10 worst right-wing statements of the week — celebrity quack edition

Vaccine truther and Wall Street Journal "expert" Suzanne Somers has decided Obamacare is a socialist Ponzi scheme

By Janet Allon, AlterNet

Actress and comedienne Suzanne Somers (Credit: AP)

Some really crazy things came out of the mouths of the frothing right wing this week –
1. Suzanne Somers is still an idiot, and the WSJ prints her error-ridden Obamacare hitjob anyway.
While Thighmaster spokeswoman Suzanne Somers has matured since her hit TV show days, her plumpers and politics have pretty much ossified. Her enlightened take on the Affordable Care Act appeared in the Wall Street Journal this week, concluding that it’s “a greater Ponzi scheme than that pulled off by Bernie Madoff.” She wrote 535 hysterical words, in which Lenin came up in addition to Madoff, on the topic of this dreaded “socialized medicine.” By the next day, the Journal had published nearly a fifth as many words in corrections.
But it did not correct the “Ponzi scheme” assertion, which was based on flimsy anecdotes about relatives who had bad experiences with Canadian doctors, and how Somers is hearing on the news that everyone’s premium is doubling and tripling. (Any guesses as to which so-called news channel she watches?)
This piece of rocket science appeared in WSJ’s “The Experts” section, which bills itself as “an exclusive group of industry, academic and cultural thought leaders who weigh in on the latest debates.”
This will definitely be our go-to section for expert analysis henceforth.
2. John Stossel: Women, aka hypochondriacs, should pay more for health insurance.
Fox libertarian spokes-moustache John Stossel became rather mentally unbalanced about the fairness of the Affordable Care Act this week. It’s not fair, he whined, that under the law, men have to pay as much for health insurance as women because “Women go to the doctor much more often than men! Maybe they’re smarter or maybe they’re hypochondriacs. They live longer. Who knows?”
The point is, they’re women, dammit.
Another thing that has Stossel and a number of Republicans really irked is that men have to help pay for pregnancy and maternity coverage, when men can’t even get pregnant. It’s so unfair!
Look, everyone knows that women get pregnant all by themselves, and it’s their fault they got themselves into this fix, and they damn well better get themselves out of it. Hypochondriacs!
3. Concerned Women for America: Very worried that young people might get health insurance.

While women are making bank with this whole Obamacare Ponzi scheme, you know who is getting screwed? Young people, that’s who. Concerned Women for America is very very concerned about that; concerned that young people may actually choose to join a program that will help them afford health insurance.
Concerned Women don’t just get concerned about any old thing. They’re not losing any sleep about silly things like tens of thousands of children going hungry because of the massive food stamp cuts that just took effect. They only get concerned about important things, like how close Miley Cyrus’ butt got to Robin Thicke’s crotch at the VMA Awards.
In an interview this week with the Christian Broadcasting Network, Concerned spokeswoman Alison Howard sent out the alarm bells to “young subsidizers” who might sign up for a “government-run program that’s a complete fail.”
“Complete fail!” she said. So hip with that phrasing!
Then she told those same hip young people, who listen to CBN all the time, to “pray for our nation’s leaders, that they have wisdom and clarity to fix this very broken problem and help us completely heal as a country,” according to Right-Wing Watch.
This praying stuff will be good practice for when you get sick or hurt, and don’t have health insurance.
4. 27 GOP senators vote to disapprove of themselves.

At first glance, maybe this headline actually makes sense. About time these clowns disapproved of themselves for their heartless policies and shameless tactics. But, no, no. No such attack of conscience has hit the Republicans in Congress. What took place this week in the Senate may have set a new low on the moron scale—and these days, that is really saying something. All 27 Republican senators who voted recently to raise the debt ceiling, pay the nation’s bills, and reopen the government (and arguably do their jobs), voted this week in favor of a symbolic “resolution to disapprove” of that vote. All of them.

Apart from making no sense (but when has that stood in the way of Republican politics?) the vote was completely pointless, unless the point was to further illustrate their idiocy.
Actually, the point was as simple as it was hypocritical. (Remember when John Kerry was given hell after saying he was for something before he was against it? At least some time passed in between.)  The point was simply to brazenly give these Republicans political cover, so that Tea Partiers and other right-wing crazies won’t try to unseat them.
5. Marsha Blackburn: Americans must be free to drink from red Solo cups.
Tennessee Republican Marsha Blackburn made some marvelously on-point comments during the congressional “yell at Kathleen Sebelius” hearing on the bumpy Obamacare roll-out this week.
“Some people like to drive a Ford, not a Ferrari … And some people like to drink out of a red Solo cup, not a crystal stem. You’re taking away their choice,” said Rep. Blackburn.
Blackburn has taken the lead as a defender of Americans’ rights to choose many important things this week, not just red Solo cups. From cheap shoes, clothing and plasticware to insurance plans that don’t cover much of anything, or kick you off when you get sick. Cause we’re Amurricans, damn it. And we’re free.
Yes, she’s a staunch defender of freedom and the rights of all Americans to choose. Except, of course, women’s right to choose whether to have a baby or get contraception. That’s the government’s job.
6. S.C. soup kitchen to atheists: No serving soup for you!
Everyone knows that religious belief and serving food to the poor are inextricably intertwined. Which is why it makes total sense that a group of avowed atheists,Upstate Atheists, were banned from helping out at the Spartanburg Soup Kitchen in South Carolina last week. Since they were not allowed in, they set up across the street to distribute food and other necessities like toothpaste and socks to the area’s poor. And they did this while not believing in god. What an abomination!
Upstate Atheists’ slogan is “Charity Beyond Belief,” but the Spartanburg Soup Kitchen wasn’t buying it, calling the atheists’ mission “counter to the mission of the soup kitchen.” The executive director then added, “They can have the devil there with them, but they better not come across the street.”
We did not know that the devil had branched out into the charity business. Clearly, a rebranding scheme.
7. Minn. Republican party posts, then deletes, unbelievably racist message.
The Chisago County, Minn. Republican party got caught with a deeply offensive Facebook post comparing abortion to slavery this week.
“Pro Choice. Against Slavery? Don’t buy one,” said the caption to a picture depicting a slave auction. MSNBC and radio Host Ed Schultz posted a screengrab of the photo on his Facebook page.
Unsurprisingly, outrage ensued, leading the party to delete the post and deny any responsibility for it. They said their page was made by a “large number of administrators,” who, we guess, aren’t vetted very well.
But they are very, very sorry, and sought to remind everyone that the Republican Party derives from the anti-slavery movement.
Today’s Republican Party always reminds us of abolitionists and Lincoln.
8. Nevada Rep.: ‘Would bring back slavery if constituents wanted it.’
Nevada Assemblyman Jim Wheeler did not get the Republican anti-slavery memo, as evidenced by comments Wheeler made to the Storey County Republican Party in August, according to the Associated Press, that came to light this week.
He said he’d bring back slavery if that was what his constituents wanted. There was a Youtube video of it that now appears to have been taken down. Perhaps someone thinks these comments make him look bad. Even racist. Which, of course, he is not. Why would you think that?
Because he did add that he would find it distasteful to bring back slavery, saying “I’d have to hold my nose … they’d probably have to hold a gun to my head, but yeah.”
That’s how dedicated this man is to public service. He’d be willing to override his own lack of bigotry to represent bigots.
9. Religious broadcasters: It’s simple. Miley Cyrus sold her soul to the devil.
Remember Miley Cyrus’ tongue at the VMA? Remind you of anyone? Someone with a forked tongue perhaps?
It’s a well-known fact that the devil has completely taken over the entertainment industry—Rick Santorum definitely thinks so—so it should not come as a surprise that there was a coded message in Cyrus’ infamous performance. She was announcing she’d sold her soul to the devil, said a pair of religious right broadcasters.
Broadcaster Rick Wiles and anti-rock music pastor Joe Schimmel confirmed this revelation on Wiles’ TruNews radio program this week.
“The American entertainment industry loves perverting the souls of innocent children, [and] they thrive on their wicked methods of defiling children and converting them into little citizens of Babylon. It is the work of the synagogue of Satan. Their latest poster child to recruit little Babylonians is Miley Cyrus,” Wiles said.
Wait, “synagogue”?
He also said he has seen an actual photo of Cyrus licking the ribs of a caped skeleton figure with red eyes and horns, according to Raw Story. An actual photo!
Schimmel agreed, as any reasonable person would. Cyrus, he said, has been “baptized into the Illuminati.” Her dance moves, he added, are demonstrations of “how to have sex with some satanic figure.”
Let us pray for the safe return of Miley Cyrus’ soul.
10. David Conn: Obama similar to Jim Jones.
It was a banner week on Wiles’ TruNews radio program. He also interviewed a very enlightening Jim Jones/Jonestown cult “expert.”
David Conn, the “expert,” is seeing the emergence of another Jim Jones-like figure in our midst—President Obama, who embodies “the re-emergence of the Jones Cult mentality on a grand national level.”
Let’s unpack that for a sec.
“First off, Jones captured the media and Obama captured the media,” Conn explained. Also they both had strange childhoods, and were yearning for father figures. Leaving the plane of reality altogether, Conn added, “Obama’s only father figure was a terribly nasty old man, a pornographer and a child molester and a cocaine user who was an avowed communist.”
Wiles knew just who he was talking about: Frank Marshall Davis. He’s the one who got Obama into cocaine.
Also, both of them, Jones and Obama, had a background of community organizing. Of course, Obama’s cult is Islam, so that’s a slight difference. But otherwise, it’s a no-brainer.
Here, have some more Kool-Aid.