It seems that the Talarico clinic phone call supposedly verifying that he spent time at the Lindner Center of Hope clinic in Ohio is a washout. Talarico was seen in Austin a day before he was supposedly “released.” This is a shame, since it acts as an embarrassment to conservatives and creates a measure of cover for Talarico, who has yet to explain what he was doing for the two weeks he vanished into the eighth dimension.
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The call was said to be taped by Rhein Amacher on Saturday the 10th and published by Nick Sortor on his X page. The recording is very convincing; it features a harried and evidently not too bright staffer who seems pretty well up on the age scale. At one point she corrects the caller as to where the clinic is actually located.
But that’s where the questions begin. To start, “harried” and “Saturday” don’t really mesh under these circumstances. A high-class clinic such as this one is unlikely to be overwhelmed with activity during a weekend, particularly one located in the backwoods of southern Ohio, far from the madding crowd. The “not too bright” also rings false. A clinic of this type is going to hire the best they can get – grandmothers at loose ends coming in part-time are not going to make the cut.
There’s also the HIPAA question. HIPAA regulations are extremely ferocious about releasing patient information. The section dealing with penalties is lengthy and detailed. For inadvertent, unintentional offenses, the fine can rise to $50,000. For a criminal release of info, it’s up to $250,000 and ten years in jail. Believe you me, playmates, all personnel at such clinics are going to have that drilled into their heads using the Ludovico process, if not having it tattooed on the back of their right hand. The chances that a staffer would release or confirm anything about a patient are about zero.
Going over the top in matters like this is not at all rare among conservatives. In point of fact, it’s something of an occupational disorder. People just can’t leave well enough alone. A great story appears, compelling, serious, and with the potential to do substantial damage to the lefties. But it’s never good enough. They have to Spielberg it, throw in UFOs, dinosaurs, burning orphanages, and whatever else they can think of. It never works. They always get caught, and a potential game-changer is, at the very least , thrown into doubt, if not rendered useless.
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This has happened all too often in recent years. There were the Birthers, suffering an OCD focus on Obama’s birth certificate while ignoring all the legitimate questions concerning his convoluted career. There were the “fiber masses” that supposedly infested the blood vessels of anybody who accepted the COVID shot. A little common sense would have put both of these to sleep: repeatedly moving the goalposts on the birth certificate was never going to produce worthwhile evidence. And if blood vessels were actually jammed with some kind of synthetic “fibers,” that means a massive and immediate stroke.
At the same time, both these yarns buried legitimate questions that should have been pursued, such as Obama’s invisible man status at Columbia and his strange overseas connections, or the fact that the COVID vaccines can cause serious heart infections. These were brushed aside – if they ever came up at all – by media and politicians as being no more than another batch of conspiracy theories.
So if Nick Sortor and Rhein Amacher have some explaining to do, so does a conservative movement that has fallen on its face once again. We ought to be a lot more careful going forward. And BTW, Talarico still needs to come across with what he was doing and where for those missing two weeks. (It might even have been the Lindner Center of Hope. Their “denial” is a little masterpiece of weasel-wording.) Hammer him on that and forget the phone call.
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Image: Antonioaesparza