“Your appendix is connected to your large intestine, which is connected to your small intestine, which is something that Karl Marx had.”

No, this isn't a post just to mark me as the one millionth blogger to link to Jon Stewart's very funny "11/3 Project" clip. It's also a post to point to this piece on a New York Times blog the other day. It covers a protest of the health-care bill in Washington. And OK, it's the Times, but that sign in the picture -- the one that says "Marx" with a red circle and a line through it (a la the Ghostbusters logo; I ain't afraid of no socialists) -- is of a type that doesn't seem hard to find at these protests.

A while ago on this blog, I wrote "I've never had any use for the 'Bush=Hitler' brand of sloganeering." I think that's pretty clear. Well, likewise, I think it's intellectually lazy (more like intellectually comatose) the way the grassroots right has reacted to the Obama administration thus far. Like all major policy debates, there's a lot to be said about health care -- the least useful of which is, "Trying to change the health-care system in the U.S. will turn the country into a Marxist stronghold." This is asinine on at least seven levels.

But what I really loved about the report in the Times was this summary of a common combination:

Some of the same people warning of too much government spending also complained that Medicare does not provide sufficient coverage.

That brought to mind a possible Onion headline. Something like this:

Beneficiaries of Government Help Complain Government Doesn't Help Enough at Protest Against Benefitting from Government Help