it was too stupid a joke—until fox called it news

I swear upon a stack of hyperlinks. . . . Last weekend, when it became known that five of the seven suspects in the failed car bomb attacks in London and Glasgow were employed by British hospitals, I was all set to write a sarcastic post about how national healthcare causes terrorism. . .

. . . but I decided it was just too stupid to waste your time.

Of course, I don’t have to fill a 24-hour news cycle with rightist propaganda, so I had the luxury of making that judgment call. It seems the folks at Fox News aren’t as fortunate.

Today [Thursday] on Fox News’s Your World With Neil Cavuto, National Review Online columnist Jerry Bowyer attacked Michael Moore’s movie SiCKO and its positive portrayal of the health care in countries such as Britain and France. He argued that national health care systems are breeding grounds for terrorists because they are “bureaucratic.” “I think the terrorists have shown over and over again…they’re very good at gaming the system with bureaucracies,” said Bowyer.

Perhaps the most hysterical point of all is that there is actually a coordinated PR blitz to denigrate SiCKO. . . which is a popular Hollywood movie! So much money; so few brains.

My other thought upon reading Bowyer’s comments: If bureaucracies are breeding grounds for terrorists, perhaps we should turn a wary eye toward the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon. . . or maybe we should put private health insurers on the terrorist watch list:

Only 4% of Medicare and Medicaid budgets go to administration compared to 20% and more for private insurance. According to the World Health Organization, private insurers higher costs are "mainly due to the extensive bureaucracy required to assess risk, rate premiums, design benefit packages and review, pay or refuse claims."

[emphasis so added]