Newly minted North Carolina GOP Sen. Thom Tillis will see your anti-vaxxer nonsense and raise you the freedom from having to wash your hands.
During a Q&A at the Bipartisan Policy Center on Monday, Tillis related a story from his time in the state legislature in 2010, complaining that the U.S. is “one of the most regulated nations in the history of the planet,” video via C-SPAN shows.
“I was having a discussion with someone, and we were at a Starbucks in my district, and we were talking about certain regulations where I felt like ‘maybe you should allow businesses to opt out,'” the senator said.
Tillis said his interlocutor was in disbelief, and asked whether he thought businesses should be allowed to “opt out” of requiring employees to wash their hands after using the restroom.
The senator said he’d be fine with it, so long as businesses made this clear in “advertising” and “employment literature.”
“I said: ‘I don’t have any problem with Starbucks if they choose to opt out of this policy as long as they post a sign that says “We don’t require our employees to wash their hands after leaving the restroom,” Tillis said.
“The market will take care of that,” he added, to laughter from the audience.
Troll factor/Poe’s law quotient here approaching a kazillion.
It’s amazing stuff. We’ve gone from “Ebola is going to kill us all because our public health system is a nightmare” during campaign season to “We’re the most regulated country ever, why do we even need to make people wash their hands?” three months later.
Beginning to think Tillis is the GOP response to SCOTUS possibly wrecking Obamacare subsidies. “Sick? You need the Free Market to decide.”
Roger Moore
I think it’s time to start lobbying for “Libertarianism” to be added to DSM VI.
JPL
I mentioned this on a previous thread because he wants to replace one sign with another sign.
Drew Funk
Pretty sure requiring a business to post a sign that says “We do not make our employees wash their hands” would also be a regulation.
JPL
@Drew Funk: Ben Cisco responded to me in a previous thread
You’re surmising that the concept has to make sense. Trust me, it doesn’t.
Roger Moore
@JPL:
I doubt it. He may say that he’s going to replace one regulation with another, but the best bet is that he’s going to eliminate one regulation and then refuse to implement the replacement regulation because it’s too oppressive to businesses. It’s sort of like the way that conservatives say we should eliminate burdensome regulations because people can always sue and then turn around and complain about frivolous lawsuits. It’s classic bait-and-switch.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
Why have health inspections of restaurants? After all, when enough people get sick or find rat turds in their food, The Market will do something.
Cacti
If Senator Tillis thinks bathroom handwashing is onerous and burdensome…
I’d say there’s a very good chance he doesn’t wash his own hands after taking a crap.
dmsilev
Lets cut to the chase. Anyone advocating against the use of modern public health and medicine techniques forfeits the rights to benefit from them. Senator, I hope you enjoy the leeches we’re about to strap to your arm to “treat” that cancer.
piratedan
@Cacti: a feature of slinging legislative poo… and a huge ty to the good folks of North Carolina for putting this asswipe (or lack thereof) into office.
Cacti
@dmsilev:
I also believe in leading by example.
The GOPers should make hand washing optional for the food handlers in the Congressional cafeteria.
dmsilev
@Cacti: I keep hoping that the GOP will go en masse on one of those “Congressional Retreat” things, insist on free-market-fairy catering, and all come down with cases of botulism and the like.
dubo
In all of human history has a single public or private dollar ever been spent doing an audit of employee handwashing? This is the “waste and/or tyranny” hill he choses to die on?
beltane
Would it be mean to hope this idiot contracts hepatitis due to unhygienic food handling practices?
Villago Delenda Est
The unspeakable stupid. IT BURNS!
Villago Delenda Est
@beltane: No. It would be justice.
boatboy_srq
@Drew Funk:
Net takeaway: Tillis wants them to put up a sign. But that’s just what Tillis himself wants. If they choose not to, he’ll be unhappy, but he doesn’t need a law to make them post it. He won’t be a customer there [for long]…
Interesting, no, how the nation with the World’s Greatest Healthcare can no longer be arsed to attend to basic hygiene and preventative steps until BlackEbolaDeathPlague.
SenyorDave
Digby has a post on this, and here’s her final comment:
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the feces of patriots and tyrants.
philpm
Tillis forgot to add, “By the way, don’t ever expect me to patronize a business where that happens. I’m a white, Christian senator and I’m above eating in someplace like that.”
beltane
@Villago Delenda Est: The unspeakable stupid. IT BURNS!
SatanicPanic
They’ll blame dirty Latinos every time they get sick. They do this already. According to the racist right, the Disney measles outbreak was because of undocumented immigrants. Pointing out that Central American countries vaccinate as much as we do doesn’t get through to them.
boatboy_srq
@dmsilev: @Cacti: Brilliant ideas, both.
Cacti
It’s useful to have Republicans in power every now and then, as a reminder of how bugf**k crazy a lot of their ideas are.
beltane
Someone should tell Sen Tillis that almost all food handlers are low income and that most kitchen staff are various shades of non-white. Soap and water could very well be the only thing standing between his Aryan meat-temple of a body and a whole world of various brown people cooties.
dedc79
I keep waiting for “the market” to “take care of” morons like Tillis, but I feel like I’m waiting in vain….
boatboy_srq
@philpm: I’m reminded of stories I heard from the GOTea convention in San Diego. Immigration was a hot topic then, too. One can imagine what all the cabbies, hotel workers, caterers et al thought of that – and how many wrong turns, dirty sheets, compromised meals etc the delegates got.
beltane
@SatanicPanic: Hey, many kitchen workers are Latino. Thom Tillis is just signaling that he wants the right to ingest their intimate body fluids. Jesus may have washed the feet of the poor but Thom Tillis wants to eat their shit.
philpm
@boatboy_srq: Well, according to the GOTea thinking, if they can’t speak English (well or at all), then they can’t catch on to the sneering condecension either. Of course, the GOTea doesn’t do irony either.
boatboy_srq
@philpm: They don’t do multilingualism either (“Speak Ahmurrrcan, dammit!”). SD is an English/Spanish/Hindi/Urdu/Russian/Cantonese/Mandarin town – and the likelihood that you’ll run into somebody in a service industry who doesn’t understand you is pretty low.
raven
There’s, was a BBQ in Lexington, NC that has one sink out side of the 2 restroom! Jimmy’s BBQ
jl
Maybe this is a GOP outreach program to those dudes I see in the john who never wash their hands after depositing fluids and solids there?
Bad news for Democrats?
Judge Crater
@Roger Moore: Good one! And define it as people wanting to live in the 18th or 19th century when they had the freedom to die of smallpox and live without indoor plumbing and “big government” was the Justice of the Peace 10 miles away down a dirt track with three creeks and a small river to cross with no bridges.
These people are impossibly stupid. What happened to that libertarian utopia that Glenn Beck was going to build in Idaho?
beltane
Soap is a socialist plot!
SatanicPanic
@beltane: exactly. Then the call will be to deport them.
Amir Khalid
It needs to be shouted from the rooftops, all of them, that Thom Tillis is fucking stupid. Like anyone is who places their Ideology over common sense.
MattF
Oh, and ‘one of the most regulated nations in the history of the planet’ is just weird and ignorant. On the other hand, I suppose Somalia is, after all, libertarian paradise, compared to, say, Sweden. But maybe not, since Tillis would, I’m guessing, have a little problem with the average Somali’s skin color and religion.
Mike J
I picture Starbuck’s PR department staring at their screens and asking, “why me?”
Origuy
In Tales of the City, Armisted Maupin wrote about the legendary Edsel Ford Fung, waiter at the now-closed Sam Wo’s in San Francisco Chinatown. The sink for the restrooms was outside the doors, which were visible from the dining room. In Maupin’s story, a woman came out of the toilet and headed back to her table. The abrasive Edsel, famous for insulting customers, yelled at her from across the room, “Hey lady, wash your hands!”
GregB
Mandatory hand washing is the first law Hitler implemented.
Sanitation is another word for genocide of salmonella viruses.
trollhattan
@beltane:
And, the bartenders have cellphone video cameras.
Couldn't Stand the Weather
To me, glibertarian bleating about “excessive regulation” boils down to this subset of greed: I Don’t Want To Pay For That. These brain donors think their Big Mac/cab ride/diaper wearing escapades at the cathouse might cost less if not for the federal and local laws and regulations. Like hand washing.
Yeah… that fast food might cost ten percent less, if the workers don’t follow age old rules and regs. Hope that pays for the funeral, as salmonella can kill you. But, hey. Death is just the Market at work.
For fuck’s sake! Maybe a rather small meteor could ht this guy’s McMansion. Act of God, right? No payout from Allstate, in such a case.
The Market at work.
Roger Moore
@Judge Crater:
I think they managed to extract all the grift they could and moved on to the next scam.
beltane
@trollhattan: Heh.
MattF
@Couldn’t Stand the Weather: I’m reminded, actually, of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld– and particularly the city of Ankh-Morpork. It’s a sort of Libertarian paradise, but you’ve got to be careful. Very careful– where that friendly vendor of street food might be selling rat pie.
SatanicPanic
Mr Tillis is doing here is making a joke that doesn’t work. He’s saying the market will decide that companies that post signs that say “we don’t make our employees wash their hands” because people will stop going to that place. Of course, he’s just replacing one regulation with another. And expecting people to accept that companies will self-police, which is the real problem. Or maybe he just wants to turn over regulation to those pyschos at Yelp. Who knows.
JPL
@MattF: MSM allow their bullshit to continue.
maybe they don’t want to get the shush treatment.
Couldn't Stand the Weather
@MattF:
Pie of rodent? Sounds like Tillis’ just dessert.
And, Morpork? That cannot be right.
Elizabelle
To me, “We don’t make our employees wash their hands” is as good as saying “Take your business elsewhere and don’t let the door hit you in the ass.”
Call the place “Germtopia” or “Salmonella on Skates.”
Just think of the advertising this will spur in Swamp Carolina: “Our BBQ is great AND our employees wash their hands.”
And then, LOL, maybe we’ll have videocameras at the sinks to make sure employees wash their hands. Freedumb!!
Somewhere Kay Hagan is laughing, mirthlessly.
trollhattan
The Free Markets (PBUT) dictate that every Carnival Cruise liner be named “SS Norovirus”
“Your cruise may be continuous, but the fun will be in spurts.”
Elizabelle
@Cacti:
I see Senator Tillis’s constituents showing up to meet him, gloved to the hilt.
White gloves, if they’d like to be formal about it.
jl
@SatanicPanic:
” Of course, he’s just replacing one regulation with another. ”
Damn, you just beat me to it. It is a very sad commentary that this totalitarian humanity-hating commie Tillis is the best poor excuse for a market loving conservative this soft and unfit country can produce in its advanced state of socialist decay. The commie Tillis really just wants to replace one set of onerous regulations by another.
At the next meeting he will want these poor oppressed companies to post signs like “We don’t keep track of how we store the food” and “We don’t check that our suppliers are selling us what they say it is.” “We don’t worry about what all those bugs are in the kitchen” and all sorts of other nonsense that the market can perfectly well take care of all by itself.
The minimal regulatory regime would be ONE sign that informs the customers that the restaurant or grocery or butcher shop does what it damn well pleases in every aspect of its business, and if the customer doesn’t like it they can go someplace else. This should be a very small cheap, preferably newsprint that is posted someplace in the building to reduce wasteful inefficiency. If the information is important enough for the consumer to know, they would find it and understand what it means.
Tillis is a commie in disguise.
Amir Khalid
@SatanicPanic:
My simpler (and therefore far better, so there!) theory is that Mr Tillis is just plain stupid. Especially if he thought he was making a joke.
Tree With Water
For all intents and purposes, the republican party as known and constituted until 2001 died that year with the ascension of Bush-Cheney to the Executive Branch. The old party went the way of the Whigs and no one noticed. This is in part due to the lazy habits of thought, such as those that lent themselves to the misperception that there’s a dimes worth of difference between T-baggers and the republican party. Who says third parties don’t stand a chance in this country?
Elizabelle
Maybe the Koch Brothers told him to say that?
They do own at least one or two toilet paper brands.
Mike in NC
@Elizabelle: Conventional wisdom is that Hagan ran a fairly crappy campaign, and didn’t visit many of the places she ought to have. In her TV ads, she also focused almost exclusively on public education cuts engineered by slack-jawed moron Tom Tillis and his corrupt Tea Party cronies. The elderly white conservatives who elected Tillis didn’t care about those cuts, nor anything else but sending a message to “That One” in Washington.
mai naem mobile
Several years ago, when all the Iraq war books were coming out, i heard one of the post-war rebuilding era US Generals(not Petraeus,possibly Odierno) being interviewed. He talked about how we complain about bureaucracy here but how he would.have been thrilled to have bureaucracy there because thats what gives you a structure to work withIn. It seemed like it was a revelation to him. These libertarian idjits here need to deal with a no.bureaucracy country, like, say Somalia.
Alex S.
Very enlightening comment, The market takes care of dirty restaurants like nature eventually takes care of the ill. One could call it market darwinism.
WJS
Germs are a liberal conspiracy!
SiubhanDuinne
@Elizabelle:
But they also have some paper towel brands. Wouldn’t they want to ensure those are used in abundance?
Oh wait, I’m trying to make this make sense….
You know what? Never mind.
dmsilev
@MattF: Yes, but in Ankh-Morpork, there’s a large clientele which actively seeks out and desires rat pie.
SatanicPanic
@Amir Khalid: well I won’t disagree with that
Another Holocene Human
The “market” does take care of it–in a shitty economy. Look at economic development in Florida, rural and urban, and compare it to Massachusetts. In Massachusetts if you are spreading gastroenteritis around the community, are given the chance to stop it, and do it again, the state will shut your business down for three weeks, which is how long it takes for everyone to stop spewing from both ends and creating droplets of bacterial sludge which land on unwashed hands to spread on everything.
In Florida … eh. You can look up a business on myfloridalicense before you dine. But old bad reports mysteriously aren’t on the site. Nothing is posted in the window about a failed inspection. And nothing will shut the place down.
There are the costs in lost productivity. The costs in loss of trust. And lack of trust slows the velocity of money. Keeps it sticking to the inside of pockets. There are some extremely wealthy people in my county and they hire personal chefs. They do eat in restaurants … up north. (I learned this from chefs. They know their industry.)
So, yeah, we can compare “nanny state” to the libertarian model, and the libertarian model is bad for business.
MattF
I have to say, every once in a while Jen Rubin writes a piece that I pretty much agree with. Here, e.g., on vaccination:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2015/02/03/chris-christie-and-rand-paul-blow-it/?hpid=z5
Elizabelle
Maybe this is C-Span enabled grift? Tillis is hoping people send him bottles of Softsoap in response?
Calouste
@Another Holocene Human: The one thing that anti-regulation ideologists always forget when invoking their holy free market, is that in a truly free market, information is free, as in widely available and easily accessible, to all market participants. Obviously, if as a customer you can’t easily find out if a restaurant has a history of serving a helping of salmonella with their entrees, the market isn’t free.
Another Holocene Human
@Alex S.: When “the market” serves its correction, both the dirty and the clean will be swept under.
Without the discernment and structure of regulation, testing (scientific testing), and enforcement, the fearful lizard brains of the mob will be making the decisions, thank you.
And the mob is not exactly a job creator.
But if you don’t believe me, drive around rural Northern Florida some time and see the Randian dream in action.
chopper
@dmsilev:
that a rat tart? disgusting.
David in NY
GOP Senator: “Libertarianism requires you to eat shit.”
muddy
@dmsilev: Rat onna stick!
Alex S.
@Another Holocene Human:
Well, I don’t exactly approve of his comparison, but it’s a very concise demonstration of right-wing philosophy.
Another Holocene Human
@Calouste: Right, that’s the idea of the letter grades in the windows although the truth is, not every individual can possibly be a post industrial expert on every topic, so most of the population, for example, doesn’t understand all the details of the hand-washing–outbreak cycle. (I only know so much because I temped at public health for a while.) Dumbasses will keep spreading the germ at “D” because they’re dumbasses (like people who don’t vaccinate, people who put the wrong stuff into their septic tank, people who prefer to buy toxic chemicals to clean stuff because of the “clean smell”, and so on) and the public health disaster will continue. At the end of the day you need that enforcement authority to shut the place the fuck down when they’re a repeat offender. In fact, many people unknowingly just expect government will do this for them:
They couldn’t say that on TV if it wasn’t true?
Well, they couldn’t sell those pills if they don’t work?
I’m sure they must have fixed those problems if they’re still open?
The vigorous FDA, FTC, and USPS enforcement era of the 1950s carries a long shadow (even though FDA was declawed ages ago). So think about that.
All through the early 2000s vending machine servicers were filling kid’s vending machines with little toys made in China that had toxic levels of lead in them. In Massachusetts the state employed people to check all vending machines as well as all toy stores for lead-contaminated toys, which would lead to report and seizure.
But in your state?
Was somebody looking?
Did anybody know?
Did your kid buy a trinket for 50 cents and put it in their mouth?
ChristianPinko
The Republican Party: officially at supervillain level of evil.
Pee Cee
This is easy to understand. Thom Tillis is full of shit and he knows it. He simply wants the rest of us to eat more shit so we are as full of it as he is.
Another Holocene Human
@Alex S.: I know, but it’s amazing when a grown person says such things. They must be lying. Only a 20 year old could believe such things, not having observed how a problem WITH ONE MANUFACTURER can cause the public to REJECT AN ENTIRE PRODUCT CLASS.
Look at what happened with IUDs. Artificial sweeteners. Instant-on televisions (they caused fires). Vaccines (over a: a bad swine flu vaccine in the 70s laying the groundwork and then b: a bunch of post hoc propter hoc false inferences, so basically vapor). Food and drugs are very susceptible to this sort of mass rejection although it can happen with other consumer goods (and also can happen in the business to business space–one spectacular screwup, and nobody wants to take the same risk again). I think food and drugs hit that purity/disgust psychology which makes the effect more powerful.
Buddy H
I was talking to a waiter who told me the restaurant forbade their employees from taking sick days during certain busy times of the year. I never returned.
I could imagine sick people dragging themselves in to report for kitchen duty.
With no paid sick leave, food is being prepared by folks who should have stayed in bed.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@SatanicPanic: Shit, you’re a local. They’ve been doing this here for upwards of thirty years. First time I’d heard Dirty Mexicans (TM) blamed for disease outbreaks I had not yet left for college.
That was a LONG time ago.
beth
@MattF: It’s really scary when they’re so crazy that even Jen Rubin won’t carry their water any longer. Could we really be close to achieving peak wingnut?
JCJ
This reminds me of something I heard on the radio years ago.
The DJ (Larry Lujack at WLS – AM inChicago) had gotten a note from someone about a good bathroom story. The note said that at work a supervisor noted two employees leaving the bathroom without washing their hands. The supervisor told them they had to wash hands before returning to work. The reply? “We’re not going back to work. We are going to lunch!”
Another Holocene Human
@mai naem mobile: Boom. Lay it on us mai naem.
You know, one of the most stable, continuous empires in the history of the world is China and that place’s life blood was its civil service. And when they took civil service exams they were supposed to be masters of the liberal arts, we’re not talking about the Hartford, CT fire fighter’s civil service exam here.
The Ottoman empire in its heyday had quite the bureaucracy as well.
Of course, the anti-corruption plan of the ancients was one, little cut. :D
One would hope that today we can do better than that.,
srv
Now you see what happens in a country that doesn’t have the 1st Ammendment. Unless you’re muslim or something.
SatanicPanic
@CONGRATULATIONS!: SoCal born and raised!
ETA- that is to say, I’ve heard just about everything blamed on The Mexicans at one time or another
Another Holocene Human
@CONGRATULATIONS!: @SatanicPanic: Central American countries and certainly Mexico actually have better rates of vaccination that these “my children are pure” dildos.
And any lapses in Central America are probably due to war/gang violence or funding shortfalls. The compliance rate is high.
But if we were less of douchebags at the border and acknowledge that we have conflict-migrants that we created and just made sure their medical was up to snuff and sent them on their merry way at the border like a civilized country. Oh, right, that will never happen.
Another Holocene Human
@srv: Yeah, in the UK you have to back the shit up you say better or you could face legal action.
Not saying it’s a better system because it’s probably not. But it is hilarious when the woo purveyors get one end of the stick and think they’re going to beat you with it and end up with it square on their own forehead.
Citizen_X
So, apparently pooh-flinging is no longer metaphorical for the reichtards?
muddy
@Buddy H: This happens anyway. Even if they allow you to take the day off you can’t because you won’t get paid.
Another Holocene Human
@Roger Moore:
It’s probably broken down into its component memes and appears in the standard diagnostic questionnaires.
See Axis B Personality Disorders.
SatanicPanic
@Another Holocene Human: Vaccinations are so cheap and easy and the reasons for doing it so compelling that all but the most dysfunctional countries do it to the fullest extent possible. And if they don’t have the money there’s always Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, etc. to help them out.
Suggesting these countries don’t vaccinate is almost on the level of suggesting they don’t have phones. Or roads. Shows staggering ignorance.
Origuy
@jl:
Like the cellar of the Planning Department on Alpha Centauri?
Citizen_X
If I ever have the misfortune to meet this idiot, there’s no way on earth I’m shaking his hand. And I’m telling him why, manners be damned.
Bill D.
@GregB: Salmonella is not a virus but a bacterium. Big difference. Bacteria are actual living things that take in food and excrete waste. If you get a bacterial infection, they produce toxins that kill your cells and thereby make available more food for themselves.
Biological viruses, on the other hand, are essentially malware for living cells (the analogy to computer viruses works well in both directions). The rogue code gets into your cells’ command center (the nucleus), and makes the cells do things they’re not supposed to do like cranking out more viruses. And yes, the cells die in the process but that’s just collateral damage.
Another Holocene Human
@dubo:
Yes, the Massachusetts Dept of Public Health does investigate businesses and test individual employees after outbreaks and tells the business what they need to do to get into compliance.
If the business fails to do this and causes more cases to emerge, they will be shut down for three weeks, which is enough time for all infected people to emerge with systems and flush it out of their system.
It’s not a perfect system because infected people don’t always see a doctor and the doctors don’t always report the right stuff to the state. But I know of a case where they traced an outbreak among elderly people (who ended up in the hospital) to a cake decorator.
This stuff is important because the hospitalizations cost money, the lost time from work costs the economy, the suffering is completely avoidable, and children can even die from these same diseases.
But I betcha NC despite having the technical expertise right there probably doesn’t do this basic public health function because the American Southeast is stuck on stupid and proud of it.
Another Holocene Human
Quizno’s the chain had a really hard time breaking into Mass because the first franchise was almost immediately shut down for bacterial gastroenteritis which is spread by employees not washing hands, and even though that was really the fault of the franchise owner the entire brand was tarnished for years.
Businesses HATE to get shut down for 3 weeks. You can lose the business. That’s why they fight these regs. But it was a powerful motivator. When I worked in a Mass kitchen our boss had hot water, soap, and paper towels a plenty every few feet. Rub your nose? Hand wash. Handle raw stuff? Hand wash. Handle dirty towel? Hand wash. Touch the phones? Hand wash. I think I halfway-developed a tic. But we never got our asses shut down.
I walked into a diner in Fla one day. I watched this girl making sandwiches and the phone rings and without stopping she picks up the handset and then when the call is over goes right back to fixing sandwiches.
I walked out.
opiejeanne
@Cacti: I’m pretty sure that’s what we’re getting at, or at the very least not washing his hands after shaking the dew from the lily, because his mama taught him not to pee on his hands, never mind where that thing’s been.
Another Holocene Human
Also, pet peeve time, I hate the obsession with rubber gloves. Stupid douchebags touch EVERYTHING with those gloves. Unless they go on and come off JUST for your sandwich (think the really thin sandwich gloves made of that crinkly plastic?) they’re actually worse than bare hands.
Hot water, soap (soap that is for hands and doesn’t tear skin up and cause open sores, of course!), and clean towels, used EVERY TIME you switch between food and not-food. You see those rubber gloves? Fuggedaboudit. That worker won’t even realize how many wrong things he/she touched because their skin is protected with a think layer of latex.
muddy
@Citizen_X: I would love the opportunity to shake his hand, if only I had enough advance warning for a pit stop first.
Amir Khalid
@opiejeanne:
“The lily”. Hmm. I’ve never heard it called that before.
Another Holocene Human
@SatanicPanic: They’ve put their disgust reflex in place of reason. High disgust factor –> likely conservative. Ignorance is only the beginning.
We’re talking weapons grade, head-up-the-ass narcissism here, WE shit rainbows and fairy dust, YOU are filthy vermin infecting our pure land. If you’re getting those uncomfortable fascist vibes just now, good. You have a functioning conscience. This kind of shit leads to violence.
opiejeanne
@Judge Crater: We’ve known how to prevent smallpox since Martha Washington took her children into Philadelphia to be inoculated with cowpox. Meanwhile, the clergy was loudly braying from the pulpit about how this was going against God’s will.
opiejeanne
@MattF: CMOT Dibbler uses rat for his wares, but only for his height-challenged customers who actually prefer it.
Iowa Old Lady
This imbecile and Chris Christie in London both remind me of how you can be a big star on a state stage and still not be ready for prime time.
Buddy H
@Another Holocene Human: Supermarket cashier sneezes loudly into her hand, then continues scanning and bagging my food.
In the walmart in my old exurb (that I fled from) they would throw the carpets that were at the entrance onto shopping carts while they washed the floors.
In an “upscale” grocery store near my home they took four shopping carts and turned them upside down in the parking lot to block a pothole.
When the hole was filled, the carts were returned for our use.
xenos
I don’t just want the state to regulate this stuff, I want it to get all “me and Warren G. -pew pew pew pew – gonna regulate!” on these businesses.
opiejeanne
@MattF: I read a series of comments on a conservative blog about Pratchett’s books and how much they all loved him, and thought he must be a Libertarian. Having actually spoken to him more than once, and having paid attention to what he is actually saying in his more Dickensian moments, I doubt that very sincerely.
Mr. Longform
@ChristianPinko:
wrongo – supervillains are smart (mad scientist types); these guys are more like supervillain sidekicks.
opiejeanne
@Couldn’t Stand the Weather: oh, it’s correct.
Ook ook!
Ben Cisco
Ladies and gents, I present #TillisSigns.
You’re welcome.
jl
@Judge Crater:
” Good one! And define it as people wanting to live in the 18th or 19th century when they had the freedom to die of smallpox ”
Unless that is a joke, you are buying libertarian and reactionary GOP lies about US history. First state laws for compulsory smallpox vaccination were in early 1800s. First was in Massachusetts in 1809.
Those liberty destroying laws were the reason for Jefferson’s and Madison’s and John Adams’ (especially Adams since he was from MA) famous denunciations of the totalitarian threat of public health laws and how they threatened the dream of a free United States of American.
Oh… wait… maybe I am not remembering correctly…
opiejeanne
@muddy: sausage inna bun!
jl
@Ben Cisco:
#TillisSigns. is hilarious.
Every company should have a Tillis slogan. Catch it our way!
Leaking good in the Neighborhood.
I’ll look for a celebratory column from Brooks on the renewal of American rugged individualism and self-reliance that can be found in eating out.
Ripley
This is good news for whatever that is under John McCain’s fingernails.
opiejeanne
@Another Holocene Human: My 94 year old father died from the effects of food poisoning he got from a restaurant in July 2012. It was left untreated by his idiot doctor, and then improperly treated when he was in a care facility, and it eventually killed him in September.
opiejeanne
@Amir Khalid: We all learn so much here.
MattF
@opiejeanne: Well, that’s what happens when you mingle different humanoid species indiscriminately.
MattF
@opiejeanne: Very much so. Pratchett is hilarious, and if the Libertarians don’t get the joke, well…
Iowa Old Lady
I certainly hope the people serving Tillis ignore that pesky sign. I sure would. I might even have to run my fingers around the inside of the toilet rim before I handed over his croissant.
Mike in NC
@Iowa Old Lady: No, Thom Tillis would never order a croissant — too French. A big heaping plate of biscuits and gravy is more his thing.
opiejeanne
@MattF: That is startling, coming from her, but she just can’t help herself, going on to make a snotty remark about Hilary near the end, about how Christie demanding rock star treatment is more like something you’d expect from Hilary. She must be referring to that old chestnut of an Urban Legend, the one that starts out with “Don’t you know who I am?”, the one with Hilary that never happened.
opiejeanne
@Iowa Old Lady: Remind me to never, ever piss you off.
Richard mayhew
@dubo: definately in hospitals. A friend of mine got her dnp with hand cleaning research
MattF
@opiejeanne: Oops, missed the comparison of Christie to Clinton. I suppose that’s about the worst thing she could say about someone.
Villago Delenda Est
@jl:
Something about the salad bar at Applebee’s will be mentioned, I’m sure.
Villago Delenda Est
@MattF: The Libertarians are too blockheaded to realize that Pratchett is not laughing with them.
Couldn't Stand the Weather
@opiejeanne:
Didn’t expect that.
And I thought Rudy Rucker’s sci fi was a bit wild and crazy.
As for Tillis, here’s hoping that, by the spring, he’s as legitimately notorious as his soulmates McDonnell, Mourdock and Akin.
boatboy_srq
@Iowa Old Lady: WIN.
@Mike in NC: Just don’t tell him what’s in that gravy…
jefft452
The free market at work
There was a time when Uncle Sam, he had a war with Spain
And many boys in bonnie blue were in the struggle slain
Not all were killed by bullets, no not by any means
The greater part by far were killed by Armour’s Pork & Beans
Calouste
@opiejeanne: Conservatives, eh? The same people who put the Sex Pistols in the top 50 Most Conservative Songs Ever? Context is not something they are really aware of.
Steeplejack
@MattF:
Can’t find the exact quote now, but I love Pratchett’s description of the River Ankh being so polluted that “even an agnostic could walk across it.”
dmbeaster
@Calouste: Actually, in a truly free market, information is a huge expense and the lack of it burdens all transactions since even buying fresh vegetables would arguably require due diligence as to the accuracy of the scales (or else acceptance that you might be cheated to some degree and just live with it.). So much commerce works so much better with regulations that allow one to assume that due diligence is largely unnecessary. These morons never get this. And I understand that free market theory assumes that information is free and equally available, which shows how fundamentally stupid the theory is.
Sondra
OMG…Now it seems that if the phrase the “Public Good” appears in any statement, these folks are agaisnt it. The don’t believe in the :Public Good”, they believe in individual freedom…So OK…how about they choose individually to be selfish and vaccinate themselves for their own individual good because…fuck the public, when the apocalypse comes, they can remain in their bunkers with their own food, water, bitcoins, guns, ammunition and immunity to the diseases that will ravage the country afterwards…How about that?
You know sooner or later, if this group of dumbos reaches a critical mass, the folks in the rest of the world are going to start demanding some sort of proof of vaccination in passorts. They will not be considered tourists. They will be considered disease vectors.
Tom
@opiejeanne:
I think he actually makes fun of libertarianism, in his own way.
“I think that sick people in Ankh-Morpork generally go to a vet. It’s
generally a better bet. There’s more pressure on a vet to get it right.
People say ‘it was god’s will’ when granny dies, but they get *angry* when
they lose a cow.”
— (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)