“Ron Paul told TPM on Wednesday that even if there’s a ‘case or two’ that makes Americans uncomfortable, the government should stay out of the health care business. Even if one of the cases in question is his former campaign manager, Kent Snyder, who died with $400,000 in unpaid medical bills after being unable to secure health insurance due to a pre-existing condition.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HW2VW-Z1M94

One of the rules of thumb we’ve developed since we fell into this bottomless pit of blogging three years ago is Always double-check ThinkProgress transcripts. We’re all for afflicting the comfortable, but TP has a nasty habit of being too, um, enthusiastic in their mission. There’s plenty of outrage to go around without sexing up the dossier.

But Monday afternoon, we were asleep at the switch:

HOW THE OTHER TWO PERCENT LIVES…

“By the time I feed my family, I have maybe $400,000 left over.” –Louisiana GOP Congresscritter John Fleming, adding that “class warfare has never created a job”. [ThinkProgress]

This was, how you say, not quite right. The sentence doesn’t end where ThinkProgress ended it:

“The amount that I have to reinvest in my business and feed my family is more like $600,000 of that $6.3 million,” Fleming said. “So by the time I feed my family I have maybe $400,000 left over to invest in new locations, upgrade my locations…”

That version of the quote is from TPM, which went with the implied $200,000 in Fleming’s family food budget.

But even that is misleading. In fact, of everybody who decided to run with that quote, the only reasonable voice was Fleming himself.

Read more »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVAgz6iyK6A

Presenting the best iPhone commercial ever.

[via Rachel]

Our guest columnist is WorldNetDaily, which buries the lead in the very last line.

In a 21st century world consumed with interest in “the dark side” of the paranormal, is the mysterious realm of demonic spirits and other-worldly beings as portrayed in movies, books, and television productions that literally fill our pop culture screens and load down our bookshelves, really real? Is the devil a myth — a figment of the human imagination — or is there an existing demonic world of darkness? Is Satan really alive and well?

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Google responds to Rick Santorum’s request to remove his filthy namesake page from its database:

“Google’s search results are a reflection of the content and information that is available on the web. Users who want content removed from the Internet should contact the webmaster of the page directly,” the spokesperson said. “Once the webmaster takes the page down from the web, it will be removed from Google’s search results through our usual crawling process.”

While we wait for Dan Savage to take a swing at the softest pitch all season, consider Google’s subsequent baldface lie clarification:

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A clever bit of street theater — we hope “tarp” is a deliberate visual pun — falls victim to decades-old satire:

Occupy Wall Street put up a tarp overnight. Using trees in the park, the occupation erected a structure, which inevitably meant the New York Police Department was going to tell them immediately this morning they had five minutes to take all tarps down. The protesters opted to hold an emergency assembly to discuss whether to cede to police orders or not. They democratically in the quickest way possible tried to arrive at a consensus. But, there was no consensus before police marched in and began to take control of the situation.

We hope to god we’re never stuck at a pizza parlor with these people. They’d never decide on a topping.

Live Blog for #OccupyWallStreet: Day Four, NYPD Attack Camp for Putting Up a Tarp [Firedoglake]

The tragic irony of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is that it was supposed to be an improvement. After Groovy Bill won the election — we saw him play sax at a Mac Court rally in Eugene, although he failed to demonstrate for the assembled stoners How Not to Inhale — he grandly instructed the Secretary of Defense to prepare for ending gay discrimination in the military.

And then it all blew up in his face.

What followed was not unlike Hillary joking that she was too butch career-minded to bake cookies, then hastily calling a photo op to prove she could tollhouse with the best of them. Rather than stand by principle, Bubba mounted a strategic retreat and not-so-grandly declared that if gays would be so kind to stay in the closet, he promised nobody would throw open any doors.

Fourteen thousand doors pried open later, here we are.

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