Will Somebody Please Shut Bob Corker Up?

A number of people think that the Eighteenth Amendment prohibiting alcohol production or distribution is the worst thing attached to the United States Constitution. This is because a number of people haven't been paying attention.

Prohibition in the 1920s was a lot like the War on Drugs is today. Are any of you having any trouble getting high out there? Try your local schoolyard. Chances are that there's a guy there who can hook you up.

Besides, repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment was fairly easy, much simpler than taking people's alleged "democracy" away is. And that's why the Seventeenth Amendment is without question the most terrible thing in the Constitution.

Prior to ratification, most United States Senators were elected by their state legislatures. Then toward the end of the nineteenth century, the Populist movement gained broad popular support, although not enough to actually win elections at the federal level. The Seventeenth Amendment is an outgrowth of the Populist movement, as is the unholy mess that California has become.

Actually, that may or may not be fair. California state legislators might be the smartest people in the whole world, but they're trapped in a stupid system. The Seventeenth Amendment, on the other hand, created a system that promotes stupidity itself.

Having senators elected by the state legislatures was every bit as democratic as direct election is, since the legislature itself is popularly elected. The old system was still reflective of the popular mood, but the senators that emerged from it tended to be better informed, more capable, and less prone to mindless demagoguery.

Look at the U.S Senate prior to 1913 and compare it to the Senate today. The only thing sadder than people saying that a drunken nepotism beneficiary like the late Ted Kennedy was one of the greatest senators of the 20th century is that they're probably right. Had the Senate's current placeholders been in office during the Civil War, the United States would have ultimately been annexed by Peru.

Was there corruption under the old regime? Absolutely. But what do you call a former First Lady getting elected in a state that she's barely spent ten minutes in for no other reason than people felt badly that her husband got a blowjob? Can you think of anything that Mitch McConnell has done with his life?

There is probably no greater example of the destructive power of the Seventeenth Amendment than Tennessee's Bob Corker. Senator Corker is living proof that nothing succeeds like stupidity tempered by viciousness. The longer I think about it, the more convinced I am that there aren't many people as violently fucking dumb as Corker and the ones that are are happily institutionalized. In that, he's the perfect expression of everything the Republican Party has become.

To my eternal pleasure, the good Senator seems determined to display his awesome ignorance on the proving grounds of the Capitol at every opportunity.

This week, he showed off for a Canadian politician, Dr. Carolyn Bennett (MP, Lib. St. Paul's, Another Toronto Liberal.) The result was simply stunning to anyone who has even a passing interest in how life really works and how the retarded always triumph over those who didn't spend their high school years exposing themselves on the short bus.

The U.S. is the world leader in medical innovations and technological breakthroughs, Republican Sen. Bob Corker charged, yet Canada gets all the financial benefit by selling drugs and medical devices at prices irresistible to Americans.

"One of the things that has troubled me greatly about our system is the fact that we pay more for pharmaceuticals and devices than other countries, and yet it's not really our country so much that's the problem, it's the parasitic relationship that Canada and France and other countries have towards us," the Tennessee lawmaker told Carolyn Bennett.

"Meaning that you set prices and unfortunately all the innovation, all the technological breakthroughs, just about, take place in our country ... you benefit from us and we pay for that and I resent that."

There are so many factually wrong or misleading statements in that tirade that I'm not sure where to begin.

But it gets better.

Their debate was a timely one. Another U.S. senator -- Democrat Byron Dorgan from North Dakota -- is preparing to make a legislative push in the days to come that would allow Americans to buy cheaper Canadian drugs.

Dorgan will introduce an amendment to the health-care reform legislation currently before the Senate finance committee that would legalize so-called re-importation. Under current U.S. law, only pharmaceutical companies are allowed to import prescription drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration into the United States.

Drug companies import more than US $40 billion in drugs into the U.S., while drug wholesalers and consumers are shut out of the global marketplace. Consequently, Dorgan has long maintained, Americans pay the highest prices for prescription drugs of anywhere else in the world.

News of the pending amendment, to be introduced when the health-care reform bill makes it to the Senate floor, has alarmed some Canadian observers who fear exportation could lead to a shortage of drugs in Canada.

Bennett herself raised that concern in her testimony on Wednesday.

"Please don't think that you can import cheap drugs from Canada ... it will last us about 36 days," she told Corker.

He replied: "That's a silly way of dealing with it."

"My goal over time is for us not to pay more than you because you set prices and cause us to pay more when we're doing all the innovation," Corker added.

"In essence, the Canadian government and its citizens are taking advantage of our citizens by virtue of setting prices that are lower than competitive prices."

Dr. Bennett later described her retarded interrogation at the hands of Corker as "a nice to and fro."

Since I doubt the Senate has the balls to hold a Member of Parliament in contempt, I've decided that I need a seat so I can deal with these assholes myself. I assure you that my testimony would be very different than Bennett's.

Sen. Corker: How would you like to respond, Mr. Stalin?

MP Stalin: First, let me thank you, Senator, for proving every stereotype that I've ever heard about the South. That really was a rather impressive display. Were you pretending that I'm Harold Ford, Jr during it?

Senator Corker, no one appreciates a good Huey Long impression more than I do, but virtually everything you just said is either misguided, dishonest or balls-out fucking dumb. If the Crackers on your staff actually prepared that for you, you really should consider reevaluating your hiring practices.

Sen. Corker: I resent that! I ...

MP Stalin: Mr. Chairman, can you put a muzzle on that asshole? I'm trying to make a point here. Thanks.

Bob, I can call you Bob, right?

Sen. Corker: I prefer Senator Corker.

MP Stalin: Thanks, Bob. Now, I get that you're a Republican and you don't understand capitalism very well. That's why I'm here. To sorta school you. By the time I'm finished, you might not be so fucking delusional.

You are correct in arguing that American pharmaceutical companies do business in Canada, where price controls are in effect. However, that might be the only thing you've been right about all day.

You see, no one's forcing your companies to operate in my country. They do so because after a careful cost-benefit analysis, they've determined that they can make a healthy profit in Canada. And they do, as their quarterly earnings statements will no doubt affirm.

One of the basic tenants of capitalism is that major purchasers have the power to negotiate price. That's true in every transaction that doesn't involved North Korea or the United States government. I seem to remember something about your Department of Defense paying $400 for a toilet seat, over and over again for a goddamned decade.

But that's another point for another day. The fact is that buying in bulk is a good way to get bargains. Make no mistake, Bob. The largest domestic customer of your drug companies actually is the U.S Government; though Medicaid, Medicare, the Veteran's Administration and the Centers for Disease Control. No other American entity comes anywhere close to your purchasing power and your power to effect price.

How is it that anyone who has ever set foot in a Costco knows something you don't, Bob?

Not only do you choose not exercise that power, you have actually passed laws prohibiting the government from doing so. Actually, you did it twice; first in President Bush's 2003 deficit factory of a prescription drug bill, and then again with President Obama's bribe agreement with the pharmaceutical industry this past spring. Is everyone in this town either crooked or stupid?

As one of the Greatest Canadians Ever, the good Dr. Reverend, has repeatedly told us "That's what happens when you let the Goyim have money."

Sen. Corker: I've never heard anything so outrageous ...

MP Stalin: Put a sock in it, Bob. I'm not one of your illiterate hillbilly constituents and this ain't one of your retarded Tea Parties.

Another important part of capitalism is the sanctity of the contract. As you might have noticed, Big Pharma isn't exactly stupid. They agree to our price controls because of the implicit understanding that their product will be sold at low prices for domestic consumption, not to sell back to folks too stupid to cut their own deal.

What that basically means is that even if you pass Senator Dorgan's idiotic amendment allowing re-importation, we're not going to export the drugs to you. Furthermore, you're all fucking nuts if you think that we will. We can pass laws in Canada too, you juvenile jerk-off.

The simple fact is that none of you assholes are serious about providing prescription drugs to the American people at a reasonable price. If you were, you'd negotiate one with the providers, just like good capitalists everywhere do.

"A competitive price" is precisely that, you tool. It's decided by the market, and you jackals are are almost as big a player in the pharmaceutical market as you are in the defense contracting market. Yet you don't use the powers inherent in your market position to effect pricing.

What you're actually doing, Bob, is trying to use the power of the government to maximize the industry's profits. Pretending otherwise is a cute little act that might wash with the idiots who vote in primaries, but it doesn't mean that you're telling the fucking truth.

Do you honestly think that if you used the government's market position to lower price, you would lower innovation? An industry that doesn't innovate, dies. That's another law of capitalism, Bob.

Sure, they might not have hallucinatory profits every year, but they can make up the shortfall by cutting back on lobbying and campaign contributions. Make no mistake, shitheels like you aren't protecting the market, you're perverting it.

The only reason that you get away with it is because the Democrats are every bit as dishonest and corrupt as you are, but three times as fucking incompetent.

You're not only a shill for the pharmaceutical companies, Bob. You're a statist shill for them, using the power of the government to keep prices unnaturally high. Yet you're the same stupid prick who was on TV three Sundays in row bitching about the GM-Chrysler bailout. How do you sleep at night, Bob?

Sen. Corker: I sleep just fine.

MP Stalin: I figured you might. The most evil motherfuckers among us always do.

Every single industrial sector that made America great has been crashing into the ground for thirty years now. But health care is recording profits perversely out of proportion with the rest of your economy because the American government has been literally skinning the American people alive to maximize those profits.

Although you probably haven't read your own Constitution, I have. And there's nothing in Article One that gives the legislative branch the power to engage in price gouging on behalf of private industry against the people, chucklehead. Google it.

By the way, please spare me the rhetorical horseshit about "Canadian socialism," okay? Our market works just fine, which is why we haven't had 33 failed attempts to reform it. And that nonsense coming from a country that borrows hundreds of billions of dollars from actual communists for no other reason than you're bad at math is enough to make me shit myself with laughter right here.

If you don't get that, you're not the senator from Tennessee as much as you the senator from Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.

Sen. Corker: Are you finished, sir?

MP Stalin: Yeah, it's been a blast. May I close my testimony by telling you to go fuck yourself and stating my hope that you choke to death on your own tongue for the record?

Sen. Corker: No.

MP Stalin: I didn't think so, you cocksucker.