YES, BUT THE OTHER 299,999,700 AMERICANS ARE STILL FREE!

The wingnuttosphere went a bit crazy yesterday because Congressman John Dingell, in a radio interview, said it would take a while for health care legislation to, as he put it, "control the people." Wingnut reaction: Obviously he meant this literally! Obviously real human beings are unable to keep themselves from blurting out the sinister plans they hope to conceal, like the farcical Nazis hiding out in England in the classic Monty Python sketch "The North Minehead Bye-Election":

Himmler: ... I am retired vindow cleaner and pacifist, without doing war crimes (hurriedly corrects himself) tch tch tch, and am glad England win World Cup - Bobby Charlton, Martin Peters - and eating lots of chips and fish and hole in the toads, and Dundee cakes on Piccadilly line. Don't you know old chap I was head of Gestapo for ten years. Five years! No, no, nein, I was not head of Gestapo at all...I make joke....

Truly evil people can't help saying what they really mean! Just like Dingell!

But before we panic, let's go to the transcript and see what Dingell really said. Emphasis mine:

Let me remind you this has been going on for years. We are bringing it to a halt. The harsh fact of the matter is when you're going to pass legislation that will cover 300 American people in different ways it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people.

And that's exactly what he said:



Well, obviously, if we're going to take "control the people" absolutely literally, we have to take to take "300 American people" -- rather than "300 million American people" -- absolutely literally as well. Clearly Dingell was referring to "control" of only a tiny fraction of the U.S. population. Maybe it's a small group of our millions of prisoners, or a few illegal aliens, or some jailed international terrorists -- but it sure as hell isn't the whole country if he didn't say "million." Clearly, all 299,999,700 million other Americans are still free citizens!

Feel better now, righties?