The Daily Strike-6/20/09-Wouldn't Go As Far as THAT Part VII

Good evening and welcome to the Daily Strike. Today, we give you this week's edition of Wouldn't Go as Far as THAT (WGAFAT). Once again, it's very difficult to narrow the nominees down to three, but here we go.

3. The bronze this week goes to good old Senator John McCain (R-AZ), who somehow came within 7 percentage points of becoming President of the United States. The following quote unfortunately isn't "ridiculous" or "out of the ordinary" because it's peddled so much by conservatives that it has seeped into our collective conscience. That's why I think it merits a spot on this list. This is what McCain said in response to a question about a public health insurance option:

"The idea that somehow the government can administer health care in a more efficient fashion than the private sector I think flies in the face of examples of other countries that have done so."

That's, mmmm, completely incorrect, Johnny. Just because every Republican tries to insist that the government is inefficient doesn't make it so. According to ThinkProgress, when compared to five countries with "socialized medicine" the United States finishes last or next-to-last in every metric of health care performance. Say you're so stubborn that you don't want to take lessons from other "socialist" countries. The "socialized, government-run" health care we currently have in this country, the Veterans Administration, which has higher quality care for lower per-patient costs than almost any private insurance.Everything about government that is inefficient exists because Republicans have screwed it up (think Katrina).

2. The silver goes to House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH). Boehner and his Republican colleagues introduced their own version of a health care bill. Actually, it was more like a two page pamphlet that didn't contain any actual information. I digress. Boehner was asked a good question about what the Republican plan would do to help community health centers. Boehner answered that "hearing about community organizations reminds me of ACORN!" His jab against the activist group/Republican pariah got a health laugh from his fellow House Republicans. The actual question, of course, went unanswered. Real funny, Boehner. Ignore for a second the fact that attacking ACORN is stupid and disingenuous, because they're a small group that actually does GREAT work helping to empower the poor. I would argue that their work is about 100 times more important than anything House Republicans have ever done, and their alleged sins of voter registration fraud is about 1/100th as bad as what House Republicans do every single day. What the hell kind of logic is that, Boehner?

"What do you plan to do to help our military?"

"You know, hearing about the military reminds me of the Nazi army."

1. The gold this week was a pretty easy choice. It goes to Republican Rep. Peter Hoekstra, who sent this gem of a Twitter on Tuesday:

"Iranian twitter activity similar to what we did in House last year when Republicans were shut down in the House."

Yeup, pretty much exactly the same thing. Hoekstra is referring to the month-long Republican protest on an empty House floor because the Democrats adjourned without ending the ban on offshore drilling. Yeah, just like Iran. Just like Iran, House Republicans weren't allowed to have an input in their democracy. The House adjourned without even having a vote! And twenty or so rich white Republicans on the air conditioned House floor, Twittering on Blackberries provided to them by the Federal Government is exactly the same is a million average Iranians desperately trying to communicate about peaceful protests in spite of state-sponsored censorship of social networking sites. Drilling for oil offshore, which would yield increased oil supplies in about ten years, is just as important as the right to vote and peacefully protest. It's exactly the same thing. Hoekstra thinks he can compare House Republicans, the most laughable bunch of idiots I've ever seen, with the Iranian people. Wouldn't go as far as THAT!