Fire and shoot yourself in the foot while it is in your mouth:
The St. Petersburg Times reported this week that WellCare Health Plans, a Florida-based company that provides managed-care plans for millions of Medicare and Medicaid participants, has come under federal investigation. Indeed, the FBI raided WellCare’s headquarters Wednesday morning, along with the U.S. Attorney’s office, HHS investigators, and the Florida Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit.
***Right wing blogs saw the reference to Soros and pounced. Conservatives hit the St. Petersburg Times comments section, with insights such as, “I hope they prosecute that worm GEORGE SORROS [sicadded, “Welcome to George Soros’s America?”
As it turns out, there are two big problems with the story. First, Soros sold off his interests in the company quite a while ago. Second, WellCare is actually run by Bush Pioneers and generous Republican donors.
I wish I had something to add to this more substantive than BWAHAHAHAHAHA.
ConservativelyLiberal
All I can add to that is
!!!!!
;)
Repub motto: Leap first, then look to see what you are going to land on and how far away it is…
This shit just writes itself.
capelza
I think the entire sane part of the blogosphere and the American public should just use that when responding to morOns. Really…if thousands of bloggers just posted BWAHAHAHAHAHA to all the crazy people…everywhere that allowed posting that is.
Of course I’d miss the snark…
chopper
shoot yourself in the foot first, ask questions later.
jcricket
Post would have been funnier if you titled it “Ready, Fire…”
:-)
But seriously, what’s the deal with the Soros hate. A self-made billionaire who survived the Holocaust (while most of his family perished) contributes to the Democratic party. That’s just a terrible indictment of the Democrats and anyone who receives his money, right?
The right-wing, of course, is funded solely by grass-root bootstrappers. Like Richard Mellon Scaife and Rev. Moon. And all their enterprises are profit-making machines, not money-losing outlets to print baseless smears.
M.Mawkish
Get it straight moonbat!
Cinderella Ferret
Oh, and Scaife’s family values are absolutely impeccable. Like most of us married guys he hires a prostitute, brings her home, and has his “needs” satisfied. And, the Reverend oversees mass marriages of complete strangers to continue his support of strengthening the institution of … well, marriage of complete strangers.
Aaahhhhhh. I love the smell of napalm in the morning. Selah.
Bubblegum Tate
Needless to say, Stalkin’ Malkin is all over this one. Oh, except for the part where she’s got it all wrong. Welcome to Gorge Soros’s America indeed–it’s being ruined by Bush Pioneers!
Snarky Shark
That pretty much nails it.
Mention Clinton,Gore,or Soros and wingers go bat-shit insane in fractions of a second. And boy are they getting desperate!
But hey dudes, way to draw attention to yourselves. I know wingers aren’t capable of feeling shame or learning, so look for more of this.
Jon H
I love that picture.
Rudi
But this is just market forces at work, like Enron. The Repugs are having fits in Florida, the Republican governor is showing moderation and being attacked by the other Bush.
Svensker
But seriously, what’s the deal with the Soros hate. A self-made billionaire who survived the Holocaust (while most of his family perished)
I agree with jcricket. What is it about Soros? My brother was the one who first clued me in about Soros-phobia, when he almost burst a blood vessel when I said something about Soros being not such a bad egg.
Can anyone ‘splain?
capelza
They must hate on Soros, loudly and often to drown out the words Moon and Scaife and Murdoch and Ailes and….
cleek
what’s wrong with Soros?
he funds liberal causes.
is there anything else i can help you with today?
Peter Johnson
Where do I start? How about here:
The Other Steve
He said Bush is a bad President.
They say he should feel guilty for not dying in the Holocaust.
M.Mawkish
You tell them Peter Johnson! But you should include this too:
See! Sore-os made the Supreme Court rule for the terrorist by giving some sort of support (probably guns) to pro-terrorist lawyers! Everyone should read this well-written and carefully sourced article. It is clear Soros is trying to take over the US of A:
See!? He’s unleashing hordes of illegal aliens on our cities and probably paid the guy who started the fires in California!
But what of the current owners of WellCare? Well there is nothing at all nefarious about what they do with their money:
Do you get it yet, moonbats? 105,000 to the GOP and almost as much to the Democrats even though they don’t deserve it and probably wasted it on drugs!!
I’m going to rummage through some garbage cans and when I come back I’ll have proof that Soreos tricked the fine Americans at WellCare into buying his company and then used bribes, torture and sexual favors to force the FBI to raid WellCare’s offices!!
capelza
Don’t forget to check his countertops! I bet he squashed a stray dog with them, too!
Fledermaus
That guy has to be DougJ.
Jess
Peter, the critics of MoveOn would be more convincing if they showed any semblance of understanding of what the organization was about. It is not a top-down structure. While they get funding from a variety of sources, mostly just your average fellow Americans, their activism is directed by their participating members. These are your fellow Americans coming together, pooling their resources, and joining their voices so that their views will be heard. In other words, Americans practicing democracy. The vast majority of the positions taken by MoveOn are mainstream liberal, not radical left (there is difference), and in many cases they are in the majority. I know rightwing paranoia has gotten so extreme that they now believe the greatest threat to American democracy and freedom is Americans freely participating in their democracy, but until you can get over this bizarre delusion, don’t expect the rest of us in the mainstream to take you seriously.
If you have any arguments about why we shouldn’t be supporting freedom and democracy, feel free to share.
Jess
The guy in the picture? No! Don’t ruin the beauty of the visual for me! (I already sent it to my mother, a retired editor.)
Mike S
Check out Atlas shrugged.
They even have a part of the story that admits Soros doesn’t own the company.
The bolding is dones by the shrugger. See the fact that he “may be deemed to have…” just further proves the point.
Not an honest bone in the GOP message machine left, if there ever was one.
Mike S
Malkin is equally absurd.
WellCare’s PAC has donated considerable money to Republicans. But the company took off with a generous helping hand from George Soros:
Darkrose
I’m waiting for the Anti-Defamation League to pounce on “judenrat”.
Waiting…
Waiting…
jake
What the fuckity fuck? Why do I get the feeling that if the terrorist promised, cross-their-heart-hope-to-die to only kill Jews these scum sucking assholes would demand we shut down Gitmo apologize to Sheik Khalid and give Bin Laden a Medal of Freedom? What a bunch of cocksuckers (and I don’t mean that as a compliment.)
Wheee!
And thus concludes another thrilling ride on the CognitiveDissonance Roller Coaster(TM)! Soros touched it so it must be Evile. Stay tuned to see if the Spit-Flinging Brigade calls on the GOP to return those ill-gotten dollahs!
How the hell can these dumb fucks get out of bed, much less type?
jcricket
Wow, I had almost forgotten about the aspect of Soros that wingers pounced all over because of their
latent anti-semitismdeep care for Holocaust survivors. Anyone remember the whole “somehow managed to survive the Holocaust” smear about Soros?Despite PJ being a spoof (PJ = Peter Johnson = Pajamas = spoof on pajamas media), I love the wingnut logic.
Soros’ investments/donations aren’t transparent, but “Arkansas Project” Scaife and Rev “King of the moonies For-evah” Moon get a complete free pass.
The Tom Tomorrow cartoon linked to earlier is dead-on. It
doesn’t matter what you do or who you are. If you express anything that sounds “off” of the Republican party line, you are to be disowned, smeared, spit on, etc.
I do love that the (as Dave Neiwart puts it) proto-fascist shock troops that the Republicans have been feeding a steady diet of red meat these past 30 years have started to actually take over the party. I can’t wait for the coup when they’re really in charge and Tom Tancredo and Inhofe are their nominees.
Delia
Ooh, you missed the best part on the Atlas Shrugged paranoia fest.
Got that? Grover Norquist is working for him. Betcha didn’t know that, huh? Bet Grover didn’t know that, either.
Psycheout
Um, isn’t Pam Jewish? “Judenrat” simply means traitor here.
Wipe off the foam and try again. She’s a great friend of Israel.
Andrew
With friends like that, you need a lot of geniuses to balance out an IQ distribution.
DougJ
Are we sure the guy in picture doesn’t mean Terry and Rick? Maybe we’re not giving him enough credit.
DougJ
I find the “judenrat” stuff very unsettling. Not being Jewish, I don’t really understand it but there’s this strange undercurrent (I’ve seen it before) of right-wing Jewish people calling out left-wing Jewish people in what can only be described as highly anti-semitic terms.
I don’t get it.
Jess
You know how we’ve been joking about how we can no longer tell the wingnut spoofers from the real thing? I’m not laughing anymore–I just checked out Psychout’s site and I really can’t tell if it’s for real. No joke.
Bubblegum Tate
Jess-
Psycheout is a spoof. And a pretty good/funny one, I must say. I definitely enjoy his work.
louisms
Sure they hate Soros. They see him as a traitor to his class. And after all, the conventional wisdom is that all we lefties are losers living marginal lifestyles and motivated by class envy. Soros gives the lie to that stereotype.
Fat cats are supposed to give money to their people, not the dirty pinko hippies. No wonder Malkin et al are outraged by this freak of nature.
daniel rotter
Psycheout, one can be a “great friend of Israel” and still be anti-Semitic. Israel is a country, not a religion. As for the fact that Pam is Jewish, a Jew can say anti-Semitic things, an African-American can say racist things against blacks, etc.
chopper
he obviously used his evil jew-powers to make a deal with the nazis. he’s so seemly! have you looked at his nose? like a hook, it is.
snorkel
Not that I’m a fan of Atlas Shrugged, but judenrat is not an anti-semitic term. Raten is German for “to advise” and when the Nazis occupied a town, in e.g. Poland, with a large Jewish population, they always asked the Jewish community to appoint a committee of community leaders, which was called the Judenrat (Jewish Board of Advisers?) In any case, I think Atlas was using the term to accuse Soros of “ratting” out Jews, because of the way he survived the Holocaust. Following a link on the AS site that is linked to by Mike S, I gathered that he was actually only 14 in 1944 when his father asked an important government official who was also his friend to take George in and pass him off as his own (Christian) godson. While living with this official, George often accompanied him on errands in which Jewish families had their possessions confiscated. The article that was linked alleges that even today he sees no problem with how he behaved. As you usual with all matters involving extremely inhumane episodes in human history, it is hard to know how any of us would have acted in the same situation.
demimondian
So, let me get this straight. Either AS meant Jewish rat or she meant Jewish collaborator with the Nazi occupation. I can’t see how either of those would ever be an acceptable term of insult for someone who was 14 when the war ended.
No, snorkel, there’s no way around it — that’s a wholly inappropriate and unacceptable epithet to throw around.
jake
Is snorkel what one would call a concern troll or just a common or garden troll?
snorkel
I’m not a troll at all. But coming from a Holocaust-demolished family, I have spent many hours since childhood thinking “how would I have acted, if …?” I’ve often even secretly wondered whether my parents did anything I wouldn’t want to know about in order to survive. I’m certainly not blaming Soros for anything.
And, yes, demi, you are right. Atlas Shrugged has no right to blame anyone for any actions (s)he may have taken as a child in that situation.
snorkel
Ended last post too soon,
Reprehensible as that is, it isn’t anti-semitic.
snorkel
I’m not being very clear tonight. So let me just say that it is neither reprehensible nor anti-semitic to end a post too soon. Rather, my point was, I should have written:
And, yes, demi, you are right. Atlas Shrugged has no right to blame anyone for any actions (s)he may have taken as a child in that situation. Reprehensible as that is, it isn’t anti-semitic.
Chris Andersen
Hmmm. Might this story make a good example of “left-wing gossip mail” to pass around to your conservative brother-in-law? Of course, since it happens to be true that might disqualify it.
TenguPhule
Shorter Peter Johnson: Soros spends money on things I don’t like. Only Republicans should have the right to do that.
Abort, Quit, Be a Hero, Peter Johnson?
laneman
Mike, please – Atlas is the ‘citizen journalsist – citizen soldier’, or whatever. And she’s an ass at best.
laneman
I think I misread yore post
chopper
i wonder how many people who rag on soros for what he went along with when he was 14 during the war also defend pope benedict for having been in the hitler youth, luftwaffenhelfer and german army up until he was 18 or so because ‘he was just a kid’.
jake
Now, now chopper. Surely the Graeme Frost pile on has taught you that kids are fair game. That Soros should survive the Holocaust and go on to make a fortune which he uses to fund liberal organizations proves that he did something nefarious to earn those nice granite counter tops.
Actually, all this crap about Soros’ brief stint as a messenger boy makes me wonder if I’m the only one who has ever seen Europa Europa.
snorkel
Europa Europa is a great movie I’ve watched several times. This true story was amazing. I’ve seen the real live person on TV once and, as an old man, it’s clear he was never as good-looking as the young German actor who portrayed him. But sometimes charm works as well as good looks.