Cheap shots: Welcome back Government!

From How to Explain Me.

Worst thing since slavery. Except maybe twerking.

When the African American neurosurgeon and remarkable political thinker Dr. Ben Carson told the Values Voter Summit that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was the "worst thing that has happened in this country since slavery," the comedians inevitably came out like earthworms after the gentle rain. The win, in my view, goes to LOLGOP:

The real indignity of slavery? The website problems that slowed people as they desperately tried to sign up for it.
— LOLGOP (@LOLGOP) October 11, 2013

Kunta Kinte, Oprah, Congressman Charlie Debt and Congressman Marsha Blackburn, and much much (well, some) more below the fold!


Wonkette ran a photograph, uncaptioned and without explanation, that apparently shows a young torticollis patient being told that he is covered by his parents' insurance until he turns 26, in spite of his entrepreneurial desire to pay his own medical bills, or rather fail to pay them, creating jobs for bankruptcy attorneys:

Oprah on the divine mystery:

“I think you can be an atheist who doesn’t believe in an overarching being who created all of this and sees over it,” [God-denying champion swimmer Diana] Nyad said. “But there’s spirituality because we human beings, and we animals, and maybe even we plants, but certainly the ocean and the moon and the stars, we all live with something that is cherished and we feel the treasure of it.”

Winfrey agreed: “Well, I believe that and feel that so deeply. It’s why every time I enter my yard or leave, I say, ‘Hello trees!’”

And every time the trees leaf, they're saying, "Hi, Oprah!"

Oprah drives through the stand of aspens in Tom Cruise's driveway in Telluride. I'm not making this up. From I Am Bossy.

The last in an otherwise inglorious series:

I claimed against @roxberry here that I couldn't find a case of a politician's joke turning into a trial balloon, but I was wrong:

@roxberry wait wait, here's one: Chris Christie: "If I was in the Senate right now, I'd kill myself"
— Yastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) October 12, 2013

(See here.)

Feminists always take it halfway. Takes a Republican to go truly radical:

Congressman Marsha Blackburn, the only cross-dresser in the House!


Correction:

Correction: October 15, 2013

An earlier version of this article misspelled, on second reference, the surname of a representative. He is Charlie Dent, not Debt.

Clearly a dirty trick from the Tea Party rascals. Who want to know, by the way, is he a Muslim? Or if not, how come he prays like that?

Charlie Dent via Lehigh Valley Live.

Namaz prayer in Kyrgyzstan via Flitzy Phoebie. 

You think this is bad? You should see HHS droning Afghanistan:

But cannot make Obamacare exchange work: "@jaketapper: NSA collects millions of e-mail address books globally http://t.co/jzeFLZcpXm”
— Hugh Hewitt (@hughhewitt) October 14, 2013

How wrong is this?
1. The NSA doesn't, um, run the Marketplace. Wouldn't be legal for it to do so either.
2. The article is about how incompetent the NSA data collection is. If they could make the Marketplace work it would be a big surprise.

And congratulations to Jeh Johnson

on his nomination to head the Homeland Security Department! I had to Google around to remember why I was so pleased about this—he's an unabashedly good guy whose last appearance in these pages was when he suggested in strong terms that we get rid of George W. Bush's "Global War" language when discussing what is or should be a police matter; he'll be the first chief in the Department's history with a clue as to what's wrong with it. On the way, I found a funny old column from Glenn Greenwald castigating President Obama for basically being the opposite of Johnson in this respect:

Why would anyone in the US government or its owners have any interest in putting an end to this sham bonanza of power and profit called "the war on terror"? Johnson is right that there must be an end to this war imminently, and Maddow is right that the failure to do so will render all the due-process-free and lawless killing and imprisoning and invading and bombing morally indefensible and historically unforgivable. But the notion that the US government is even entertaining putting an end to any of this is a pipe dream, and the belief that they even want to is fantasy. They're preparing for more endless war; their actions are fueling that war; and they continue to reap untold benefits from its continuation.

Or is it possible Obama may have meant what he's been saying on the subject and implementing as policy against the steadfast resistance of the CIA? I don't know, reporting is so hard!

Image from Sprezzatura! (a cool blog from West Virginia with no relation to Lee Siegel's infamous sock puppet).