Joe Wilson: Firing Upon Fort Sumter

As he bleeds from a severed hand, a nurse tells a man that he looks Hispanic and thus she will have to check his birth certificate before the hospital can admit him for treatment.

Then they called Maria to clean up this mess...

Of course, the big news all last week was the “emotional outburst” of Joe Wilson, Republican congressman from South Carolina. Briefly, in defiance of congressional protocol, in defiance of military protocol (Joe Wilson is a retired Colonel in the National Guard), and in defiance of what his momma must have taught him was good manners (not that it seems to matter much these days), Joe interrupted President Obama’s speech on health care with the cry of “You Lie!” Besides calling into mind Invader Zim accusing earthling Dib of lying when Dib claims that Zim is…well, an alien invader, it also brings to mind the setting of the argument in that august show–a school playground. Wilson claimed that he was just so overwrought by emotion that the incident just sorta happened and has tried to get away with a private apology to Obama for a rather public insult.
Wilson’s account is disingenuous at best. It’s easier to see in his actions his own little version of General Beauregard opening fire on Fort Sumter, a direct opening salvo in the war against Obama. Joe, confused about the appropriateness of the town hall antics of the summer, fully expected the body of Republican Senators and Representatives to join in on calling Obama a liar and disrupt the speech completely in a chant of liar, liar, pants on fire. They didn’t, and Joe slunk away at the end of the speech, tail between his legs, calling the White House to offer a lame “I’m sowwy–I have kids in the service.” Whatever THAT has to do with it. But Joe’s tail didn’t stay between his legs for long! Not with Michele Malkin and Glenn Beck and the host of other rabblerousers calling him an American hero! Joe’s got his nuts back and he’s refusing to apologize to Congress for a censurable offence when he’s already apologized–in private–to the President. His heart must have leapt when he heard the Taxation Protesters echoing his accusation in chants of “Liar, Liar, pant on fire” this weekend.
Is it really about the prospect of illegally aliens getting free medical services under the still yet undefined Health Care plan? Especially when, as many observers have already pointed out, the proposed bills have language specifically excluding benefits to unofficial immigrants. Especially, as Donny Shaw pointed out on Open Congress, that Joe Wilson himself voted to reimburse hospitals for services rendered to uninsured illegal aliens back in 2003. Aaaaaahhhh, but that was under a REPUBLICAN Administration…with a white President.
I can’t help but think that this whole thing is part and parcel of some crazy-ass pipe dream that when some deluded “patriot” shoots Obama–as some of the crazies who’ve shown up with guns at the town hall meetings seem to be advocating (and many more secretly hoping for it)–he’ll be taken to the local hospital where HE WILL BE DENIED TREATMENT because he doesn’t have a valid HAWAIIAN BIRTH CERTIFICATE! Wouldn’t that be poetic justice for tryin’ to push Commie medicine down our throats and, at the same time, validate our paranoid fantasies? Then God will intervene and install Sarah Palin to her rightful place on the throne.
It’s getting dangerous to be sane.
(Personal note: a quick Hoppy Bird Day to JM 😉 )

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“He Said, The Sheriff’s Getting Nearer…” –Blazing Saddles

Fred and Bert discuss the birther insanity, no matter what evidence is offered, Bert rejects it, even arguing that Obama made use of Area 51 technology to plant his birth announcement in Hawaiian newspapers.

No wonder Lou Dobbs keeps ragging on Obama for his birth certificate--he thinks he might be an illegal alien

Remember Blazing Saddles? The scene were the townspeople are waiting for their new sheriff? Gabby Johnson is up on the highest building with a telescope and spies ultra-cool Cleavon Little riding to town. Cleavon Little is called Black Bart–because his name is Bart and he is…black. Gabby, speaking authentic frontier gibberish, attempts to warn the townsfolk and calls out, “The Sheriff is a N…” when the church bell rings, cutting off the N-word. He says the sheriff is getting nearer, says Mayor Olson Johnson to Howard Johnson. “No, consarn it, dagnabit, the Sheriff is a N…” CLANG! This goes on until Cleavon Little arrives and the welcoming committee extends its hand to our new “…nigger.”
So what does this have to do with whether or not Barack Obama was born in the US? Well, from the get-go, a certain portion of the opposition has bandied about reasons why he CAN’T be the President. He’s a Muslim, his middle name is Hoo-Sane! He was schooled at a madrassa. His wife hates America, his minister (odd for a Muslim to have a minister) hates America. Then towards the end of the campaign…he’s not a natural-born citizen. He’s actually a KENYAN. Yeah, have you ever seen him run? Besides the campaign, I mean?
That’s getting a lot closer to what the truth really is. Harry Shearer tried to explain it as the natural outcome of the last two Presidents being elected both had “legitimacy” problems: there were rumors that Clinton had renounced his citizenship, and George Bush actually lost the popular vote election and would have lost the electoral college had not the Supreme Court intervened with its historic decision guided by Nino Scalia that whoever the cable news networks decide on election night has won the election is the winner no matter what the actual vote count might be, whenever someone bothers to actually count it. But I think John Ridley came nearer to the truth. Speaking as a black man reacting to the Professor Gates issue, he said, “We’re sick and tired of having to prove things to the self-righteous reactionary fringe which looks at life as one, big racial profiling traffic stop: Step out of the car Mr. President and show me your birth certificate.” Let’s call a spade a spade–Barack Obama can’t be the President of White America because he’s … fill in the blank. No one wants to admit that that is the real reason because then, they’d sound just as bigoted as they are acting. We want our country back, shouted one shrill birther? She wasn’t talking about Barack Obama as much as she was talking about pre-1960s Whiteland. Where there wouldn’t be a black professor at Harvard to break into his own home when the door was jammed. When there wouldn’t be a Kenyan in the “white” house. But to say that would be to expose yourself. So there has to be all this BS about birth certificates, even after it has already been published! We’ll except Lou Dobbs from this–HE thinks Obama secretly slipped across the border from Mexico…
Just to clear things up–I’m not writing this because I’m black. My people came over in the great migrations from Eastern Europe prior to WWI. I’m writing it because I’m sick and tired of these people treating the President of the US as if he’d just been found inside someone’s house. And demanding he be arrested. In spite of the fact that it’s his own house.

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