THERE. NOW SHUT UP.

The Obama administration is releasing copies of President Barack Obama’s original long-form birth certificate, White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer announced Wednesday.

…”The president believed the distraction over his birth certificate wasn’t good for the country,” Pfeiffer said. “It may have been good politics and good (television), but it was bad for the American people and distracting from the many challenges we face as a country.”

“At a time of great consequence for this country — when we should be debating how we win the future, reduce our deficit, deal with high gas prices, and bring stability to the Middle East, Washington, DC, was once again distracted by a fake issue,” Pfeiffer added. “The president’s hope is that with this step, we can move on to debating the bigger issues that matter to the American people and the future of the country.”

The Onion reports:

Though Mitt Romney is considered to be a frontrunner for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, the national spotlight has forced him to repeatedly confront a major skeleton in his political closet: that as governor of Massachusetts he once tried to help poor, uninsured sick people.

…”Every day I am haunted by the fact that I gave impoverished Massachusetts citizens a chance to receive health care,” Romney told reporters Wednesday, adding that he feels ashamed whenever he looks back at how he forged bipartisan support to help uninsured Americans afford medicine to cure their illnesses. “I’m only human, and I’ve made mistakes. None bigger, of course, than helping cancer patients receive chemotherapy treatments and making sure that those suffering from pediatric AIDS could obtain medications, but that’s my cross to bear.”

Today is the 5-year anniversary of Massachusetts’ landmark health care law, the basis for the national health care law that went into effect last year.

So let us take this opportunity to thank MITT ROMNEY, THE GUY BEHIND STATE-SUPPORTED HEALTH CARE. FORMER GOVERNOR MITT ROMNEY, THE GUY RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT, WHO BACKED THE PLAN AND SIGNED IT INTO LAW. Thanks, Mitt, for being so strongly behind public-sector health care!

Let us also take this opportunity to thank Sen. Scott Brown, who voted in favor of the bill.

We look forward to the continuing support of both of these Republicans for public-sector health care access and the need for a health care mandate to keep cost rising costs. We see no reason why either of these fine gentlemen would hypocritically change their tune.

Lots of Americans want the government to defund NPR. As Talking Points Memo pointed out, that’s because most Americans think the government is giving NPR 424 times as much money as they actually do.

Salon takes this to its logical extreme: what if the government was actually funding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting with the amount that most Americans think the CPB is getting?

…that would mean the CPB would receive $178 billion a year from the government. (And that’s not even counting what they get from Archer Daniels Midland and viewers like you.)

BBC, the largest broadcaster in the world, takes in $7.5 billion in income a year. If Americans were right, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting would have a bigger budget than every military on Earth besides our own. NPR would beat China in an arms race.

What would the Corporation for Public Broadcasting even do with that kind of money, besides continue to have a liberal bias and support the establishment of sharia law? We have some guesses:

• “Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!” would be broadcast live from a moon base.
• PBS would require a donation of at least $100,000,000 before sending you a DVD box set of a Fleetwood Mac reunion show.
• $250,000,000 gets you a genuine Thai silk tote bag filled with precious stones. And one DVD documentary on the making of “The Red Green Show.”
• “Frontline” would always be in IMAX 3-D.