(By the way, here is last Sunday’s Area Votes in Congress writeup from the Philadelphia Inquirer. I really don’t have much to say about it except that it featured two typically awful No votes by Joe Pitts, one against extending jobless benefits and one against protecting our estuaries; to do something about it, click here…and I also posted here.)
1) I really try not to waste time with the ravings of a certain OxyContin addict in particular, but sometimes Flush Limbore says things that are so utterly ridiculous that an immediate comment is demanded; here, he wrote in The Murdoch Street Journal today that he was “not inciting violence” (and just because it’s in the Journal doesn’t give it the imprimatur of respectability, it should be noted).
In response, I give you the following:
- Here, he tells us that campaign contributions to Obama from the big financial firms “bought the rope (Obama) is using for their hanging.”
- Here, he says, among other things, that Obama is “overthrowing” the country.
- Here, he says supposed ties from President Clinton to Waco are “tangible.”
- Here, a 1995 quote is recalled in which Limbore predicted a “second American revolution.”
- Here, he says Obama thinks bankers are “far more evil than the biggest mass murderer of Americans in our nation's history.”
And these Media Matters entries are only from this month, people!
If I had the time and/or the desire to go back for a period of years (and I assure you that I don’t in either circumstance), I have no doubt that I would take me hours and hours to compile every instance of violent rhetoric from Limbore.
He’s almost pitiable, really…almost.
2) Also, I came across a recent item from Bernie Quigley; I wanted to find a way to highlight the recent story of how SEC investigators were cruising porn sites when they should have been trying to prevent our economy from doing “the big swirl into the hopper” that kick-started The Great Recession.
And in this post, Quigley tells us…
Is one-size-fits-all, nationalist, globalist centralization finding its endgame? This week's Newsweek, featuring Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) in his "Come and take it" boots on the cover, looks at Texas and sees behind the veil a different economic paradigm. "Texas has always been something of a separate country when it comes to politics and culture," they write. "Lately, the state seems to be functioning as its own economic republic." And as its federally dependent neighbor California unravels, it appears to be a quite successful model, but one that could well be destroyed by ObamaCare, the bailouts and centralization. Perry was the first to oppose.
We might ask in New England why this can't be said about us. Because our governors were first to flock to the rhetoric of Obama and the last, perhaps, to see ourselves with the kind of independence that Perry and Texas today represent. We need to go back to our Emerson and brush off in particular, his essay "Self-Reliance," which gave Yankee independence its independence. Today Perry embodies it.
Uh, I’m not at all sure that “Goodhair” Perry “embodies” anything except craven opportunism and demagoguery; to compare him to Ralph Waldo Emerson is truly the stuff of comedy.
One reason why, as noted here, is because Emerson had some interesting stuff to say about religion…
On July 15, 1838,[53] Emerson was invited to Divinity Hall, Harvard Divinity School for the school's graduation address, which came to be known as his "Divinity School Address". Emerson discounted Biblical miracles and proclaimed that, while Jesus was a great man, he was not God: historical Christianity, he said, had turned Jesus into a "demigod, as the Orientals or the Greeks would describe Osiris or Apollo".[54] His comments outraged the establishment and the general Protestant community. For this, he was denounced as an atheist,[54] and a poisoner of young men's minds. Despite the roar of critics, he made no reply, leaving others to put forward a defense. He was not invited back to speak at Harvard for another thirty years.[55]
…
Emerson's religious views were often considered radical at the time. He believed that all things are connected to God and, therefore, all things are divine.[111] Critics believed that Emerson was removing the central God figure; as Henry Ware, Jr. said, Emerson was in danger of taking away "the Father of the Universe" and leaving "but a company of children in an orphan asylum".[112] Emerson was partly influenced by German philosophy and Biblical criticism.[113] His views, the basis of Transcendentalism, suggested that God does not have to reveal the truth but that the truth could be intuitively experienced directly from nature.[114]
(And oh yeah, Rick, there were also rumors that Emerson was “AC/DC,” if you know what I mean, and I’m not talking about the band…not that there’s anything wrong with that.)
Perry, on the other hand, has said the following (here)…
In what was described as a "God and country" sermon at the Cornerstone church in San Antonio, attended by Perry and other mostly Republican candidates, the Rev. John Hagee stated, "If you live your life and don't confess your sins to God Almighty through the authority of Christ and His blood, I'm going to say this very plainly, you're going straight to hell with a nonstop ticket." Perry was asked if he agreed with those comments and said, "It is my faith, and I'm a believer of that."[25] Perry went on to say that there was nothing in the sermon that he took exception with. Kinky Friedman, the Jewish independent candidate for governor said, "He doesn't think very differently from the Taliban, does he?"
Good point (and if Quigley persists in his belief, then he could just relocate to The Lone Star State and help it secede along with Perry, if he really wants to be self-reliant).
3) Finally, I give you the following from Christine Flowers in the Philadelphia Daily News today (here)…
SHORTLY after Sen. Barack Obama won the 2008 election, I wrote a column titled "My Big Fat Patriotic Promise" in which I vowed to do what every proud American has an obligation to do: exercise my right to criticize the government when I thought it had veered off course.
Way back in that somewhat more innocent time, before tea parties and the health-care battle, I reminded readers that we were privileged to live in the "Home of the free, land of the critics."
Many agreed, filling my in-box with praise for saying something that is patently obvious: Dissent is patriotic.
There were a few naysayers who tried to interpret any criticism of Obama and his policies as evidence of racism, or at the very least a suspicious unwillingness to give him the benefit of the doubt before even 100 days had elapsed.
But on the whole, responders agreed that calling your critics evil was the first step on a dangerous path that tended to end up with people being sent to "re-education" camp.
Soo…Flowers is trying to say that she felt a duty to dissent more with Obama’s election, but that supposition on her part led others to think – in her mind, anyway – that that made her “evil”?
I cannot imagine any self-respecting media outlet anywhere on earth that would allow such delusional comments from anyone of a contrary political opinion (and if you guess that this is nothing more than a setup for more ad hominem attacks by Flowers against Bill Clinton in particular for rightly calling out the Tea Klux Klan, you win a free subscription to The National Review, the paper of which can be used to line your cat’s litter box).
This provides an occasion to revisit some instances of Flowers’ particular brand of dissent:
- Here, she said that Obama State Department lawyer nominee Harold Koh would “apply Sharia law” (uh, no).
- Here, she said anyone who voted for Obama wasn’t a “real Catholic.”
- Here, she either spun or merely regurgitated a variety of falsehoods on then-Illinois state senator Obama’s voting record on that state’s “born alive” legislation.
- Here (and this was particularly charming), she said she believed that Obama is trustworthy because he was “largely raised by white grandparents” in a column where Flowers criticizes Obama for labeling his opponents as “bigots” (Proof? Anywhere in sight??).
And I have to laugh when Flowers blames “the mainstream media” for supposedly propagating the narrative that the teabaggers are a fringe (uh, check this out, Christine).
Because it is owing to the very moral bankruptcy of the “mainstream media” that Flowers claims to detest that she even has a platform to spout her bile to begin with.
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