So, what’s wrong with this photo? It came from a campaign mailer from Patricia Phillips, who is a Loudon County, Virginia, Republican running for a state senate seat.
OK, but thanking a US veteran might be more appropriate.
The keen-eyed and quick-witted will note that this distinguished old officer is — or more accurately, was — not a member of the US Armed Forces. He’s a Soviet naval officer. You know, our enemies back in the day.
I propose that Phillips’ campaign staff is neither keen-eyed nor quick-witted. And her opponent must be laughing his ass off.
JISHOU, HUNAN — Just days after Matthew Vadum of American Thinker proposed the dubious analogy that letting the poor vote was like giving crooks burglary tools, another brilliant mind pops up with similar cutting edge 18th century political ideas.
This time the mind in question belongs to John David Dyche, a Republican lawyer in Louisville, Kentucky. He wrote an opinion piece for the Courier-Journal entitled “Property rights crucial to voting rights.”
He begins with another dubious analogy — doctors this time, not second-story men.
Some bemoan Kentucky’s 10 percent voter turnout in recent primaries. But quantity hardly assures quality in making important choices.
If you had a serious disease would you open your treatment to everyone or confine it to a few specialists? A free society’s biggest decision is how it shall be governed. The Founders therefore placed prudent limits on participation in it.
After offhandedly suggesting that it was probably a good idea to let blacks and women vote, Dyche then takes us to the good old days when only the landed gentry could participate in politics or governance. You know, the situation that encouraged some demented landed gentry types to create an entirely new nation sometime around 1776.
Unlike Vadum, who draws his arguments from paranoia-scented thin air, Dyche dresses up his anti-democratic broadside with lots of quotes from historical figures — none of whom lived after the 1850s — with whom he happily agrees. Must be that law school training.
JISHOU, HUNAN — David Barton is a loon, a dangerous loon.
I’ve blogged before about David Barton’s peculiar version of American history. He teaches that the USA was deliberately conceived as a Christian nation, despite considerable evidence to the contrary. Barton misquotes the Founding Fathers, twists and quotemines historical documents, and when all else fails outright lies about history to support his cockeyed ideas.
The Religious Right adores him. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), who is vainly trying to be the presidential nominee of her party, invited Barton to teach the Constitution to newly minted Representatives. Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who at one point was considering a presidential run, famously said:
`“I almost wish that there would be, like, a simultaneous telecast, and all Americans would be forced–forced at gunpoint no less–to listen to every David Barton message, and I think our country would be better for it. I wish it’d happen.”
The Atlantic Monthly had a lengthy analysis of Barton’s appeal and his peculiar methods of historical research. There is no doubt that Barton’s religious belief drives his interpretation of history, but what kind of beliefs does he have?
Here’s a clue. Right Wing Watch posted this excerpt of Barton’s appearance last year on televangelist Kenneth Copeland’s “In God We Trust” video series. Barton is talking about the need for Christians to get involved in public affairs.
JISHOU, HUNAN — I wish she would just shut up, go back to Alaska and do whatever she did before being picked as Sen. John McCain’s running mate. Oh, wait, she can’t. She quit that job. Well, you get my point.
Days after the shootings in Arizona, after a number of people remarked on her use of gun-friendly terminology and metaphors, Sarah came out of her Lower 48 igloo to post a long-winded video on her Facebook page. Here is the text, with my commentary in all-caps. I apologize in advance if I offend anyone.
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Like millions of Americans I learned of the tragic events in Arizona on Saturday, and my heart broke for the innocent victims. No words can fill the hole left by the death of an innocent, but we do mourn for the victims’ families as we express our sympathy. HOLE? POOR CHOICE OF WORDS FOR GUNSHOT VICTIMS. “WE” — ARE WE QUEEN NOW?
I agree with the sentiments shared yesterday at the beautiful Catholic mass held in honor of the victims. The mass will hopefully help begin a healing process for the families touched by this tragedy and for our country. BLAH BLAH BLAH — POLITICIANS’ PLATITUDES
JISHOU, HUNAN — A century and a half ago on Dec. 24, South Carolina seceded from the USA, the first act of rebellion in what became the American Civil War.
From what I’ve read in the US news lately, it seems some people have forgotten why South Carolina and the other Confederate states withdrew from the Union. Teabaggers and revisionists would like us all to believe the War was all about State’s Rights, and a tyrannical federal government, led by the Yankee scum. They avoid the unpleasant reality that the main issue was slavery.
There were of course many factors that led to the Civil War, but the catalyst for it was the issue of slavery. The South did not want to give it up, and the Union was making it more and more difficult for the South to conduct its slave-dependent business.
So, yeah, at a certain level, the issue of state’s rights was a major cause of the Civil War, but they weren’t talking about general issues of interstate commerce or interstate laws. The specific issue was slavery, and no amount of whitewashing (pun intended) by today’s neo-confederates can conceal that truth.
South Carolina, on Dec. 24, 1860, issued the following proclamation. It clearly shows that the state’s principal complaint was the federal government’s and northern state’s interference with slavery. The words “slave,” “slavery”, “slaveholding” and “servile insurrection” pepper the document. The state legislature was not making some nebulous argument about “state’s rights.” The South was pissed that the rest of the USA was fucking with the South’s slave economy.
JISHOU, HUNAN — “Sarah’s got a gun. Sarah’s got a gun. Her new show’s just begun. Not looking for Russians. What ’bout the caribou? What did it fail to do?” (With apologies to Aerosmith)
It failed to drop on her first shot, because Sarah can’t shoot. As a frontierwoman, she would starved to death on her first Alaskan winter. Watch, then read the article (link after the video).
Here’s the article fisking this obviously staged hunt.
Will people actually believe that Palin bagged this hapless animal all by herself, thereby proving what a rough-and-tough Mama Grizzly she is? Sad to say, the answer is probably yes. Her adoring fans have absolutely no abilities at discernment.
She and Dick Cheney ought to go hunting together. Ahem.
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