gay among conservatives than he does as a conservative around gay people. Which makes a lot of sense. Did Cenk let him even finish a thought? Hell no. Cenk continued to deride and harangue the guy, but even worse, he kept LAUGHING IN HIS FACE - repeatedly, loudly, rudely. This is a guest on his fucking SHOW - is that how you treat your guests? Really? THAT passes for journalism? Laughing in a guy's face over and over again and telling him what a moron he is? So I lost all interest in the fact that Coulter called him a retard (which is an offense to retarded people everywhere, who don't deserve to be compared to such an odious prick) and instead my ire was directed at this Uygur character who can't conduct himself professionally during a freaking interview. Now, my heart really goes out to this poor GOProud guy, because here he is trying to effect positive change in the country so we can get back to a constitutional government and maybe all get back to WORK and making some money instead of plunging into the misery index yet again, and not only do two prominent groups boycott a same-party event because of his group but the opposition laughs in his face. WTF? He didn't deserve that shit. No, the disgrace here was not Ann's use of the word "retard" but the SHAMEFUL treatment of a guest by Cenk Uygur. And now MSNBC is gonna put him on the 6 o'clock news? Oh yeah, GOOD move, assnuggets. I hope he gets a fuckton of negative publicity for his derision of this guest who did him no harm, and I hope your whole damn station goes under. Wasn't Olbermann bad enough? Didn't you learn from him? Apparently not. Well, ok, so here's the video - you know the drill; it's probably cut off so the link is HEREand if it isn't cut off, here's the embed:

Ok, Cenk - I'll say it myself. You're not a retard. You're a fucking ASSHOLE. And if Ann Coulter was the swearing type that's what she would have called you anyway. How DARE you jump on Palin - PALIN, not even COULTER - when YOU are the disgrace? How dare you?? You colossal prick. And you know what? I hope I never see you on the streets, but your guest? Can come to my house for dinner any day of the week. How do ya' like them apples, jerkoff?

RELATED READING

Yay, A New Post!

It's possible Cheney remains a stalwart defender of conservative principle to cover for his activities leading the Dick Cheney Executive Assassination Squad. Shhhh, it's a secret.

My friends, I am just as dismayed as you at the utter GLUT of news that has continued to pile up day by day by day since November 4th, and am as overwhelmed as you are. I don't intend to stop blogging, but I surely can't cover it all - please refer to Moonbattery, Newsbusters, The Rottweiler, and various other blogs on my roll to keep up with all the happenings, all right? I am only one person, I'm busy, and I am looking to become even busier. But here's one that interested me.

Why IS Dick Cheney so chatty all of a sudden?

Off the top of my head I can think of many reasons. For one, he's finally free of the constraints of actually having to make decisions regarding national security without being a camera whore, he is finally free of the constraints of having wackos trying to handcuff him on stage (ok, so that was Rove) and screaming "BuCheneyHitler!" at him (well, ok, maybe not) every time he shows his face, and last but not least, our new administration has decided to release sensitive and important national security documents and lessen our national security - security which Cheney has worked really fucking hard to build up for the last 8 years or so. I might "chat" a little myself. I might start to defend myself for once as well, waking up and realizing "Wow, it's not all up to me anymore...but the new guy sure is fucking it up - I better speak up now."

One of the main differences between the Clinton administration and the Bush administration, was that right away you knew you weren't going to be seeing these guys on television all. the. fucking. time. They weren't big camera whores, they weren't going on Leno, they weren't doing endless photo ops, holding hands and shaking babies world without end. After 8 years of IN-YOUR-FACE, we had some peace and quiet, and we could, within limits, ignore Washington. Contrary to leftist opinion, this is a positive thing. As far as national security, I had some confidence that these people actually did have the best interests of the country at heart, DID intend to keep the US safe and free, and I felt that on that particular score at least, I had reason for confidence - reason to say, "SOME things just have to be secret. It's the nature of the beast." You don't, for example, go blabbing the location of secret Pakistani ally bases helping combat terrorism to the world at large (cough-Pelosi-cough).

With the advent of the new-style hopey changey chop suey, all that changed. This was not just going to be a transparent administration (well...transparent about certain things and not others - certainly transparent about the prior administration!) it became clear that we were once again under the leadership of megalomaniac narcissists who intended each and every day in each and every way to be IN OUR FACES. It was not going to be possible to ignore them to any degree because they are camera whores the likes of which we haven't seen since Billy-boy and his associates. These people mean to be stars, and stars they are! And in order to detract from their utter incompetence and asininity, one of their tactics has been to expose the secret intelligence of the past administration. It had the opposite of the effect they'd intended, so they're gonna try to make it into a...hehe, well, into a federal case. Tried, of course, in the popular newsmedia. Coolness counts! SWAGGA matters! (I'd like to turn a duck gun on that reporter who compared Obi-wan to Billy Dee Williams and Shaft - this guy is so whitebred, so Don No-Soul-Simmons that the very idea of him having the same kind of "cool" as Billy Dee or Shaft or Dolemite is asinine. He possesses the elite urbanite coolness that is popular with white latte-sipping leftists; not SWAGGA FFS.)

On to their speculation as to why he's talking now. First they describe with breathless pearl-clutching how busy Dick and Liz Cheney's schedules have been. Dickses and Lizzes and schedules, oh my! Those tricksy Cheneys!

Parsing Cheney — code-named Angler by the Secret Service — is a lot like fishing in dark water; there's a lot going on underneath, but you'd never know it from staring at the surface. So let's take Cheney's own stated explanation first. The former Veep says he's worried that by dismantling a controversial Bush-era terrorist surveillance program and stepping back from harsh interrogation policies, the Obama Administration is putting the nation at risk. "I think it's fair to argue," said Cheney, "that we're not going to have the same safeguards we've had for the last eight years."

Man, if I have a secret code name with the Secret Service, I hope it's something awesome like "Angler." Um, I guess it doesn't matter anymore that people know this secret code name? I hope not, since they just reported it. However, that explanation makes perfect sense and I'd say he's understating the case. Emphasis mine to show the editorialization of this article. See, it's not labeled Op/Ed, but it am anyway!

Cheney is clearly troubled both by Obama's rollback of the policies he championed and the buzz on the left that a sitting President might prosecute a predecessor who took those policies too far. Cheney has repeatedly charged the White House with proceeding with prosecutions against the Justice Department lawyers who found the legal basis for the policies and the CIA officers who executed them. But Cheney is reaching: Obama has stopped short of calling for anything more than a probe into the genesis of the Bush-era tactics. True, a probe might well lead to more questions about Cheney's conduct, but Obama has specifically ruled out legal action against the CIA officers.

No, they were satisfied with naming, publishing photos, and telling us where those officers now work. Why prosecute when you can paint a target on their heads instead? Also, who cares where Obama has stopped short? The guy's an incompetent boob so far as the nitty gritty and an evil supergenius insofar as the big picture - he also lies through his teeth. His stopping short now will mean nothing a month from now. Cheney is right to be worried.

Now here's the part that killed me - no need to emphasize anything because it's pure spin and it's...insane.

A more likely explanation is that Cheney, who championed the idea of preemptive-attack doctrine as Vice President, knows that in politics as well the best defense is often a good offense. With the White House decision to release various Bush-era memos on interrogation, and the coming disclosure of thousands more photographs from Abu Ghraib later this month, Cheney is "trying to rewrite history," says a Republican consultant who has experience in intelligence matters. "He knows that as time goes by, he will look worse. And so he's trying to put his stroke on it." (See pictures of the aftershocks of Abu Ghraib.)

Cheney obliquely conceded as much on Sunday, when he told CBS's Bob Scheiffer, "I think it's very, very important that we have a clear understanding that what happened here was an honorable approach to defending the nation, that there was nothing devious or deceitful or dishonest or illegal about what was done." That sounds like: O.K., we got a little out of hand. But we meant well. So how 'bout we just let it go?

He's trying to rewrite history by getting ALL the information OUT? Even the bit that HAS gotten out has done nothing but vindicate him, as well as to demonstrate that he was NOT in fact the prime mover to begin with (Liz Cheney's interview with Norah Dumbass a few posts ago deals with that well). Providing full documentation is REWRITING history? And by what stretch of the imagination is what he said there possibly interpretable as anything remotely like "Let it go, we fucked up"? In fact it says precisely the opposite, just as the documentation so far proves precisely the opposite. How does this idiot read that stuff and say the opposite of what it means - isn't reading comprehension a bare minimum for journalism??? How did this guy make it through school? Also, when did we switch from legal and sanctioned interrogations approved by all the legal committees and the president's men in Guantanamo - where, you know, the waterboarding took place - to Abu Ghraib? Little bait-and-switch? Do they teach that in Journalism 101? Cheney didn't approve or endorse the abuses of Abu Ghraib and you're comparing apples and garden hoses here - liar.

What's quite clear about Cheney's sudden chatty spree is that he wants to refocus the question about waterboarding and other interrogation techniques from whether they were legal to whether they worked. After eight years on the front lines of the war on terrorism, perhaps that is all a man can see. It certainly might explain why Cheney is making such a fuss about asking Obama to release a pair of after-action memos — which he says offer proof that the controversial methods produced evidence that, as Cheney claimed on Sunday, "saved thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives."

Which is clearly irrelevant. If it saved 6 million lives it would be irrelevant, right? And we already know it was legal, which is why we can move on to the question of what it accomplished. The un-uniformed, un-countried enemy combatants could have been killed where they stood and instead got a resort-like captivity - and if they didn't spill the goods we knew they had, they got a caterpillar or a walling. 2 of them got legally waterboarded and hundreds of thousands of Americans were saved. Cry me a fucking river.

A far darker explanation for the spring offensive isn't about the past but the future. Obama officials have spied something like a set-up in Cheney's latest gambit. One of the Bush team's biggest talking points in its final days in office was an insistence that its greatest accomplishment was preventing a second attack in the years after Sept. 11. By laying down the charge now that Obama has made the country less safe, the Bush team may be able to point fingers of blame if a second attack ever comes.

Irrelevant. For the next 30 years the left will blame Bush (unless someone else comes along they hate more) and the rest of us already know who is deliberately weakening us and setting us up for another attack. The message of the Bush years was that you may build democracies in the ME (wow...that's really amazing actually) but until you've built *only* democracies in the ME you can't let your guard down for a second. Our guard is being not just let down, but THROWN down with reckless abandon. Cheney's got no reason to go on a tour to set up the possible future repercussions here - he's not that vapid nor that stupid. He knows we aren't either. Hell, Biden himself told us right out that this man was going to be tested within 6 months and that it was going to look like they did exactly the wrong thing, right? Blame Biden, then.

Then they say something about maybe salvaging his reputation - I mean, yeah, I would want to as well if I were this guy. He got one fuck of a bad rap.

Cheney briefly ran for President in 1996, and though he is unlikely to make that mistake again, he may see a chance to boost his dismal approval ratings at least within the battered ranks of the GOP.

Yeah, he already has. Not sure why you care, but when your buddy released those memos Cheney's approvability shot up like a rocket. And the speaking he has been engaging in has had the same effect as well. It might have been nice if he'd done it during his tenure, but he had a damn country to run, and what good would it have done anyway?

In any case, Cheney's reappearance has delighted Democrats — "Bring it on!" quipped a White House official on Tuesday afternoon, when asked about Cheney's re-emergence

God, they're stupid.

— and dismayed Republicans. Said one: "We're trying to turn the page, and he's climbing out of the grave to haunt us."

Holy mixed metaphors, Batman! Must have been Meghan McCain. Some RINO; who cares?

Shark-Jumping

On the same day I find out that the aftermath of that unprofessional bitch reporter's actions were FALSELY removed due to a NON-copyright violation (how the hell did they convince anyone it was their footage when it was a third party? Who paid who off to get it taken down? The purge, it begins...) I come across this piece, which frankly makes me feel filthy. I mean Happy Days, OK...why not? It's from Happy Days that the term "Jump the Shark" even originates so it's OK to use it to any ill ends. Oh, hell, whatever, I don't have so many fond memories of Andy Griffith either. I always thought he was an asshole for not carrying a gun, and the one guy who DID was a complete buffoon who always shot himself in the foot. I still feel dirty, but not for the reasons I originally thought. Opey - you just go on back to Mayberry, why don't you - or your imagined Mayberry of Europe. After all, they can only live in Mayberry because we defend the whole fucking lot of them.

In a brief note on this nonsense in which the so-called "torture memos" were released without the accompanying memos on the invaluable information that was gathered as a result of enhanced interrogations (not torture, sorry) - including the PREVENTION of Wave 2, planned and operational to attack the left coast - I heard someone make a really excellent point. Two (possibly 3) of the prisoners were waterboarded; problem with the "War Crimes" kooks is that waterboarding is not even legally torture. If they were so gung-ho on prosecuting Cheney et. al. for torture and war crimes for putting a caterpillar in with a detainee - an ENEMY COMBATANT - then why don't they go ahead and MAKE waterboarding illegal and make it torture legally? They could do it in a heartbeat. So why aren't they doing it?

Because that would prove what we've known all along, that it WASN'T illegal and it wasn't TORTURE to begin with. To make it illegal/torture now would put the nail in that coffin, wouldn't it now? Not that the memos shouldn't have DONE that already. Non-issue, move on. Next person to say war crimes gets dismissed as a mere, worthless nutjob, a hysteric with nothing real to say.

Things that Make You Go Hmm...

So we already know that pirates are hilarious - just ask Hillary Clinton. We know that Obama is now a hero - just ask the media. What else do we know?

Well, we know that

Richard Phillips was just one of more than 250 hostages of many nationalities being held by pirates who have seized dozens of vessels, from oil tankers to luxury yachts, in recent months.

Helicopters once again flew over pirate bases near Eyl on the Somali coast overnight after his rescue.

"They killed our friends on the lifeboat and we thought helicopters would bomb us in Eyl last night," a pirate in Eyl, who called himself Farah, told Reuters.

"We were mourning for dead friends and then roaring planes came -- grief-upon-grief. America has become our new enemy."

Really? Oh, *really*? 250 hostages in recent months, and these are your "friends"? Which makes us bad? Have I gone insane, or did this guy seriously just say that?

Oh, I'm so fucking sorry they flew helicopters over your pirate base, you miscreant turd, and I'm SO SORRY your hostage-taking criminal pirate "friends" are dead...oh wait, no I'm not. And since when do we want you as anything but an enemy, turd? Why the hell would we want you for anything BUT an enemy?

While some people are bending over backwards to praise Obumbles for grudgingly signing off on a vague order to "use appropriate force" - IF the captain's life was in immediate, imminent danger (being a hostage to armed pirates isn't enough, apparently) - I'm not going to be that generous. The only possible appropriate resolution of this would have resulted in these miscreant criminal shitstains to now FEAR us and fear coming near us ever again, not to declare us their new enemy and threaten us further. There never should have been any question of deadly force the instant any of this came close to happening. 250 hostages in the past few months do not call for negotiations or for inquiries in a court of law, as Obi-wan so graciously called for. The fact that it was even a question is outrageous. The fact that his stand was not immediate and forceful and strong instead of the weasel-words he DID use, grudgingly, in the final extremes, does not in the least speak well of his decision in the slightest. The fact that there has been no fear cast into their black hearts tells me all I need to know.

"This is a big wake-up to the pirates. It raises the stakes. Now they may be more violent, like the pirates of old," he said.

So far, pirates have generally treated hostages well, sometimes roasting goat meat for them and even letting them phone loved ones. The worst violence has been the occasional beating. No hostages are known to have been killed by pirates.

Oh, wait. I guess I was wrong. They're really just a bunch of good guys using unconventional means to make a living just like the rest of us, and we have wrongheadedly now invoked their ire, made a new enemy, and encouraged future violence with our imperialism and our barbarous, torturous methods. Roasted goat meat surely makes up for the minor inconvenience of having your ship shot up, boarded, hostages taken, beaten, and held captive for a week at gunpoint - just pay the money and shut the fuck up next time. They need money too!

Are you KIDDING me?

Excuse Me? I Was Told There Would Be Obstructionists?

So where the hell were they on this one? Why didn't somebody block this fucking thing? They've hidden all this shit in there that is drastically unconstitutional and shreds our individual liberty, autonomy, and privacy to pulp. Instead of, as would be customary for something that has NOTHING to do with economic stimulus, having, say, a proposal, a bill, a DISCUSSION and then a VOTE - they just snuck this abortion into a bill where it doesn't belong, and torched our autonomy in the process.

And let me just say now, TO EVERY ASSHOLE BLOGGER/JOURNALIST (YES, AMANDA MARCOTTE AND JESSE TAYLOR AND EZRA KLEIN AND KEVIN HENDRICKS MELISSA MCEWAN AND ALL THE REST OF YOU) WHO KEPT SAYING TIME AFTER TIME THAT OBAMA'S HEALTH CARE PLAN WAS GOING TO BE FINE BECAUSE IF YOU HAD INSURANCE YOU LIKED YOU COULD JUST KEEP IT THE WAY IT WAS - WELL FUCK ALL OF YOU, YOU GO TO HELL AND YOU DIE, AND YOU WERE COMPLETELY, POSITIVELY FUCKING WRONG. I TOLD YOU ASSHOLES THAT AT THE TIME!

That's better. Because the reality now is that there is NO opting out of this, and doctors who fail to report your EVERY visit, EVERY prescription, EVERY concern, test, or issue, EVERY cold, EVERY wart, EVERY Xanax TO THE FEDS - yes, TO THE FEDS to keep in a database - will be PENALIZED at the sole discretion of the HHS Czar. The National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will **monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective**. If you're costing them too much, they are going to tell you to fuck off - EVEN IF IT'S UNDER YOUR OWN INSURANCE, EVEN IF YOU ARE PAYING FOR IT YOURSELF OUT OF POCKET. There is no "opt-out" in this Trojan Horse. But before the euthanasia starts, the elderly are going to be hit. Hard. The author of this Obamination has stated that old people are going to have to start just dealing with the diseases and problems that come with old age instead of treating them, and we're going to have to stop demanding so much from health care.

The children will be hit, and those who are most in need of health care are going to get creamed, and the fat people are going to be obliterated, and smokers will probably just explode.

Now we can ALL die of poor health care - you remember how we told you that SOCIALISM isn't a rising tide that lifts all boats, but rather SINKS them to the lowest common denominator? We will all now be equal partners in misery and ill health - now whether you can afford it or not, you can not get adequate health care. Instead of figuring out a way to help people who are down on their luck get treated more easily, you've just condemned us ALL to the shitheap.

Thanks a lot, socialist fucktards. Did you really think you weren't going to see armed revolution in your lifetime if you managed to FORCE all the rest of us to live by your evil socialist plans? Forget it. You all bought this one, and it's NOT going to be pretty. I'm willing to die for my liberty - are you willing to die to take it from me?

You Really Can't Write This Stuff

Larry Flynt (yes, that Larry Flynt) and Joe Francis, CEO of Girls Gone Wild and criminal underage pornographer have requested a 5 billion dollar bailout from congress. Well, they're probably hurting what with all the free porn available to all ages on the internet. Hey, it's been a long time since we hunted through National Geographic to catch a glimpse of boob. Actually I don't even know why I did that considering my father kept Playboy right by the toilet and it wasn't exactly as 'tasteful' then as it got later. What do you mean, girls don't do that? Shut up.

I don't know. Flynt's an asshole and obviously Francis is too, and Flynt loves to make a mockery out of the US government and the legal system, but...at this point, who cares? We've got a whole cast of barking moonbats taking charge, what's left to "make" a mockery of? It would be kind of funny if they got it, and frankly there are worse misuses of our tax dollars (trillions worth coming right up!) so go for it, guys. Strike while the iron's hot.