The Daily Strike-6/14/09-Wouldn't Go As Far as THAT Part VI

Good evening and welcome to the Daily Strike. I just returned from New York where I spent some quality time with The Big Picture. I apologize for the lack of entry yesterday. Tomorrow, we'll return to serious business. As for tonight, it's another edition of WGAFAT.

3. The bronze this week goes to Indiana Rep. Steve Buyer (R). As we noted, the House accepted the Senate version of the bill and sent it along to the President last Friday. The support in the House for this bill FAR outweighed the opposition. But according to the House rules, equal time has to be given to both sides. So Steve Buyer had a disproportionate amount of time to spout out reasons why it's bad to regulate smoking. This particular rationale caught me a bit off-guard:

"Too often we should be careful about being cute here on the House floor. So cute means the reference with regard to lettuce. So I'll follow your logic. Do you realize if you were to take that lettuce, dry it, and roll it, and smoke it. And you go ahead and you smoke your lettuce. Do you realize that you are going to end up with similar problems than if you were smoking tobacco. It's not the nicotine that kills. It's the smoke that kills. So It's the inhalation of the smoke. That's what causes and is responsible for the pandemic of cancers, of heart disease, respiratory disease, and other disease. It's the smoke"

Ignoring, for a moment, that he's talking about smoking lettuce on the House floor, which is hilarious, how can he POSSIBLY make that claim? Does lettuce have toxic additives? Is smoking lettuce addictive? It's probably best for Mr. Buyer not to show his face on the floor for awhile.

2. Second place this week goes to the incomparable Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, Republican from Minnesota. Bachmann was going on a diatribe on the House floor about the government's plan to close certain auto dealers.

Now we've moved into the realm of gangster government. We have gangster government when the Federal Government has set up a new cartel and private businesses now have to go begging with their hand out to their local--hopefully well politically connected--Congressman or their Senator so they can buy a peace offering for that local business. Is that the kind of country we are going to have in the future?

First of all, she's talking complete jibberish. She's saying all of this because government is trying to keep one business solvent, when it has spent a generation letting the private sector do whatever it wants. Second of all, using the word gangster, really? Talking about Obama? I would be less worried if Bachmann hadn't already called Obama anti-American.

1. The gold tonight to the Reverned Jeremiah Wright, who we all hoped we'd never hear from again. Obama's former pastor was asked whether he had spoken with the President since his inauguration, and Wright responded, "no, the Jews won't let me talk to him." Wright may have had very good reasons for his controversial speeches that attacked the injustices of America. But he has far less credibility to make those criticisms when he's making bigoted comments himself. As The Big Picture pointed out, Obama must be disappointed that one of his mentor's is acting like a complete loon when he should be reveling in Obama's success. The comments also carry more weight when you consider what happened the very next day at the Holocaust museum. Most people who come up with conspiracies about "the Jews running things" are neo-nazis or skinheads.

That's it for tonight. See you in the morning!