Politico reports in, “Rush Limbaugh: Mitt Romney booed at NAACP because white,” that Rush Limbaugh said that the candidate’s speech was “over these people’s heads” and of Obama: “He’s confident they’ll boo Romney, simply because Romney’s white.”
We fairly sure that Limbaugh can’t open his pie-hole without committing, at very least, Dickory in the Second Degree.
Mitt Romney, valiantly fighting an uphill battle, was booed while speaking at the 103rd NAACP Convention in Houston on July 11th. Reportedly the harshest round of booing came when he reiterated his goal to repeal the Affordable Care Act. This made him sad:
Image by NICHOLAS KAMM / Getty
To his credit however he both finished the speech and garnered sporadic applause and even a reserved ovation. At a later speech in Montana he responded to additional heckling honestly with, “[I] want people to know what I stand for and if I don’t stand for what they want, go vote for someone else, that’s just fine.”
Full reports available at the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal.
The current comic from SMBC seems fitting, doesn’t it?
Comic by smbc-comics.com. Used with respect, but not permission.
So – how many political arguments you seen that use this proof? And here you thought political arguments weren’t logical!
Posted in Sad Fun
As reported by American’s United in “Louisiana Revelation: School Voucher Funding – It’s Not Just For Christians Any More” Louisiana state rep. Valarie Hodges (Republican) is now unsure of her support for Gov. Bobby Jindal’s patently unconstitutional (but still ratified) law allowing taxpayer money to fund private religious schools. According to the Livingston Parish News the representative is quoted as:
Rep. Valarie Hodges, R-Watson
“I actually support funding for teaching the fundamentals of America’s Founding Fathers’ religion, which is Christianity, in public schools or private schools.” and “I liked the idea of giving parents the option of sending their children to a public school or a Christian school.” Later she added, “Unfortunately it will not be limited to the Founders’ religion.”
While the founders religious preferences are still debatable it’s very likely that many (if not most) would be very uncomfortable with the evangelism of today. It’s also true that many of the most well-known and most respected of the founding father’s (Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton, Adams, Wilson, Morris, Madison, and Washington for example) are also those most critical of religion.
Jefferson, of course, is credited with coining the term “separation of church and state” in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association:
“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between church and State.”
Representative Hodges clearly needs to review her history. Finally she ends: “We need to ensure that it does not open the door to fund radical Islam schools. There are a thousand Muslim schools that have sprung up recently. I do not support using public funds for teaching Islam anywhere here in Louisiana.”
For Representative Hodges clear ignorance of her own history and the US Constitution she easily earns a charge of Dumbassery in the First Degree. For her blatant (and illegal) favoritism of her own religion she also garners an additional charge of Dickory in the Second Degree.
Posted in Church and State
Tagged Dickory, Dumbassery, politics, religion, Seperation of Church and State
You’ve got to hand it to the president; at his campaign stop in Glen Allen, Virginia he and his team kept their spirits up despite a massive deluge. Buzzfeed has 30 Pictures Of President Obama’s Rain-Soaked Campaign Speech that show how well he did but our favorite, of course, is this one where it’s clear that he’s had just about enough rain for one campaign:
Image by MANDEL NGAN / Getty Images
Good on the president for going through with the appearance despite the weather!
Photo by Wikipedia
On May 1st, 2003 – less than six weeks after the start of a conflict many would argue is still ongoing – President Bush announced “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.” An enormous banner reading, “Mission Accomplished,” ruffled in the breeze behind him.
Of course we now know that although “Major Combat Operations” stopped the conflict continues to this day and has claimed (by varying accounts) the lives of over 4,500 U.S. servicemen and women and tens-of-thousands of Iraqi (some estimates are in the hundreds of thousands) after this announcement.
It may be argued that the case depends completely on the definition of “Major Combat Operations” but semantics aside the hubris and spectacle of the day would haunt the administration. Bush would later say in 2009, “Clearly, putting ‘Mission Accomplished’ on an aircraft carrier was a mistake.”
The administration’s later admissions concerning the inappropriateness of the banner coupled with the legitimate points about the definition of what was being announced soften the blow here. While history may very well treat the former president more harshly we can only sentence him to Misdemeanor Douchebaggery for hiding behind technical definitions and ignoring the broader implications. We also add the charge of Dumbassery in the Fifth Degree simply for being unable to see how easily this could bite him in the ass.
Several televisions spots produced by the Obama campaign focus on his record as an outsourcer of jobs while he managed Bain Capital. As both the Washington Post Fact Checker and FactCheck.org review in-depth there is no reasonable evidence to support this claim.
Here’s one of the ads in question:
As an aside: while the focus of this has been on his time at Bain the ad also claims that he outsourced jobs as governor of Massachusetts. This is also more complex that presented and is covered well in the FactCheck.org piece.
The Obama campaign is leaning heavily on official (but unconvincing) SEC filings to support their claims. Even if correct they provide only the most tenuous of connections leading us to consider an initial finding of Felony Douchebaggery.
However, in response to criticism, they are scrambling to provide any compelling proof for the claims but are still running the ads without that proof making this a clear case of Dickory in the First Degree.
SadPolitics.com will focus on the quality (or, more specifically, the lack of quality) infecting our national political discourse.
Simply put politics become “sad” when people lie. Note that this is not the same as being in error. Somebody that makes an error and admits it has not lied – in fact with any luck we’ll be able to applaud many such people on this site. No, a lie is when you know something is wrong but you continue to say it because it helps you.
For our purposes, at least, politics aren’t sad when somebody disagrees with you. The world is a complicated place and there are no simple answers leading to situations where multiple honest, intelligent well-constructed but nonetheless completely contradictory opinions may flourish. But to step over the line, to propagate a lie or brash, uninformed simplification that’s known to be false – that’s sad.
Posted in Site Business
