Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Send in the clowns . . . again

Whenever the Republicans need to distract the public from something they'd rather hide from, they send in the clowns.

So Arlen Specter defected, and McConnell says it endangers the country.

That was clownish enough, but then the chief clownette had to weigh in with her special brand of nutty distraction.
Minnesota Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann, following Rush Limbaugh's cue, suggested on Tuesday that President Obama was to blame for the swine flu crisis. She went even further than the talk show host, implying that swine flu epidemics are a Democratic phenomenon that dates back to President Carter.

"I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out then under another Democrat president Jimmy Carter. And I'm not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it's an interesting coincidence."

Unfortunately, Bachmann's facts are a little off. As Glenn Thrush notes, Republican President Gerald Ford, not Carter, led the country during the last outbreak of the virus.

And wasn't it a Republican senator who insisted on removing funds from Obama's stimulus bill that would have prepared us to fight a pandemic, like the swine flu that is coming?

Michelle, Michelle . . . . you're a living, breathing SNL skit, and you don't even know it.

Ralph

1 comment:

  1. Add another clown to the list: GOP Chairman Michael Steele is defensive about Republican responsibility for removing pandemic funds from the stimulus plan:

    His claim is that they had no way of knowing that such a threat might materialize. "Did we know this at the time of the vote? Don't come back and make this link six months after the fact ... we don't know what tomorrow holds." He added, "I'm not going to sit here and accept that connection."

    Er, ahem, Mr. Steele: that's what emergency preparedness is, Sir. You prepare for the unexpected.

    I suppose by his logic we can disband our military cancel all those military equipment contracts between wars, because "we don't know what tomorrow holds," so why spend money we might not need?

    Clowns, poor unhappy clowns.

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