JABbering Stooge

Moore vs. Gupta on Larry King via The Talent Show:

GUPTA: I also think the whole idea, Michael, of just calling it a free system I think is a little bit nebulous to people who don’t fully understand what you mean by that. Yes, you’ve got to raise taxes significantly. I mean France is drowning in taxes. They’re running a $15.6 billion debt.

$15.6 billion?! Hell, we’re spending about a third as much PER MONTH just to feed The Most Holy George W. Christ’s Oedipus Complex! We’ve had a budget deficit in the hundreds of billions of dollars just about every year since The Anointed One was planted in office by his daddy’s buddies on the Supreme Court - peaking at about $400 billion in ‘04. Here, let me channel H. Ross Perot a bit:

Source: OMB via Media Matters for America

And it gets worse than that. Our total debt is on the order of TRILLIONS of dollars! Scale France’s rather paltry $15.6 billion debt up to fit an economy our size, and it’s still nowhere near where we are! In short, it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to say that France is bankrupting themselves by providing basic services for their citizens, when we’re doing the same to ourselves on a much larger scale, at a much faster pace, and we’re not even providing for the basic fucking needs of all of our citizens!!!

Seriously, Dr. Gupta. Please quit while you’re ahead behind. Stick to what you’re good at (medical journalism), and leave the punditry to the professionals.

Keith Olbermann on Chertoff’s fearmongering:

The gut feeling has been described as breaking news. Actually a gut feeling would be closer to breaking wind.

Have to say that I spewed my beverage with laughter when he said that.

Atrios on the Moore/Gupta debate:

Basically, to “fact check” Moore, the kind of scrutiny which rarely happens to, say, hacks from AEI or the Preznit of Amurka, Gupta pulled up some nitpickery alternative numbers.

Ex-actly. More to the point, as Atrios points out, such treatment of real liberals is “fairly typical.”