Remember that executive order in which Obama directed hospitals to allow patients to decide who can visit them, whether they be immediate family or not? But that patients are the ones who get to decide, not arcane and out of date hospital rules? Here is Red State’s take:
Because our socialist Kenyan President has nothing better to do than decide who visits you in the hospital- BEFORE YOUR DEATH PANEL.
Your modern Republican party- unashamed to lie about anything, no matter how obvious the lie.
CJ
I don’t want teh ghey in my hospitals!
Chuck
Executive orders tend to be short. How much you want to bet if someone quoted the order verbatim that they’d get banned from the site?
Redstate loves them some constructed-reality echo chambers.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
Redstate lies, dog bites man. Is this a revelation? Who cares, it’s what they do. Dems lying about other dems. Now there”s a story for the front page of BJ.
Cat Lady
Barack Obama has nothing better to do with his time than think up reasons to deny many thousands of random people access to many other random thousands of bedridden people on a case by case basis.
/wingnut
Mike in NC
Red State is a vegetative state.
mr. whipple
Jeebus I need a drink.
Mike Kay
I’m surprised they didn’t just go with the “this will lead to man on dog sex” angle.
Quicksand
I think you HAVE to be gay to visit someone in the hospital now. Isn’t that right?
Elisabeth
FWIW, I read/skimmed the article and the headline doesn’t appear to match the author’s issue with the president’s action. He actually thinks the notion is a good one just doesn’t agree that the president has the power to do it.
Now I feel dirty and am going to wash thoroughly.
Zam
How long til this becomes the main topic of the Sunday shows? I’m putting my money on this weekend.
TR
I heard the hospitals were now required to give you teh gay.
Incertus (Brian)
I’m surprised the headline wasn’t “Obama will make you suck a dick to see your dying grandma.”
slag
That’s disappointing. I thought the Death Panels were going to decide who visited me in the hospital. I’ve been boning up on my chess in hopes of meeting the Grim Reaper for a while now. Now, I don’t know who to expect. Are we ever going to get to plan anything with this guy in office? Christ.
Colette
Gay is the new MRSA.
gbear
The people (well, white guys) willing to read and believe Red State deserve it. They’re putting in the time and effort to earn their stupidity.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Some cats refuse to bury their shit.
Redstate exists.
Coincidence?
I think not.
burnspbesq
@Cat Lady:
Even worse: he’s going to delegate this responsibility to Rahm.
mclaren
That’s how the conservatives wound up Lying Their Way To Crazy.
Someone else tossed in a pointer to this article a while back, but it’s still as relevant as ever.
Badtux
I’m sure Red State’s headline was exactly correct. In some universe. Not this one, of course, but in some other universe, one where unicorns are pink and cotton candy grows on trees and vampires sparkle, yes, sparkle, I say!
It must be interesting to be an author for Red State, having to walk through a portal into an alternate universe every day in order to go to work blogging. I wonder, is the sky red in their universe?
– Badtux the Snarky Penguin
gbear
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal): Who told you about my cat? She actually builds a pile of litter to take the shit on (which is closer to Drudge than Red State).
beltane
Are there really people out there who object to unmarried partners visiting their significant others in the hospital? Really?
And of course they happen to be the same people who want the right to force life support on a brain dead patient against their spouse’s wishes.
Republicans are very consistent. They can be counted on to promote whatever policy will cause the greatest amount of suffering possible.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
never mind
Tom Hilton
@Badtux: I think it’s correct in the universe with no shrimp. Or maybe the universe that’s nothing but shrimp. One of those.
Mark S.
Obama to assign everyone a sassy gay friend!!!!
Actually, that might not be a bad idea.
gbear
A lot of times, it’s the family of the hospitalized person that blocks visits by people not in the family. This mostly happens when the family is homophobic and has never recognized the partner.
edit: Mark S. – Please send me a sassy gay friend please. I could use one.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@gbear:
Rahm did. ;)
Our own dearly departed Tommy would ‘unload’ in his box and proudly leave it there for us to admire. I notice Redstate does this very same thing every single day, just like Tommy did.
It has to be intentional.
Cat Lady
@burnspbesq:
Everyone knows that once the teleprompter is off, Obama sits in the corner of the Oval Office like an abandoned ventriloquist’s dummy.
/firebagger
/wingnut
burnspbesq
@Cat Lady:
I hate you for making me think of Paul Winchell. Some childhood memories are best left deeply repressed.
Ash Can
Hey, cut RedState a little slack, willya? If they started saying things that were true, they’d go poof. They’d lose their raison-d’etre. They’d be known as “Balloon Juice, but without the pets,” and everyone would say, “No pets? Fuck that,” and ignore them. There’s nothing in reality that they can use to argue with, so either they make shit up or put up a blank page every day.
Badtux
@Tom Hilton: Hmm, you may have a point. Given that this is all about Teh Ghey being an abomination because a section of the Bible says Teh Ghey are an abomination, and given that this same section of the Bible also says that shrimp (and other shellfish) are an abomination, clearly there are no shrimp in their universe otherwise they would be filling RedState.org with frantic screeds about the abomination that is Red Lobster Restaurant. Good work sussing out yet another difference between the universe where RedState’s writers live and the universe where the rest of us live!
– Badtux the SciFi-readin’ Penguin
(Though not yet desperate enough to read redstate.org for my sci-fi).
bemused
Is there any lie, even one so obvious that a 5 year old could see through it, that the 25 percenters would have a hard time swallowing?
WereBear (itouch)
It’s all they got. Reality has turned agaInst them! So why should they be friends with it anymore?
danimal
How do I volunteer to be a death panel member?
Cuz I’m making a list of really stupid people and another list of evil people and a third list of conservative blog writers. If you’re on all three lists, update your will.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@bemused:
The 25%ers will swallow anything tossed their way as long as the right hand is delivering it.
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
John, remember, you used to write for this website :-P
Comrade Mary
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal): How weird. I used to have a tabby who would not cover her own crap, but let the anxious Siamese take care of it for her. After he died, she somehow learned to do it on her own (thank God!)
Bonus points for any good theories on who could play the tabby and who could play the Siamese.
Jonny Scrum-half
I’m surprised that “conservatives” would have any issue with the Executive Order. It seems to eliminate one of the main arguments for gay marriage — that gay partners should have the ability to visit each other in the hospital, just like married people.
bemused
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal):
Sigh. I will never stop being horrified that at least a fourth of americans need intensive therapy & probably hospitalization. 90 million people. I want to take my country back from them.
Brick Oven Bill
His next executive order will be that men can visit dogs at veterinary hospitals….cause beastiality always follows homosexuality.
JR
Studies show that even when a lie is publicly debunked, a portion of that negative attitude towards the target of that lie remains. Lies are more profitable than non-lies. Knowing that it’s not surprising that the party of No Shame does it as much as they do.
dmsilev
@danimal:
Gilbert and Sullivan beat you to it. I’ve got a little list, they’ll be none of them be missed….
dms
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@Comrade Mary:
Redstate is the tabby and we are sorely in need of an anxious Siamese…lol!
Bobbi and Sammy have always buried theirs but Tommy would drop and run. Literally. You always knew when he had unloaded as we would hear his tearing up the stairs and through the house, sounding like Velcro Kitteh (claws out and grabbing the carpet for additional traction) every bit of the way.
I think it was his way of telling me to keep his box clean. I did. Sammy would be nice and bury it if he ran across it before his servants (us) did. Sammy is a mild-mannered Burmese so it was no sweat off his back.
KRK
My cat doesn’t cover his poo either. Though it’s supposed to be a dominance thing, mine seems to just be too freaked out by the whole defecation experience. He always takes off running as soon as he’s done. Once he’s calmed down, he’ll go back and make covering-up motions, but always too far away from the pile to do any good.
KRK
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal): I’m glad to see Gus isn’t the only one who does the drop and run. So much fun now that he’s got CRT-related constipation issues and he doesn’t always manage to get it all out on the first try.
Anne Laurie
@beltane:
Well, as you know, the people who do object believe that allowing someone to visit an unmarried partner is “encouraging immorality”. Because it’s only a real religion if it’s making somebody suffer, knowhatimean?
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@bemused:
What’s really sad is that too many of them need professional help yet they despise the very people who would help them. That goes hand-in-hand with their consistently voting against their own interests. These people operate in a world of their own making. In Wingerland, reality is whatever you say it is and anyone who disagrees is the enemy.
mss
I think the parody troll needs more glue for his mask.
Comrade Mary
@KRK: Oh, God, my memory is shot. It’s only been a year since I’ve been a cat owner and only two years since the tabby died — but yes, she didn’t cover up her crap because of laziness or arrogance — she just didn’t have a clue. She would scratch valiantly at the sides of the litter box, for minutes on end, but in all her 18 years, she never figured out that she had to paw the actual litter.
And yes, one of the other cats, or one of the humans, would always cover up for her.
There you go: my tabby was Nixon, and we were all her un-indicted co-conspirators.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@KRK:
One time our son startled Tommy in the middle of his ‘deposit’, who then fled the box and finished his ‘deposit’ on the run.
Our son scared the shit outta him!
@KRK:
Sometimes Tommy would do the same; return later and scrape litter at the opposite end of the box. One time I saw him doing this and the puzzled look on his face was pretty funny.
I’m digging litter up but it isn’t covering the poop! Let’s try again… Nope. Oh well.
and he would walk off. I don’t think he liked his crap any more than we did.
Anne Laurie
@KRK:
He may have been “punished” for dumping in the wrong place at an impressionable age. Some puppies and a few kittens, especially the ‘highly reactive’ ones, have some bad experiences and jump over “Pooping in undesignated places will be punished” to “Pooping gets me punished”. (Our eighteen-month-old rescue pup Sydney was the only dog I’ve ever met who could take a dump at a full run… it took me a good year to “rehabituate” him from the point where the only notice he gave that he needed to go was frantically tearing around the house leaving a trail behind him.)
Chad N Freude
@Brick Oven Bill: It’s my own personal conspiracy theory that DougJ masquerades as BOB. The silence of both of them on this is proof that it’s true.
Chad N Freude
Speaking of lying:
From Tom Perotta’s novel The Abstinence Teacher
Linda Featheringill
@Colette: Gay as the new MRSA? [methicillin resistant staph aureus]
That’s an interesting thought. Care to elaborate?
–picked up in hospitals?
–untreatable with the old-school antibiotics?
–one more thing that vancomycin will kill?
–what?
rob!
Okay, not that there’s not a million examples before this, but here’s a moment where the knuckledraggers at Red State KNOW THEY’RE LYING. Their not mistaken or stupid, but just BALD-FACE LYING.
So, what do they tell themselves when they do this? When you have to lie to defend your POV, does ANY part of you say “Hey, if my position is so clearly the right one, why am I lying?”
Or do they just tell themselves that Obama is evil, and since he bamboozled 55% or whatever of the country to vote for him, all of us thumbheads can’t be trusted with the truth? That all the lying is a sort of “Ends justify the means” kind of thing?
I’m sincerely fascinated by this.
Amy
Bring on the pro-family crowd
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/15/AR2010041505502.html
Will
My understanding was that this order requires all of your gay relatives to visit you in the hospital. Even Uncle Tony.
Please correct me if I got anything wrong there.
Will
What’s funny is that the actual content of the Red State article in no way supports or even really references its completely bullshit, lying headline. The headline is just like that to draw attention. Which it has. Sigh…
Smiling Mortician
@rob!:
They don’t care whether their position is the right one. It’s not even their position. There is no position. They’re on the Glenn Beck Plan:
1. Make up crazy shit about Obama that no thinking person could ever believe
2. Put it on the TeeVee or the InterWebs where small-brained bigots will slurp it up
3. Profit!
Mr Furious
Oh, how far down the rabbit hole Dan McLaughlin has fallen…
His baseball site used to be one of the best, and he and I had a decent rapport going on baseball and even politics some years ago, but the ascent of Obama has driven him to become some sort of Bizarro John Cole—rather than a reality-based epiphany that brought him back from the brink, McLaughlin has gone full-on, teabag, 100% bullshit.
I know he’s too intelligent a guy to buy into this crap, so it’s that much more disappointing. This is straight-up, pre-meditated, fully-conscious lying.
sherifffruitfly
I’m sure there has to be a lying bigot out there somewhere who reports this as “Obama forces gays to be at dying people’s bedside”. Would love to see that one.
Mr Furious
Alright, now I read the whole thing and not just the headline.
McLaughlin is actually correct in some respects. The point of his column is not outrage about the policy—he astoundingly* agrees with allowing same-sex visitation rights—but outrage at the mechanism Obama employs here.
His hypothetical about a GOP President enacting an Executive Order to advance a Terri Schiavo agenda, or abortion-related restrictions or even a BAN on gay visitation rights deserves to be acknowledged.
The headline here is flagrantly misleading, and it cannot be attributed to the old “editors create headlines, not writers” because the post is identically titled at McLaughlin’s personal site.
Unfortunately for McLauchlin, this successful attempt at garnering attention for his column will likely enlighten only a few. Liberals put off by the headline or intro will dismiss it out of hand (as I almost did) and Red State morans will be enraged that McLaughlin treats gays as humans with rights.
* I say “astoundingly” not because I believe McLauchlin is an anti-gay bigot—he’s not—but astounding that he would be so bold as to state his support at Red State.
Davis X. Machina
Acknowledged, then distinguished away. The EO in question says nothing about what treatment the patient can, or cannot, must, or must not, be given, or have withheld.
It’s legally closer to a Presidential ukase banning latex balloons from hospitals receiving Medicare or Medicaid funding than anything Schiavo-esque.
Ron
@Davis X. Machina: Sure, this EO isn’t anything like that. But the point of the Red State diarist is that if one president can use the power of an executive order to do something like this, why couldn’t a different president author a very different executive order that we hate. I’m not saying I completely agree with the guy over at Red State, but there’s a legitimate point. Nobody should support an overly powerful executive branch. Now that I felt some agreement with someone at Red State, I feel completely dirty.
Polar Bear Squares
Here’s my list:
Halle Berry
Serena Williams
Rachel McAdams
Rachel Weitz
Hop to it, President.
I’ll gladly go to my death panel if you make that happen.
Mnemosyne
@Ron: @Mr Furious:
I hate to break it to you, fellas, but presidents issuing dueling EOs on abortion is not a hypothetical. They’ve been doing it since Reagan.
Somebody should probably tell McLaughlin to google “Mexico City policy” if he’s still confused.
Dr. Psycho
Polar Bear to the Second Power, are you working the updated version of “anything you say will be held against you”?
Yutsano
@Mnemosyne: This is actually one of Obama’s more ingenious moves IMHO. An EO can be rescinded with the flick of a pen at any time by the discretion of the President, so if Obama decides it’s to ornerous boom he just reverses it and poof it’s gone.
zoe kentucky in pittsburgh
All joking aside, this order means that I no longer have to pretend I’m my partner’s sister to get to see her in the hospital. Sadly, I’ve had to do that more than once in our 11 years together. It’s humiliating and a little nauseating but necessary since we aren’t legally related and in emergency situations I didn’t want to risk getting turned away.
Frankly the idea that the hospital gets to police who visits people in the hospital is absurdly antiquated. More importantly is the power of attorney part, as we don’t carry those around everywhere we go.
postmodernista
I forced myself to read the comments, reluctantly, and suddenly ‘Confederate Heritage Month’ popped into my head. A lot of the defenses for the article and its lies seem to center around ‘state’s rights v. federal’, which I seem to remember(?) was central to the defense of southern secession and the Civil War? Maybe I’m off here, but it kinda seems to be a them with those folks…
r€nato
@zoe kentucky in pittsburgh:
I’m not so sure about that; for instance, you wouldn’t want ambulance-chasing attorneys trolling hospital wards for clients.
Angela
My youngest cat doesn’t cover her poop, but I think it’s out of pride. “Hey, mom, check that OUT!” More than once, I’ve been woken up in the middle of night by the smell of cat poop, horrified, until I got up and realized it was coming from the litter box far, far away, and around 3 corners from my bedroom.
Yup, that’s pride at work.
But she seems too smart to be Republican.
Angela
@zoe kentucky in pittsburgh:
When I graduated high school in 1986, each of us was given our regular diploma plus a driver-license-sized, laminated replica of our diploma, apparently to present when applying for jobs as proof we had graduated.
Too bad we can’t do something similar with legal docs such as POA — it’d be less of a hassle to carry around.