French in uproar over oral sex anti-smoking posters

. . A campaign to discourage young people from Smoking
shows male and female teenagers kneeling in front of a man, as if being forced to have oral sex. A cigarette takes the place of the man’s sexual organ. The caption reads: “Smoking is to be a slave to tobacco.”

The advertising agency behind the posters says only a shock campaign can halt the rise in smoking amongst 13 to 15-year-olds in France . .

Tea Party Disputes Take Toll on Convention

A Tea Party convention billed as the coming together of the grass-roots groups that began sprouting up around the country a year ago is unraveling as sponsors and participants pull out to protest its expense and express concerns about “profiteering.”…

Philip Glass, the national director of the National Precinct Alliance, announced late Sunday that “amid growing controversy” around the convention, his organization would no longer participate. His group seeks to take over the Republican Party from the bottom by filling the ranks of local and state parties with grass-roots conservatives, and Mr. Glass had been scheduled to lead workshops on its strategy.

“We are very concerned about the appearance of T.P.N. profiteering and exploitation of the grass-roots movement,” he said in a statement. “We were under the impression that T.P.N. was a nonprofit organization like N.P.A., interested only in uniting and educating Tea Party activists on how to make a real difference in the political arena.”…

“When we look at the $500 price tag for the event and the fact that many of the original leaders in the group left over similar issues, it’s hard for us not to assume the worst,” Eric Odom, the executive director of the American Liberty Alliance and an organizer of the tax day rallies last April, wrote on the group’s Web site.

Sherry Phillips, who founded and runs Tea Party Nation with her husband, Judson, said Monday that it was a nonprofit group.

That would be a flat-out lie.

She declined to comment on Ms. Palin’s speaking fee.

“If there is any profit,” Ms. Phillips said, “the money will go toward furthering the cause of conservatism.”

It’s one of those profiting ‘non-profits’?

200,000 dead and counting, can’t believe I’ve typed that for the fourth or fifth time.

It’s beginning to look like one of the most savage, shocking disasters in all of history. A rival to the Indian Hurricane of 1839 and the Antioch Earthquake of 526.

How well did Glenn Beck ‘pundit’ reality?

Grassroots activists or sheep to the slaughter? No one seems to know for sure, and only a few more seem to care.

So thoroughly cowed by corporate interests are right-wingers that they might just think it’s a good thing, volunteering their time and giving their hard-earned pay and pensions to greedy people so that they can buy houses and cars with it. America!

I posted earlier on the ‘Tea Party Express’: a group who collected over a million dollars worth of teabaggers’ money only to hand two-thirds of it to the Republican consulting firm — Russo, Marsh and Associates — that created it.

That created howls of protest from the ‘Tea Party Patriots’. But, earlier, the TPPs were wrenched by their own factious squabbling after criticism over their fiscal goings-on.

“Why are the financial records not public knowledge?” [Merits] asked. “Show me the money!”

Eventually a Tea Party Patriots loyalist couldn’t take it anymore. “Why are you intentionally trying to destroy this movement??” he demanded.

And so it continues. Conservative blogger Melissa Clouthier has an expose on the ‘hot’ tea party organization, ‘Tea Party Nation’. They’re the ones who scored Sarah Palin giving the keynote address at their February 4-6 convention.

She blew off the larger, far more prestigious Conservative Political Action Committee meeting in favor of the ‘Tea Party Nation’ convention, giving the movement some cache. All it cost TPN were Palin’s fee and expenses, around $125,000. Apparently, the venerated CPAC doesn’t operate by paying its speakers six-figure sums.

But the coup did excite the TPN people. Their scheduled venue, the Opryland Hotel in Nashville, was too small for a Palin sighting. We should move it, right?

Well, these decisions come down to only person. Because it turns out the ‘Tea Party Nation’ is Tea Party Nation, INC., a company with a single owner. And Judson Phillips wasn’t having any of that ‘move it’ talk, he had bigger plans.

Excited organizers found out October 22 that Sarah Palin had chosen to speak to the party. During the meeting, local activists urged Phillips to change the venue so more people could attend as the space was so limited at Opryland. At that point in November, he had 60 days to change the venue but was afraid if he changed it, Palin wouldn’t come speak to the gathering, says one person familiar with the meeting.

When Judson Phillips suggested the $550 convention fee, some members were so aghast they got up and left the meeting.

At one point, fisticuffs nearly broke out, emotions ran so high. Those who had been in the bottom-up organization felt betrayed because the event excluded so many average people and many of the volunteers themselves couldn’t even afford to attend. Philips and his few supporters saw an opportunity to make money.

This meeting prompted many long-time Tea Party members to quit…

The decision was made to keep the conference, small, expensive and exclusive.

Phillips’ intentions were abundantly clear to the people familiar with TPN:

Tami Killmarx said that she heard Phillips say more than once, “I want to make a million from this movement.”

Killmarx wasn’t the only volunteer who suspected Phillips intentions were to gain personally. Jerry Williams who ran security for the Tea Party Nation gatherings from the groups inception until August when he resigned, and was slated to handle security at the February 2010 convention, said, “We have a situation that’s like a natural disaster. [Likening the American political climate to a disaster.] You’ve always got people out there who want to make a buck on it. This is the same thing. There’s people out there who want to jump on this Tea Party thing for their own interests. They’re not really worried about the country or the people.”

Phillips fired Killmarx. And some others. Virtually anybody who questions Phillips and his motives gets the axe. One firing:

Due to the events of last Saturday and your indiscretion in relation to the National Tea Party Convention, it is apparent that your loyalties and interests are not compatible with those of Tea Party Nation. It is for this reason I am requesting your resignation from the TPN Advisory Board. I will give you 24 hours to remove yourself from the group before I remove it myself.

Continue Reading »

Harry Reid is an idiot. Pretty much everybody knows it.

Reid has moved quickly to show contrition after a new book, “Game Change” by journalists John Heilemann and Mark Halperin revealed that he made comments in 2008 suggesting that Barack Obama could be elected president because he is “light skinned” and lacks “Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.”

I have no idea why he’s in a leadership position, the guy is strange and utterly dis-likable. But that was just a stupid comment about the now President, and he doesn’t particularly care.

“Harry Reid called me today and apologized for an unfortunate comment reported today,” Obama said in a statement released on Saturday. “I accepted Harry’s apology without question because I’ve known him for years, I’ve seen the passionate leadership he’s shown on issues of social justice and I know what’s in his heart. As far as I am concerned, the book is closed.”

But who gives a damn about the guy who was the object of the comment? Who the hell said he’s got any say in this controversy? Republicans are still pissed that Trent Lott had to resign for statements that he made.

In an interview with POLITICO, National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn (R-Texas) said it would be “entirely appropriate” for the Nevada Democrat to relinquish his leadership post over comments about Barack Obama’s skin color and lack of a “Negro dialect.”…

“There’s a big double standard here,” [Michael] Steele said during an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”…

Still, Steele said: “There has to be a consequence here if the standard is the one set in 2002 with Trent Lott.”

[Jon] Kyl (Ariz.), the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, echoed Steele’s complaints about a “double standard” for Democrats.

“I agree with Michael Steele’s comments that there is a double standard,” Kyl said on Fox News Sunday.”

“If [Lott] should resign, then Harry Reid should. If they apologize and you know what is in their heart, my feeling is they shouldn’t. But in this case, [Reid] should.”

In other words, we don’t give a damn what black people, or the “light skinned” President, think, you guys owe us one. It’s apparently a game.

In 1948, South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond ran for President as candidate for a shocking splinter party, the Dixiecrats, who vowed to defend racist segregation.

During the campaign, he said, “All the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes, our schools, our churches.”

Thurmond’s party ran under a platform that declared in part, “We stand for the segregation of the races and the racial integrity of each race.”

And over a half century later, this is what Trent Lott proudly averred:

“I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years, either . . .”

In other words, “Our segregationist ways would have lead America to a better place.” A ringing endorsement of violent racism. Republicans are idiots for trying to play this game, there’s no upside here. Do you think they remember that the President’s black?

This is a horrible story — a woman in Virginia gave birth to a child, then cold-bloodedly smothered it in blankets before calling 911. Ten hours later.

Around eleven Friday morning the Campbell County Sheriff’s Office got a call that a woman in her early 20’s was in labor. When deputies arrived at a home in the 12 hundred block of Lone Jack Road in Rustburg they discovered the baby had actually been born alive ten hours earlier, but was dead by the time they were called out there.

“I believe everyone was upset, except for the person who should have been upset, the mother” said Investigator Tracy Emerson.

Emerson says that’s because the mother suffocated the child under bedding. He can’t charge the mother, because of a loophole in state law.

This happened two weeks ago, and still it gets no notice by the national press. You could understand if it were only the godless liberal MSM, but even the values-oriented Fox News seems to have no interest in a story that looks like it should fire up their demographic of prudes and scolds far more than Kathy Griffin saying “fuck” on CNN.

I wouldn’t even be aware of this horror story if it weren’t burning up the tubes among the Christian Right, and I can’t understand why it isn’t getting any traction. There is enough juicy moral outrage to make Jerry Falwell come back from the dead:

“In the state of Virginia as long as the umbilical cord is attached and the placenta is still in the mother, if the baby comes out alive the mother can do whatever she wants to with that baby to kill it,” said Investigator Tracy Emerson. “She could shoot the baby, stab the baby. As long as it’s still attached to her in some form by umbilical cord or something it’s no crime in the state of Virginia.”

But nobody cares about this wasted life:

If there were any way to charge this mother and put her in jail, investigators say they would. In fact, they work (sic) to try to get the state law changed after another similar incident in Campbell County. Talking to two delegates and one state senator, asking them to take this issue up with the General Assembly, but they say those three refused because it’s too close to the abortion issue.

Which is odd, seeing as how Virginia politicians normally seem to see little downside to pro-life electioneering. That’s even odder than a sheriff’s investigator acting as judge and jury to acquit a nameless and faceless murderer while making political accusations against the laws and lawmakers he’s on-duty working for.

“Simply because the mother was there, and the baby had not taken its own identity allegedly at this point, it makes the baby not its own person,” Emerson said.

According to a law – not according to Emerson who believes the little life deserves justice.

He believes the innocent babe deserves justice, but doesn’t bother to mention the killer’s name, much less bother to arrest her and everyone else in the house? In a state that six months ago won an appeals court battle to ban a legitimate medical procedure?

Virginia Abortion Restriction Is Upheld
U.S. Appeals Court Votes 6-5 to Back ‘Partial Birth’ Ban
Thursday, June 25, 2009

A sharply divided federal appeals court ruled constitutional yesterday a Virginia law banning “partial birth” abortion that was overturned four years ago, bringing the state in line with a federal ban on the controversial procedure.

Why don’t any of these low-lifes have names? As I said at the beginning, this is a truly horrible story, and I can’t understand the lack of interest in it by anyone but forced pregnancy networkers. I don’t pretend to have any journalistic training, but it seems obvious to me there is a story worth telling here. Does anybody have a rational explanation for why that isn’t happening?

No wonder it’s taking over the Republican Party, it’s populated with the same narcissists. Glory seekers, political opportunists, greed merchants and the like. Welcome to ‘reform’, right-wing style:

Majority Of Tea Party Group’s Spending Went To GOP Firm That Created It
Zachary Roth | December 28, 2009, 6:15PM

The political action committee behind the Tea Party Express (TPE) — which already has been slammed as inauthentic and corporate-controlled by rival factions in the Tea Party movement — directed almost two thirds of its spending during a recent reporting period back to the Republican consulting firm that created the PAC in the first place.

Our Country Deserves Better (OCDB) spent around $1.33 million from July through November, according to FEC filings examined by TPMmuckraker. Of that sum, a total of $857,122 went to Sacramento-based GOP political consulting firm Russo, Marsh, and Associates, or people associated with it…

…one expert on political action committees told TPMmuckraker it was unusual for a PAC to direct so much spending back to the entity that created it. And the spending details raised hackles among members of the Tea Party Patriots, a rival faction of conservative activists who have denounced TPE as a creature of Republican political professionals that lacks grassroots authenticity. In an email to a Patriots group that was obtained by TPMmuckaker, one TPPer who had examined the filings asked, “What would the true grassroots people think if they knew their money is being spent in this manner?”

..earlier…

Party Foul! Tea Partiers Eat Their Own In Bitter Internal Feud
Zachary Roth | November 12, 2009, 5:08PM

…”How much money does TPP have? How much did we make in DC? Where are the financial statements? Do board members get paid and if so who? Who signs the checks? Where does our money go?”

Merits echoed that theme. “Why are the financial records not public knowledge?” he asked. “Show me the money!”

Eventually a Tea Party Patriots loyalist couldn’t take it anymore. “Why are you intentionally trying to destroy this movement??” he demanded.

Charges of lax book-keeping — and worse — appear to be breaking out across the Tea Party movement. In a separate email written Wednesday and obtained by TPMmuckraker, Matt Perdue, the president of a San Antonio Tea Party group, ripped into the group’s treasurer, her husband, and their supporters for conducting a “mass redirection campaign,” apparently to line their own pockets using Tea Party donations.

“Where has all this money gone?” asks Perdue. “If there is nothing wrong going on, why has there not been one single piece of paper produced to back up why people got checks, some for $3,000, $7,400+, $4,000, $10,400+??? Where is the documentation? Why isn’t the cash deposited like it should be? Why did it take more than two weeks to deposit cash from the meetings?”…

Some TPPers expressed concern that the acrimony could damage the movement if exposed. “Daily Kos and other left wing interest groups are going to love running with this story,” wrote one.

Merits appeared to share that concern. “This will go public if we let it drag on long enough and if you don’t think this will have a chilling effect on all Tea Party movements raising funds you are living in a world of fairy dust and gingerbread houses,” he wrote. “Read my previous emails. If this goes on long enough, we all go down – NOT just TPP and TPE – ALL OF US.”

Thanks to Zachary Roth and TPMMuckraker.

To most people throughout Europe and the Americas, Christmas is a time of fun, gift-giving, and reflecting on the joy that “Peace On Earth, Goodwill Toward Men” could possibly be. Hard hearts being melted over the Yuletide season has been a staple of storytellers from Charles Dickens to Frank Capra, a theme enjoyed by Christians and non-Christians alike.

Real Christians hate that shit, of course, and think people who fail to show proper reverence for Jesus’ admittedly made-up birthday have no right to share in the fun, or even take the day off work that Christ paid for. Enter Real Christian Ron Lake of Nipomo, CA. He’s standing up for his Christian values by using his front yard to show that Jesus would bust a cap in Santa’s ass:

Controversial Christmas Display, Jesus versus Santa
Posted: Dec 17, 2009 10:26 PM PST
Updated: Dec 18, 2009 1:25 PM PST

NIPOMO – One Nipomo man’s holiday decorations has his neighbors banding together to get it removed.

The display is of Jesus and Santa, the two icons of Christmas. However, Jesus is holding a shotgun over the dead body of Santa Claus.

Neighbors want the display taken down citing that there are children in the neighborhood and they find it disturbing. “I know its freedom of speech, but it’s pretty disturbing and there are lots of children, that’s our main concern,” says neighbor Susana Cruz.

The artist, Ron Lake says that it represents the commercialism of Christmas.

Lake also says that his display it is a work of art and open to interpretation. “You can tell your kids and make it as if there’s a Santa Claus, and let them believe all that, but you can’t explain these things or ignore this thing. I don’t get it,” says Lake.

The controversial display went up on Monday, and since then multiple complaints have been filed with law enforcement trying to get the display removed.

Just outside of the chain link fence that separates the display from one of the main roads in Nipomo is a school bus stop.

Neighbors say children walking to the bus stop see the traditional nativity scene, or Santa soaring through the skies and kicking back on a Harley Davidson.

But then they stumble upon Jesus packing a double barrel shotgun bearing down on the Santa.

“Its private property, and everyone has the right to it, and I have the right to stand up and say I don’t like it either,” says Karen Clement who lives near the display.

“Christmas is not about Santa, its about Jesus, not the Jesus as the killer with the shotgun, but come on there’s a little humor here, a little tragedy here,” says Lake.

The display is up during the day, but Lake takes it down when the sun sets.

Of course, it’s just a joke. I think his original design was to show a flaming Santa in Hell being tortured by demons, but the Nipomo Fire Department interfered with his First Amendment rights.

Just imagine what they’d behave like if they weren’t a non-profit…

BCBS plea to customers on reform hits a nerve

Maybe it was just lousy timing, but many customers of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina are ticked off at the mail they’ve received recently from the state’s largest insurer.

First, they learned their rates will rise by an average of 11 percent next year.

Next, they opened a slick flier from the insurer urging them to send an enclosed pre-printed, postage-paid note to Sen. Kay Hagan denouncing what the company says is unfair competition that would be imposed by a government-backed insurance plan. The so-called public option is likely to be considered by Congress in the health-care overhaul debate.

“No matter what you call it, if the federal government intervenes in the private health insurance market, it’s a slippery slope to a single-payer system,” the BCBS flier read. “Who wants that?”

Plenty of people, it turns out.

Indignant Blue Cross customers have rebelled against the insurer’s message, complaining that their premium dollars have funded such a campaign.

They’ve hit the Internet in a flurry of e-mails to friends and neighbors throughout the state. They’ve called Hagan’s office to voice support for a public option. They’ve marked through the Blue Cross message on their postcards to instead vouch support, then dropped them in the mail — in at least one case taped to a brick — to be paid on Blue Cross’ dime. Or dimes…

“I went sort of bonkers,” said Beth Silberman of Durham. “You’re hostage to them, and then they pull this. My new premiums are funding lobbying against competition. It’s pretty disgusting.”

Blue Cross/Blue Shield of North Carolina–My Open Letter to My Scumsucking Insurance Company

—————————————————————————————————————————————————–
ADD: Customers fight back by editing and then mailing pre-printed insurance pleas:

While the Edwards-will-soon-admit-paternity watch goes on, and the tell-all book is on the way, the woman who would’ve destroyed a Presidential campaign goes on subsisting in the shadows. Thought it’d be timely to post some of her bio highlights–she’s no shrinking violet, for sure. It’s not surprising at all that she ended up where she did.

10 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Rielle Hunter

1.) Rielle Hunter is not her name, it’s Lisa Jo Druck. ‘Hunter’ came from her first marriage, and ‘Rielle’ she just made up.

2.) Her father was a notorious fraudster. James Druck participated in a scheme to electrocute show horses in order to collect big money insurance claims. The Horse Murders scandal was one of the ‘biggest, most gruesome stories in sports.’ He died while the FBI was still investigating him.

3.) Lisa was a top-notch jumper. Her career ended at 17 when her father killed her beloved show jumper, Henry the Hawk, in order to collect a $150,000 claim. Which he did.

4.) She’s a former girlfriend of ‘Brat Pack’ novelist Jay McInerney.

5.) She’s the inspiration for both McInerney’s and Bret Easton Ellis’ ubiquitous Alison Poole character.

[Story of My Life] is narrated in the first-person from the point of view of Alison Poole, “an ostensibly jaded, cocaine-addled, sexually voracious 20-year old.” Alison is originally from Virginia and lives in Manhattan, where she is involved in several sexual relationships and is aspiring to become an actress. She falls in love with bond trader and Shakespeare expert Dean, but soon they betray each other. The novel implies that the cause of protagonist Alison Poole’s “party girl” behavior is her father’s abuse, including the murder of her prize jumping horse.

6.) After she married wealthy attorney ‘Kip’ Hunter, he financed a play for her to star in, ‘Savage in Limbo.’

7.) They later moved to Beverly Hills so she could pursue an acting career. She has appeared in a few movies, including ‘Ricochet.’ They divorced in 2000.

8.) She started Midline Groove Productions, a New Jersey based media company. They produced 4 online videos for the Edwards campaign and were paid $100,000. Originally titled ‘Inspiring Politics: A Webisode Series Following John Edwards’, the clips were removed from YouTube after the hot controversy but have since been restored:

9.) She appeared before a Raleigh, North Carolina, grand jury in August that is investigating, in part, an additional $14,000 in payments the Edwards campaign made to her after they became aware that she was pregnant, likely with Edwards’ child.

10.) She and Edwards originally randomly came across each other outside of a hotel in New York. She greeted him by saying ‘You are so hot.’

Being a stupid lunatic means never having to say you’re sorry. That’s the lesson I get from reading wingnut posts on Obama’s ‘Stay in school and work hard’ address to kids scheduled this week.

The talk-and-spit loons are so routinely furious over the President’s traitorous breathing, or fidgeting, that their being especially irate over his speaking to their children was perhaps predictable. But now that the text of the speech is out and sadly contains no urgings to stab Republican parents or re-register them as Green Party members, there’s not much meat left to the controversy.

Ed Morrissey to the rescue.

I think the White House and Obama fouled this up from the beginning, making it look much more political than necessary, and gave their critics a boatload of ammunition with which to attack them. The speech, included in its entirety below, turned out to be entirely innocuous. But by asking teachers to impress upon children the need to “help President Obama,” they made it look blatantly political.

The real story now is…the run-up to the speech was handled poorly. Hmm. Considering that Ed and his whacko ilk are capable of yelling at jumbo-jet decibels for weeks about absolutely nothing, he may have a point. Never mind that nothing of the speech was ever going to be political, that (Republican) Presidents had done it before, that wingnuts are still again calling Obama Hitler, or that releasing the text of the speech hasn’t made a dent in the hysteria. I’m sure that if the White House had changed a few details all of this could have been avoided, and what a dumb crock of shit that is.

Continue Reading »

Facebook guy:

Health Care Reform, And The Whole Foods Boycott
Monday, August 17, 2009 at 1:26pm

I haven’t been reading Sully as much as I did a few months ago, a practice partly started when he decided to take an August vacation. That doesn’t mean the quality of his blog has declined, but I suspect for me it was an indicator that I, too, should take a break. That’s too bad, because I almost missed the news that there’s a large movement to boycott Whole Foods as a consequence of co-founder and CEO John Mackey writing a shockingly commonsensical op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that, to his more liberal customers, amounted to a “turd in the punchbowl” as one of his less-broad-minded customers put it.

Cue the narrow-minded ‘customer’:

“Let’s not pretend Mackey’s op-ed was meant to inject new ideas into the health care reform effort. He wanted to squeeze a turd into the punchbowl. The changes he proposes would be a radical departure from the core tenets that (most) dems are trying to get through (employer mandates and the public option). So publishing his comments now, in the midst of a heated battle for hearts and minds, he is in effect trying to scuttle the current reform effort. The only thing “moronic” is thinking no one on the left would notice.

Christ, I love a good boycott, give me half a reason. Our money is the only thing we as citizens have any fucking control over anyway. You really think I shouldn’t “punish” a guy who tries to step on my political goals? I’m curious, would it play any role in your shopping habits to learn that the CEO of some company was actively working to curtail your gun rights? When is a boycott justified?”

Mmm, I feel ‘Turd’ guy wins. Facebook guy only triumphs in a contest where everybody pretends to be ‘reasonable’ and ‘rational’ without actually employing reason or rationale.

The fact that he (or possibly an editor) prefaced his piece with a Margaret Thatcher quote – “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.” – undoubtedly provided a double helping of salt to that wound.

So what was his Dickensian, burn-the-orphans-for-firewood solution to health care? Here’s a bullet-point summary of his commentary, which you should really read in full:

Right then, here we go:

* Remove the legal obstacles that slow the creation of high-deductible health insurance plans and health savings accounts (HSAs).

Hahaa! This tops your list? Name one person who wants a $5000 deductible health plan. Or an HSA. Name one person who currently gets decent healthcare by way of either one. I don’t know one. Seriously, Face, this is fucking stupid. And just how far will a savings account go towards healthcare for a person with one of those insurance-killing ‘pre-existing conditions’?

* Equalize the tax laws so that employer-provided health insurance and individually owned health insurance have the same tax benefits. [This is the single biggest reason we have the current disaster of a system that we have.]

Holy crap, Face, double stupid. The biggest reason we’ve got a disaster is that the private-insurance-for-everybody concept is whacky: up-front money for no services. It’s un-capitalistic. It’s only a reasonable contract if the company is forced to provide services when the services are finally needed. The insurance companies have been cheating: they only take certain people, then they dump you when you request that they fulfill their part of the bargain. It’s no way to provide a national service.

So how do you force them to be honest? By having the government provide an ‘insurance’ option that can’t disappear. There is no healthcare reform without this, the public option. What you’re backing here, Face, is dumb and pathetic. Nothing but internet smoke and mirrors, web song and dance.

* Repeal all state laws which prevent insurance companies from competing across state lines.

* Repeal government mandates regarding what insurance companies must cover. [Or, why should I have chiropractic/holistic/etc. treatments covered when I will never use them because they are based on no science at all?]

* Enact tort reform to end the ruinous lawsuits that force doctors to pay insurance costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. (Although, as we have previously seen, Texas has very strict standards for malpractice suits and still has very high costs per patient.]

* Make costs transparent so that consumers understand what health-care treatments cost. [Medical billing is sooo random. For instance, we just got a medical bill for $430 in copays for Helen's allergist. What? They couldn't have dunned her at the time she got the treatment? And of course there are the horror stories of $100 Tylenols in hospitals.]

* Enact Medicare reform.

* Finally, revise tax forms to make it easier for individuals to make a voluntary, tax-deductible donation to help the millions of people who have no insurance and aren’t covered by Medicare, Medicaid or the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Ooooh, private donations, that will solve the problem. It’s too bad that people can’t currently donate money to…oh, WAIT–they can! And do!. Shockingly, the crisis survives: 47 million people have not been gifted comprehensive healthcare for the rest of their lives, just yet. Is this the perfect example of Mackey and Face’s impotent .22 caliber attack on the Nuclear War against Death and Illness, or what? They’d probably beg the government to put up billboards, too: “Health! You Can Do It!”

Now cue Mackey:

At Whole Foods we allow our team members to vote on what benefits they most want the company to fund. Our Canadian and British employees express their benefit preferences very clearly-they want supplemental health-care dollars that they can control and spend themselves without permission from their governments. Why would they want such additional health-care benefit dollars if they already have an “intrinsic right to health care”? The answer is clear-no such right truly exists in either Canada or the U.K.-or in any other country.

Thank you, John, for tossing up such a meaty fastball. I’d like to add that this is the stupidest thing I’ve read in a month.

Let’s see:

1.) I have the right to ‘free speech’. But if I speak a whole lot, it no longer exists? If I choose to speak more than John expects, it no longer exists? If I speak more than others, it no longer exists? If someone asks me ‘Would you like to speak some more?’, and I say ‘Yes’, it no longer exists? If I write a book, that would be ‘additional’ free speech, which indicates that it no longer exists?

2.) I have the right to own property. If I buy a second house, the right no longer exists? If John asks me ‘Would you like some more property?’, and I say ‘Yes’, the right no longer exists?

3.) I have the right to a court-appointed lawyer to defend myself. If John says ‘I can get you a great lawyer, for free’, and I say ‘Thanks’, the right no longer exists?

How did this Mackey get to be a CEO? I thought they were supposed to be smart.

More Face:

But because this doesn’t square with the political views of many of his customers, a lot of people went into full boycott mode. Radley Balko (who writes for Reason, as well as having a blog I’m sorry to say I don’t read nearly enough) recently posted a summary of why he’s doubling down on his purchases at Whole Foods after this fiasco got started. Snippy:

…The reason the boycott is moronic is that you’re punishing a company that does everything the left thinks a company should do in just about every other area (save for a few, noted below) solely because its CEO expressed opinions about health care that you don’t like. And I don’t mind that you disagree with Mackey’s opinions. But if they offend you, you’re way too damned sensitive. He didn’t say, “I think all Americans should have access to health care . . . except for black people.” That would be offensive. He put forth some proposals that he thinks would make the health care system more efficient. You can disagree with those proposals. But if you’re offended by them, you really have a low tolerance for offense.

Just what is this ridiculous reverence for the almighty corporation? Why can’t folks do as they please? People are in a difficult fight for a literally life-and-death issue, and this rich CEO writes an obnoxious, ill-informed missive that pisses off huge sections of his customers.

No, but don’t boycott his company, that would be stupid. Just because Whole Foods has benefited enormously from customers who are energetic and savvy about what decent businesses should get their dollars, what organizations reflect their values, that doesn’t mean anything now: they should all change their attitudes and habits entirely. Gee, maybe it’s the CEO who royally screwed this one up, and not the customers? Maybe?

…Just curious, if we get single payer, and the government does something you don’t like, where are you going to take your business?

I think the cool kids call this irony.

No, only the Annoying Dorks. We can boycott Whole Foods, but we can’t boycott the government. Okay, and…what? We shouldn’t want government healthcare? How about the FDA, EPA, the military–reject that stuff because it’s the un-boycottable government as well? Or we can accept government services, but only if we never boycott anything in the private sector, ever?

For the record, I think Mackey’s absolutely right.

Aw, Face, but you were wrong, and it’s on the record.

Previously: “How to annoy…#1.” “How to annoy…#2.”