Evolution? Not in OUR School!

Not too long ago, a High School in Sedalia, Missouri, prevented its band students from wearing a T-shirt with an evolutionary motif.  The shirt said “Brass Evolutions 2009″ and depicted the popular image of a long line of evolving hominids, with a monkey all the way to the left gradually evolving into modern homo sapiens, except that the hominids were also holding various brass instruments that evolved along with them.

Why is this so offensive?  Apparently, the good people of Sedalia, Missouri, are offended by evolution!  One of the teachers in the district went so far as to say, “I don’t think evolution should be associated with our school.”  Well, I hate to say it, but if the school has hired a moron of this lady’s caliber, then she is entirely correct that this school should not be associated with evolution.  Why, after all, should we sully evolution’s good name by associating it with a school filled with incompetent goons?  If the shirts could have talked, they likely would have been complaining more than the idiotic parents were.  “Get me off the torsos of these creationist fucks!”

The assistant superintendent, believe it or not, is an even bigger idiot:

Pollitt said the district is required by law to remain neutral where religion is concerned.

“If the shirts had said ‘Brass Resurrections’ and had a picture of Jesus on the cross, we would have done the same thing,” he said.

First of all, this is simply retarded.  Everyone knows that if Jesus were on the cross, he wouldn’t be able to play a brass instrument.  His fucking hands are nailed down.  Second of all, brass instruments can’t be resurrected, most notably because they aren’t alive, but also because you can’t resurrect anything.  Third, Jesus would have totally been a bass player.

But the question remains:  Is evolution a religion?  Only if you redefine religion in such a way that it applies to virtually anything.  In an effort to prevent future offense, I can imagine the shirts will say nothing about the religions of physics, chemistry, animal husbandry, biology, textiles, or psychology.  I recommend a picture of a bunny rabbit—an unevolved bunny rabbit, mind you—to help quench the insatiable and retarded anger of the residents of Sedalia.

And yes, the residents of Sedalia are retarded.  A recent letter to the editor confirmed this fact further.  The letter says:

Recent events regarding certain contraband T-shirts have brought me to a realization. Sedalia has not had a good book burning in many years.

Right on, buddy.  Sedalia hasn’t had a good witch-burning in years, either!  This surely explains the proliferation of witches in modern times!

…other kinds of blasphemous material plagues the bookshelves of our schools. Pages and pages of literature that pollute the minds of our children with theories such as evolution and those that discuss unholy acts such as abortion and homosexuality. On top of that, kids can now access the Internet and all of its “wholesome” content.

I think this man was born out of his mother’s ass.  How dare kids learn things in school!  What the school needs is to fill the library with books that don’t talk about men lying with other men (Lev. 18:22), or dashing infants’ heads on rocks (Psalm 137:9), or daughters getting their father drunk to fuck him (Gen. 19:32).  The library needs books like the Bible, that don’t have unholy content like that!

It could be the first step in a final solution to removing Satan’s “grasp” from our “throats.”

This is perhaps the most bothering sentence in the whole letter.  Why on Earth does he have inscrutably random scare quotes around the words grasp and throats, but not Satan?  Apparently he’s using grasp and throats as figurative (is he mentally grasping our spiritual throats?), but takes the existence of Satan quite literally.  No, of all the words in that sentence, surely grasp and throats are the least literal and most figurative!  Personally, I don’t think this guy has a “grasp” on “reality” and I wish someone would grasp his “throat.”

Congress Endorses Shouted Accusations, Immediately Descends Into Chaos

In a fateful decision, Congress has decided that it is now formally acceptable to shout, “You lie!”, or any variant thereof, at any time on the Congressional floor.  After Representative Joe Wilson was rebuked this week for his outburst during President Obama’s speech, several members of Congress from both parties decided the action taken was too harsh and unnecessary.  As a result, Congress convened and elected to revoke any future rebukes, rejoinders, condemnations, or spankings, giving politicians the right to speak their minds at any time.  While this decision at first appeared as if it would have little effect on the daily affairs of congress, in practice the decision’s ramifications have been devastating.

It turns out that politicians lie.  A lot.  If you were to shout every time a politician lied, you’d never stop shouting.  As such, congressional sessions now sound like this:  “YOUUUUUU LIEEEEEE YOUUUULIIEEEE LIIEEYOUUUULIEEEELIIEEEYOUUUUULIIEEEE!!!”  Clearly, this is in stark contrast to how congressional sessions sounded in the past: “BLARRGGHHHHHHHH! LIPSTICK!”

“Obviously things—YOU LIE!—are a bit different now,” said Democratic Representative Dave Starky.  “Things are—oh, I lie?  No, YOU LIE!—a bit more hectic now.  Many have even taken to shouting ‘Fire!’ during crowded Congressional sessions—sometimes even in the absence of fire!”

Like blaring cicadas awakened from thirteen years of dormancy, Congress has been yelling obscenities and accusations for four straight days now, barely pausing to take a breath.  The noise is so bad that even the cicadas have been complaining.  “I’ve been stagnant for over a decade now,” said Chuck the cicada.  “So yeah, I wake up and I’m kind of grumpy, and I’m just trying to sing to some of the ladies.”  He shakes his head.  “But how am I supposed to sing to the ladies with all this racket?  Some of the lady cicadas are even going interspecies; I swear I saw one of my exgirlfriends fly into Joe Wilson’s mouth as he was emitting what appeared to be some sort of erotic insect cry.”  We here at Saintgasoline.com can neither confirm nor deny these rumors at this time, although it is true that at least one Representative has flown to Argentina with a certain winged companion.

Republican Senator Joy Turgasco, in between her angry shouting, spoke to us about the Congressional phenomenon.  “The word liar is being used so much that it has almost completely lost its meaning here,” she reported.  “You can see all these regression patterns and nested hierarchies of accusations of dishonesty.  Bob calls Joe a liar, Joe says that Bob is lying about his lying, and then Bob says Joe is lying about his lying about his lying.  After about seven of these regressions we don’t even know what the hell we’re saying anymore, really, but we do it anyway.  This is how we make progress in Congress.”

For a few hours following the acceptance of the new rule, however, Congress had become exceptionally quiet as a result of Democratic Senator James Barnes.  In the midst of all the accusations of lies and dishonesty, Barnes suddenly blurted out, “I’m lying right now!”  Everyone immediately stopped, looked around, and scratched their heads.  One Senator tentatively ventured, “You…lie?  Or not? Or both?”  James Barnes, a former philosophy professor, had foiled them with the liar’s paradox.

The silence, unfortunately, was short-lived.  After hours of deep reflection, another representative shouted out, “No paradoxical self-referential remarks are allowed!”  Barnes, who was quite familiar with the resolution Congress had reached on the matter, knew that no such rule had been established, and shouted out, “YOU LIE!”  He immediately followed this up with, “Whoops!”, but not before having his plaintive cry drowned out by a resuming torrent of obscure shouting and incessant wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Bag Boy Equality

For years, homosexuals have been fighting desperately for positive social recognition and acceptance.  But lost in the midst of this gay activism, which is filled with men wearing evening gowns and singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” while holding a dog leash attached to a half-naked man clad in leather, are the bag boys.  Who will sing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and hold creepy leashed leather dudes for the bag boys?  Apparently no one.

The bigotry and hatred of bag boys often goes unnoticed and under-reported.  As a result, the bag boys of the world suffer their lonely plights in silence, heads down, the tears streaming down their faces as they stand at the ends of conveyor belts at the checkout lanes all across America.

“We need some sort of recognition,” said Denny Murphy, a bag boy veteran of fifteen years.  “I’ll stand down here at the end of the checkout lane, practically screaming to these people, ‘DO YOU WANT PAPER OR PLASTIC?!’ and they can’t even be bothered to respond.  Sometimes they’ll look up from their purses or wallets, eyes wandering around in confusion, and ask the checkout clerk if they heard anything.  So then we just start putting things in plastic.  At this point, the customer always turns around, finally deigns to notice us, and tersely says, ‘Oh, don’t give me plastic!  Jesus.  Here, use these incredibly awkward burlap sacks, and put the burlap sacks inside of a double paper bag wrapped in seven plastic bags for sturdiness.’”  Denny sighs in exasperation.  “Like hobos and the homeless begging for change, no one will even look us in the eye.  But at least the hobos occasionally get money and respect.”

Most would probably say bag boys are simply ostracized, and nothing more.  But in reality, they suffer outright condemnation and violence led by several religious groups.  They are frequently oppressed worse than homosexuals, women, midgets, and homosexual midget women.

“Being a bag boy just isn’t natural,” said Ned Haggart, a pastor at the local mega-church in Bumfucksville, Arkansas.  “When you go into the wild, you don’t see the monkeys and the fruit bats and the manatees putting their groceries in bags.  Unless they are those trained monkeys that are in the circus—but they’ve just been corrupted by the evil bag boy liberal agenda.”

Increasingly, bag boys are being politically targeted by religious fundamentalists.  Many worker unions are attempting to prevent bag boys from recieving wages by preserving what they call “the traditional workforce.”  Jay Dobeson, president of the conservative organization Focus on the Workforce, had this to say:  “A job is defined as a union between an employer and and employee, not an employer and a bag boy.”  He says bag boy with such characteristic rage that his jowls quiver and shake.  “Jobs have been defined this way throughout history.  To just all of a sudden redefine what a job is to include bag boys would cause the destruction of our workforce and the moral fabric of our society.  Soon we’d be telling our children that it’s okay to bag other people’s groceries.  And then the proliferation of so many plastic bags would suffocate everyone.  These bag boy activist groups are just going too far.  They should just be content that we no longer stone them to death and move on.”

Meanwhile, outside a Walmart in Ames, Iowa, a sign-waving crowd has gathered to protest the recent passing of bag boy equality legislation, which allowed bag boys to receive wages for their work.  The legislation also allowed bag boys to marry other bag boys, a practice that had long been forbidden and punishable by death.  The signs at the protest rally vary in quality from poorly-spelled scrawls written on pieces of cardboard to embroidered banners—but the one thing they all have in common is their denouncing of the bag boy equality laws.  One sign says, “It’s Adam and Eve, not Adam and Paper and Plastic and Steve!”  Other signs display only Bible verses that condemn bag boys as abominations.  At one point, the crowd starts chanting a Bible verse.  “Man shall not lay food in bags for other men!  Man shall not lay food in bags for other men!”  Apparently they haven’t quite mastered the art of chanting short, pithy rhymes with a decent ryhthm, but they’re trying—in their own confused way.

Of course, though the religious influences on the condemnation of bag boys is quite overt in this crowd of protestors, some in attendance, including key conservative leaders and anti-bagging politicians, insist that the Bible has nothing to do with it.

“This isn’t about religion; this is about preserving the traditional definition of ‘workforce’,” said former senator and Presidential candidate Michael Beehucka.  “I have no problem with bag boys; I only have a problem with people who choose to put things in bags.”  I press him further to clarify his secular, nonreligious reasons for condemning bag boys.  “It’s really quite simple,” he says.  “Look, if everyone were a bag boy, the workforce would grind to a halt.  There would be no more engineers or scientists or politicians or pastors or pig breeders.  We’d all just bag things, and then there’d be nothing left to bag, except other bags!  So being a bag boy is self-defeating.  And it’s even worse if you let the bag boys marry other bag boys!  Two boys can’t have kids!  That means no more future!  The human race would end at the quick-reflexed bagging hands of the bag boys.”  He smiles and continues.  “Now, I’m no bigot.  Some of my best friends are bag boys.  And I think bag boys have a right to life and free speech.  But I also have a right to not look at them and not have them touch my cantaloupes and put them in bags.  And I have a right to not let them marry each other.  We live in a civil society and a democracy, and that is the only thing stopping us from ripping them apart and raping them, as this is what routinely happens to creatures in the wild who become bag boys.”  Some of the other protestors at the rally nod in agreement as he speaks.

Unfortunately for the bag boys, it seems that conservative groups are now focusing all of their efforts on bagging.  They’ve largely given up on homosexuality and lobster-eating and satanic messages in rock music and wearing mixed fabrics.  Much of this is because the homosexuals already have control of the media in the form of the Gay…ermm, Bravo…television network.  Shows such as Queer Eye for the Straight Guy are  accepted fixtures of American society.  George Hazard, prominent bag boy rights activist, finds this worrying.  “We’ve been trying to model our activism on that of the gay rights movement, which has made so much progress.  I’m even pitching ideas for several bag-boy-related reality TV shows—like ‘Two Girls, One Bag’, ‘Mother May I Sleep With Bagger–the Timmy McFaye Story’, and ‘CSI: Bagger’.  Unfortunately, the bag boy equality movement has made little headway in today’s culture.  Even bag ladies and douche bags have better reputations.  But at least we’re not as bad as the atheists.  Nobody likes those fuckers.”

Of course, only time will tell if things will change for bag boys in the future.  For now the future looks bleak, with what few victories the bag boys have garnered generating continual outrage and bad press.  Bag boy Douglas Grosse, in summary of the bag boy plight, said,  “Everyone thinks they can just ignore us because the word boy is part of our title and we tend to be young and pimply and are easily ignored fixtures at the ends of checkout lanes and we don’t even get to do anything cool like bat boys or ball boys—but we’re people, too, and one day the world will realize that.”  Is little Douglas Grosse correct?  Is bag boy equality really in the bag?  They can only hope.  But for now, they just keep on baggin’.

Conversation on a Death Panel

Far away, in the dank recesses of some bureaucratic office building, a guild of government officials gathers, all of them hooded and somber, their eyes glaring with the sheen of the unyielding power that has recently been granted to them by the health care reform bill. They sit around a long, oval shaped table, distributing thick folders prominently labeled “Grannies” with a red slash through the word.

Panelist 1: I hereby convene this death panel!

Panelist 2: And yet you forego the traditional ceremonial practice of drinking a glass of blood to open the meeting!

Panelist 3: I think we all had enough blood to drink at lunch.

Panelist 1: You all know very well that, as a Catholic, I only drink blood on Sundays.  But nevermind that.  Let us forget the silly ceremony and directly address the “Granny” question.

Panelist 2: (Excitedly) I say we kill them all! Turn ‘em into firewood, my papa always said. There’s nothing quite like the smell of granny roasting on an open fire.

Panelist 3: I’m sorry, but we have to make at least a minimal effort to give health care to some of these grannies. Of course, there is a time and place for setting various grannies alight if that is financially prudent, but we can’t simply assume a pyre of all grannies will offer the most benefits and least costs. Gasoline, after all, is expensive, and grannies are slow to burn, unlike those soft, flammable Down Syndrome babies; they just light up like tiny little Roman candles!

Panelist 2: Look, the only reason I signed on for this death panel gig was to burn some grannies. If you want to provide health care to some of them, you go ahead and do that, but the health care bill was pretty explicit in endorsing universal mandatory granny burning. The Democrats are only considering dropping the public option provision, not the universal granny burning provision.

Panelist 1: Do the two of you never stop bickering? Let us please try to discuss the Granny issue rationally. This is America, after all, where things have always been discussed rationally and never exaggerated, overblown, or distorted by media outlets.

Panelist 2: (Incredulously) America?! Everyone knows we’re actually Nazi Germany now. The renaming was established on page 423 of the health care bill: “Verily, with the passing of this bill, thou shalt rename thy country ‘Nazi Germany’.” Plus it shouldn’t be a surprise that this country is no longer America, seeing as how we elected someone who was actually born in Kenya to the highest office.  I can’t believe the conservatives didn’t uncover our Kenyan plant in the government sooner!  In the next election we may even get our Nigerian puppet in office, after sending emails to all American voters about how they need to provide their bank account numbers, social security number, and vote Democrat if they wish to receive the $1,000,000 left for them in a Nigerian bank by their long-lost Nigerian relative.

Panelist 3: Obama from Kenya? Don’t be so foolish. That Kenyan birth certificate was a total fraud and a joke. Besides, everyone knows that Obama was actually born in hell, him being the antichrist and all.  This is why we liberals loyally serve him, O Dark Master!

Panelist 2: Regardless, we still need to go through this list of grannies and assign them to various forms of death. Like the health care bill noted, this is the most effective way of reducing costs associated with health care.

Panelist 1: Now wait just a second. We can’t just kill these grannies in whatever way suits you. We have to kill only those grannies that are likely to incur the most health care costs, and kill them in a manner that is cheap and affordable. Contrary to prior belief, killing grannies is actually quite costly. Did you know that socialized medicine in other countries often spends as much as $12 for every granny killed?  When you consider those costs with the fact that putting grannies in a hamster wheel to generate electricity can save $20 on a yearly electricity bill, you have to wonder if we should be so quick to kill all grannies.

Panelist 2: It’s true. Plus, in order to be euthanized, the grannies have to wait in endless, government-run lines, stretching for miles.  In some cases these grannies may have to wait for months and years just to get their much-needed euthansia services from the government.  This is what happens with government-run euthanasia.  If only we could just hire someone from the private sector, like Blackwater, to ice those grannies.  It worked for Bush in Iraq, after all!  But that would not go over well with our liberal, health-care-waiting-list-loving constituents.  Those crazy hippies just love waiting in lines!

Panelist 3: We may have to set up a private sector granny-euthanizing system, to help placate those rich, Republican grannies who want to be euthanized without government involvement by private entities.  It’s a compromise to consider.  Plus with a little granny euthanasia competition, perhaps the industry could be spurred to more and more efficient granny destruction.

Panelist 1: I’ll have to run that by the granny death squad czar.

Panelist 2: Okay, okay, but let’s just get on with it!  (Reaches for a file from the large folder.)  Here.  This is Granny Mae’s medical file.  (Pauses to think a bit.)  I say we burn her!

Panelist 3: Shouldn’t we determine whether she weighs as much as a duck fir…

Panelist 1: No!  We can’t burn Granny Mae.  Are you ignoring the details of her file?  She’s white!  Everyone knows that the new liberal medical affirmative action program detailed on page 342 of the bill mandates that illegal immigrants and minorities get first dibs on our euthanasia services.  No more will the white man be privileged!

Panelist 3: I think you mean the white man or woman.  We have to be sure to be gender neutral when talking about our white privilege!

Panelist 1:  This is true.  As such, though, Grannie Mae must be placed last on the waiting list for euthanasia.  Unfortunately we will have to ration our granny-killing squad, and only those most in need of a granny killing will receive it.

Panelist 2: Oh, I hope those conservatives don’t hear about this.  Soon they’ll be bitching about rationed care, talking about the tragedy of the commons and what-not.  When everyone has access to euthanasia, you don’t take care of it or take responsibility for it, they’ll say, and sooner or later the euthanasia will be so degraded and corrupted by misuse that it will amount to hitting old ladies with mittens and nerfballs or else trying to set them on fire withice water.  If only economics didn’t constantly try to foil our death panel decisions!

Panelist 3:  Wait.  Do you… Do you smell that?

Panelist 2:  It smells like burning.  Mmm!  The fresh smell of grannies!

Panelist 3:  That’s not grannies. It appears that I’m the one on fire.

Panelist 2:  Well, would you look at that!  So am I!

Panelist 1:  Okay, I might as well tell you guys.  You are both too old.  So I had to set you on fire.  We decided this in the upper hierarchy of death panels that oversees this lower death panel.

Panelist 3:  I’m just glad that my insurance costs for this procedure will be covered by the government health care plan!  I’m not sure my family could afford the matches and combustibles that made this possible!

Panelist 1: (Dousing himself with gasoline.)  Yes, our new health care plan is a great boon to everyone, in part because of our efforts on the death panel.  Thankfully, I too was chosen to be euthanized.  I myself was the deciding vote!  To think they tried to deny my chance at euthanasia, and cost-saving, merely because I am 1/4th white.  It’s almost reverse discrimination!

Panelist 2:  Just think, under the old plan of private, employer-based insurance, we would have been denied coverage for this euthanasia!  They would have killed us the old-fashioned way, by simply denying us any insurance for our pre-existing conditions and finding ways to weasel out of paying for important procedures or covering claims!  A panel of insurance company claims adjusters would gather, not unlike we gather here, decide who gets coverage based on their health histories and physical examinations, and pore over claims to deny in an effort to preserve profit margins!  Can you imagine such a world?  A world where panels actually convene to kill grannies?

Panelist 1: I simply cannot imagine such a thing.  Insurance companies denying coverage to the sick and the poor, charging unreasonable premiums that most can’t afford, and in effect sentencing these people to a slow, euthanized death?  I can’t imagine what that could possibly be like!

Suddenly, there is silence.  The death panelists are reduced to ash.  A large group of identically dressed janitors enters, all of them wearing jumpsuits with sickle and hammer logos on the breast, and they slowly and incompetently attempt to sweep up the ashes, inefficiently and haphazardly moving about as they are shouted at by multitudes of bureaucrats with megaphones giving them conflicting directions, while those bureaucrats are shouted at by further bureaucrats with conflicting suggestions, and so on into infinity, until eventually, after years of random, erratic sweeping, the ashes have finally been swept up into a neat pile, and the next death panel enters, armed with a new stack of granny-euthanasia files, ready to fulfill their duty as death panelists to kill as many grannies as possible.

The War on Christmas in July!

Every year, with the precision and regularity of an atomic clock, Fox News finds a way to invent controversy by imagining the impending doom of Christmas, which is supposedly being attacked on all sides by liberals, Jews, and atheists alike, who are militantly waging a war on Christmas. The evidence offered for the cultural demise of the United States’ most prolific holiday usually amounts to holiday catalogs emblazoned with sayings like “Season’s Greetings” or “Happy Holidays” or “Tis the Season.” Obviously, shout the scaremongers on Fox News, the fact that these catalogs—decorated with images of Christmas trees, Christmas lights, and Santa Claus—do not explicitly say “Merry Christmas” is evidence of a vast, left-wing conspiracy to destroy Christmas. I can only imagine impassioned and frightened Fox News viewers huddled in their suburban homes at night, hearing dastardly tales of a liberal siege on Christmas, fearfully gripping their shotguns on their paid Christmas vacations from work as the blinking Christmas lights of all their neighbors filter through their drapes and the sounds of Salvation Army bells rung by men in Santa suits reverberates through their homes. Tis the season to be delusionally paranoid—so much so that one would almost consider it plausible that a holiday celebrated by almost everyone, that even serves as an economic bedrock for most retail businesses, is going to end because a few brochures say “Happy Holidays”. One has to wonder that when the Christians were stealing the Christmas celebration from the pagans, did pagan news outlets of the time also sensationalize the death of Christmas, with portly, socially conservative pagans angrily carving shrill anti-Christian ramblings into stone tablets?

Well know about retailers who advertise “Christmas in July” sales to drum up extra revenue; well, I have my own Christmas in July corollary. Or at least Christmas in September. It’s the war on Christmas in July!  For those who don’t know about the war on Christmas, this Fox News report—detailing that Christmas is being sabotaged by secular humanists and atheists who advertise on buses—embodies the standard story.

Why the bus ad is being framed as an attack on Christmas is not adequately explained. The advertisement in question merely says, “Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness’ sake.” At the bottom is a picture of a person wearing a Santa costume shrugging. Obviously, the purpose of the ad is to inform others that belief in God is not necessary for moral behavior. Santa and Christmas are only tangentially relevant, and are only included because the phrase “be good for goodness’ sake” is a riff off of a line from a popular Christmas carol.

Belief in God isn’t even necessary to celebrate Christmas, particularly because Christmas is becoming an increasingly secular holiday. The pagans understood the true, feel-good nature of Christmas, focusing on portly fat men and spritely elves and joyous gift-giving. Christianity, of course, tried to incorporate the pious, serious Jesus, but that hasn’t worked out as well, because Jesus makes people feel guilty, ashamed, and sad. The guy was beaten and crucified for our supposed sins, has never told a joke, and incessantly preaches. If he showed up at a cocktail party, his hands bloody, his body gaunt, preaching about fire and brimstone, he’d be a total buzz kill. This is why secular culture has largely uprooted Christmas from the Christianity that was haphazardly glued to the holiday in the first place. The Christians stole the holiday from the pagans, and now the secularists have stolen Christmas from the Christians. Christmas is about snow, lights, horridly bland television specials, forced internment with one’s family members, and rampant materialism. Jesus is, at best, a hazy afterthought—akin to the embarrassed recollection that one is married after waking up half drunk in another person’s bed. So you see, the “war” on Christmas, or at least the silly Jesus-fied version of it, has already been won. Religion hasn’t been the most important part of Christmas for a long, long time, and it’s time the conservatives stopped waging their little rebellion against our secular celebration of family, gift-giving, and charity.  Leave our godless, secular holiday alone!

Lions and Tigers and Death Panels, Oh My!

All too often, wild, insane, and rabid frothing at the mouth passes for political discourse in this country. The recent debates concerning health care reform are no different. Raving idiots have hijacked the debate with inane ramblings against mythical health care bills that supposedly contain provisions for creating “death panels,” or beauracratic meetings of ominous government officials who would decide whether granny lives or dies on the basis of the financial feasibility of sustaining her life. Of course, in reality such provisions are completely absent from the bill, and exist solely in the minds of conservative fucktards who can’t even be bothered to read the actual text from the section in question. Sarah Palin, the bumbling nitwit catapulted to fame by John McCain (an act for which I can never forgive him), is emblematic of the problem. Here we have a clueless, ignorant git raving against a bill she clearly has not even bothered to glance at, claiming it entails the euthanasia of the elderly, children with Down Syndrome, and others.

Now, what does the health care bill really say? It isn’t too difficult to find out, as the bill, HR 3200, is freely available online. The section said to allow for “death panels” that would euthanize grandmothers, kill Down Syndrome babies, drown puppies, and perhaps even rape sea otters is Section 1233, starting on page 424. The section basically outlines how doctors should handle Advance Care Planning Consultations if they wish to be compensated by Medicare. In effect, the section attempts to standardize the topics that would be covered in such consultations, sets limits on how often they should be performed for reimbursement purposes, provides exceptions to these rules, and describes the reporting of quality measures. Nothing in the bill even comes close to saying, or even implying, that people would be forced into such consultations and encouraged to end their lives. So what has caused all the drama?

To put it bluntly, the drama has been caused by lying fuckwits who deliberately misinterpret and distort the meaning of Section 1233 to the public to provoke fear and backlash. As a case study of such lying fuckwittery, take this note, titled Concerning the “Death Panels”, from Sarah Palin’s facebook page.

Essentially, proponents of the “death panel” thesis assert that the bill will make Advance Care Planning Consultations mandatory through incentivization and that the larger context of the bill implies that doctors would be encouraged to pressure patients into foregoing life-sustaining treatments to save on costs. Here is Palin, commenting on how the larger context affects the meaning of Section 1233:

These consultations are authorized whenever a Medicare recipient’s health changes significantly or when they enter a nursing home, and they are part of a bill whose stated purpose is “to reduce the growth in health care spending.” [5] Is it any wonder that senior citizens might view such consultations as attempts to convince them to help reduce health care costs by accepting minimal end-of-life care?

Now, Palin is correct that page 5 of HR 3200 says it seeks “to reduce the growth in health spending.” Notice, however, that she has not included the whole sentence. She has not included the first half of the sentence because it utterly destroys her strained argument. Here is the sentence in full, from HR 3200:

This division institutes health delivery system reforms both to increase quality and to reduce growth in health spending so that health care becomes more affordable for businesses, families, and government (5, emphasis mine).

As can be seen, Palin has failed to include the crucial detail that the overall context of the bill is not just to include measures for reducing health care spending, but to include measures that increase quality. Given that context, the Advance Care Consultation section of HR 3200 makes perfect sense. It provides a standardized guideline that doctors must follow to receive compensation, which ensures that patients are given valuable information concerning end-of-life care. It calls for reporting on such measures to assess the quality, to ensure that life sustaining treatment was followed according to the patient’s wishes. Clearly, this fits the overall context of the bill, as stated on page 5, to increase the quality of health care. Either Palin is deliberately leaving out this portion of the quote because her argument falls apart without it, in which case she is a liar and a quote-miner, or else she is too stupid to be able to read and understand what it actually says. I’m inclined to believe the latter, as a result of my generous, benevolent nature.

But suppose, as a purely hypothetical scenario, that the bill’s overall context was only to reduce health care costs, and no mention was made of quality improvement. Even with this generous concession, Palin’s argument falls to pieces. This is because Section 1233 not only details quality improvements, but also provides limitations to Advance Care Consultations that would decrease costs. For instance, the bill states that doctors can be reimbursed for providing such a consultation provided that “the individual involved has not had such a consultation within the last 5 years” (424-425). Clearly, this limitation is intended to reduce health care costs. But perhaps the section details more ways to reduce health care costs, including killing grandmothers and smashing the heads of Down Syndrome infants? Unfortunately, that is not the case. In fact, the text in the section rather explicitly conflicts with any misguided interpretation that says the bill encourages doctors to coerce patients to forego life-sustaining treatments. Here, for example, are just a few quotes from HR 3200 that use language that says the complete opposite:

The level of treatment indicated under subparagraph (A)(ii) may range from an indication for full treatment to an indication to limit some or all or specified interventions (430).

Notice that the bill does not state doctors must coerce doctors to limit interventions, but explicitly states that the patient can choose a preference for “full treatment.” Why would a bill attempting to coerce the elderly into early graves include that as an option?

Such measures shall measure both the creation of and adherence to orders for life sustaining treatment (432).

Why would a bill attempting to euthanize old people provide for quality measures and assessments that would ensure adherence to the patient’s orders for life sustaining treatment?

Clearly, there is nothing that remotely suggests limiting health care interventions in this section, as the text directly asserts that life sustaining treatment should be administered and the overall context is to ensure quality improvements to health care, of which this is surely an example.

Another common criticism of Section 1233 is that it makes Advance Care Planning Consultations mandatory. Of course, nowhere in the text does it actually say this, but conservatives have found ways to misinterpret the text as implying the consultations are mandatory. Here is a representative argument, from Charles Lane’s article “Undue Influence“:

Though not mandatory, as some on the right have claimed, the consultations envisioned in Section 1233 aren’t quite “purely voluntary,” as Rep. Sander M. Levin (D-Mich.) asserts. To me, “purely voluntary” means “not unless the patient requests one.” Section 1233, however, lets doctors initiate the chat and gives them an incentive — money — to do so. Indeed, that’s an incentive to insist.

How offering reimbursement for a service makes that service mandatory is not explained. Anyone with a working brain can see that allowing doctors to be paid for a service would not make it mandatory. For instance, suppose a bill proposed that doctors would be paid for removing appendixes (as they already are). Would anyone in their right mind argue that because doctors are being paid for this service that they would therefore remove everyone’s appendix, whether they need it removed or not? Of course not. The fact that doctors get paid for procedures and consultations doesn’t make them mandatory.

But allow me to be generous again, and assume, for the sake of argument, that such consultations were mandatory. Would this be a terrible thing? As I’ve already detailed previously, the Advance Care Planning Consultation would not coerce patients into limiting interventions, but would allow patients to decide whether they want to receive all potential life sustaining procedures or whether they’d rather forego certain interventions, such as being attached to a feeding device when there is no longer any brain function. Arguably, were such a consultation mandatory, and patients made their desires known, put them in writing, and assigned family members and others to oversee their wishes should they become incapacitated, this would be tremendously beneficial. Conservatives, after all, tend to go completely ape shit in cases like Terri Schiavo’s, in which case her husband and her family disagreed over whether her life support should be discontinued. This could have been avoided had Schiavo been given an opportunity to create a living will expressing her own desires. As such, there is nothing inherently wrong about making such consultations mandatory for patients who need them. It is important for patients to have their wishes fulfilled in their final hours. So in short, even if these consultations were mandatory, which they aren’t, that would hardly be a problem.

The originator of the “death panel” meme was Betsy McCaughey, who appeared on the Daily Show not too long ago. She tries to come across as a knowledgeable, likeable woman divulging the dirty secret found within the dank recesses of the health care bill in the interview, but beneath this presentable exterior is a shrill, irresponsible liar and charlatan who probably has the lower half of a goat, horns, and the number “666″ tattooed across her ass. (I am assuming she is the antichrist given the rather liberal and easily met criteria used nowadays for determining whether someone is the antichrist. See Barack Obama, for example.) Her arguments are so pitiful and strained that I almost feel sorry for her. At one point, for instance, she criticizes advance care directives because patients could change their minds when presented with a life-threatening illness, and she argues that the doctor would have to follow the instructions of the will over the direct protestations of the patient. This is sheer nonsense, and clearly this woman has no idea how living wills function. If a patient is cognizant enough to make his or her desires known, then that takes precedence over a living will. People are allowed to change their minds. These end-of-life care procedures only become necessary when a patient is in a state in which he or she cannot communicate his or her desires—to claim otherwise is outright ignorance and stupidity. Throughout the video clip, she searches endlessly for text that supposedly supports her position, never finds it, and then has it continually debunked by Jon Stewart as he performs the stunning act of reading what the text actually says. It just goes to show that idiocy and ignorance is best fought by demanding evidence.

Now that I’ve addressed the blatant lies and misconceptions concerning the bill, allow me to address the less outlandish claims of those who argue against health care reform.

Many opponents of health care reform, for instance, argue that health care will be rationed under the new health care plan. This is simply not true. The bill says nothing about rationing care, and this is merely a theoretical concern. But let’s have some perspective here: we already have rationed health care, and even death panels, to a degree. Under the current system of private, employer-based insurance, those without health care are the poor and the unemployed (who tend to have more health problems, on average) or those with pre-existing medical conditions. In essence, then, those who need health care the most, who are more likely to be sick or who are already sick, are denied health insurance. The current proposal would produce a public option for health insurance, allowing those who are unemployed, poor, or who have pre-existing conditions to finally have health insurance and receive adequate health care. No more would the “death panels” at private insurance companies, motivated by profits, pore over claims to seek reasons to deny paying for certain procedures, to deny claims outright, or to deny insurance to those who are already sick. These practices are heartless, immoral, and wrong, and anyone who would want to preserve such a system is out of their mind. A robust public option, on the other hand, could avoid these pitfalls by having a large national base for collecting money that would allow coverage of those who are poor or who have pre-existing conditions.

Many opponents of health care reform are fond of pointing out that government beauracracy would mismanage health care, would be very wasteful, and would ultimately make health care highly inefficient. This may or may not be true, but nevertheless, government is necessary for certain functions, whether it is wasteful or not. Few would suggest, for instance, that highways, the military, police, and so on should be privatized. That is because there would be conflicts of interest with the greater public and national good, as well as other problems. With roads and highways, for instance, privatization would require public funding, which would probably destroy commutes by producing endless toll roads that stop vehicles and create out of control traffic. The concerns are similar with health care, for the current system produces unethical profit motivations that deny care to those who need it most as a result of financial problems, as private insurance companies don’t generate enough money to handle these costs, whereas a government system would have a whole nation’s collective contributions to draw from, meaning less worry about unethically denying claims to control costs (though naturally some cost controls would have to be implemented).

Another interesting argument frequently offered tries to argue that the current plan isn’t much of a compromise between the conservatives and liberals, and would lead to a slippery slope of national health care without any private sector insurance. Under the current health care plan, the public option would be offered as an alternative to private insurance, and in essence the government insurance plan would be in direct competition with private insurers. However, the argument is that the government would soon overtake the private insurers, create a monopoly, and thereafter wreak havoc on the health care system.

What is interesting about this argument is that it conflicts with the a priori belief of conservatives that government-run systems are always ineffective and inefficient. If, for instance, the government is so inept, how exactly would it manage to overtake private insurance and monopolize the industry when directly competing? Shouldn’t conservatives be pleased that the free market would be deciding the winner? And if the government does win the batlle, doesn’t that just show that government insurance is better and should be adopted? As such, I don’t find these criticisms very convincing.

These are the arguments of those who oppose health care reform. Most of them are dangerous, uninformed, and silly, while others are simply wrong. But what can be done about the rampant spread of misinformation and ignorance? It seems as though the damage has already been done. A recent survey from Public Policy Polling, for instance, showed that 62% of Republicans believe the government should stay out of Medicare. This is a disturbing figure because Medicare is a government-run program. This is tantamount to having a majority of Republicans decrying government involvement in the Senate. (Keep the government out of my legislative body!) Such disgusting ignorance and idiocy, combined with the persistent fear of illusory death panels, is so absurd that it scarcely seems possible to address it in any reasonable manner. As such, I recommend the rhetorical tactic of congressman Barney Frank, who responds to a woman who claims Obama’s health care policy is somehow “Nazi” while holding a poster depicting Obama as Hitler by sarcastically asking her, “What planet are you from?” He then goes on to rip her to shreds, saying conversing with her is like talking to a dining room table, which is an insult to dining room tables everywhere, as I suspect the dining room table would be slightly more eloquent and less idiotic. When people make unreasonable, asinine, ideologically motivated, and downright dangerous claims, they can only be met with scorn, ridicule, and constant refutation backed by evidence. These charlatans do not deserve the respect of civil debate; they lost that privilege the moment they started loudly spouting outright lies, misinformation, and ridiculous clap-trap. With that said, I can only end my analysis of this supposed health care “debate” with the following remark: you’re wrong, you’ve been shown to be wrong, and now shut the fuck up.