Mike Stark: Virgil Goode: dripping with contempt and hatred

by Mike Stark [courtesy of Politics on HuffingtonPost.com]

So a doctor is concerned that so many of our poor smoke. He develops a plan to reduce the smoking rate of welfare recipients. He shares such plan with his Congressman, Virgil Goode (R, VA-5).

Virgil Goode, who has repeatedly gone to bat for big tobacco interests (once by lamenting the idea of an elderly woman (his mother) being denied "one last pleasure" just before expiring on her hospital death-bed), responds thoughtfully.

So... I wonder how he would penalize those whose behaviors were "likely to produce aids." And who are these people? Some enterprising journalist may want to take the leap and ask the questions.

And trans-fats? Republicans don't generally get high marks for their sense of humor, but this is sublime. Tobacco hooks millions and millions of teens every year, eventually killing many of them - but only after they spend a lifetime forking over a significant portion of their income to their killers. Virgil Goode considers the tobacco pimps morally equivalent those that make home-made chocolate-chip cookies using a stick of butter. That's funny stuff.