It Starts With a Finger

It was only a matter of time before the health care debate led to people losing their fingers.

A KTLA report from a health care rally near Los Angeles last night may not include gun-toting protesters, but it does describe another sort of weapon: teeth. As in, a pro-reform protester used his teeth to bite off the finger of an anti-reformer.

Welcome to the jungle, bitch.

But blogging at DrumsNWhistles, Karoli, who says she was at the rally, said it was the anti-reformer who punched the pro-reformer: "He punched him in the face, knocked him to the ground" The pro-reformer got up, and there was a scuffle. When it broke up, the pro-reformer crossed the street and joined his compatriots.Karoli writes: "When he gets to our side, he tells a story in one sentence: 'He punched me hard, straight in the face, so I bit his finger off.'"

Wow. Those are weird rules you play by. Remind me to never look at you strangely.

Eric Ingemunson at RedCounty has more details from the rally. After speaking to several eyewitnesses, Ingemunson says the finger-biter apparently went nose-to-nose with the anti-reformer "and sneered, 'You're an idiot.'"

At that point, I'm told the victim either swung at or pushed his assailant's face away with an open hand, and his finger entered his mouth.

"It was a defensive strike," said Scott Bush, who witnessed the altercation. He said the assailant approached him in an unpredictable and threatening manner.

The MoveOn.org protester then allegedly bit off the finger up to the first knuckle, and spat it into the street where it was recovered by Bush.

"I picked it up and it had a piece of gravel stuck on it," he said. Bush rushed it to the hospital.

Another problem solved by our awesome private health care system. If we had socialized health care, they would have fed the finger to the dogs out back.