By GottaLaff
Joe "You Lie!" Wilson wants everyone he knows to sign a "pledge" to repeal health care reform.
Maybe he meant to say, "pledge to donate to Joe 'You Lie!' Wilson":
(click on image to enlarge)By GottaLaff
Rep. Joe Wilson's wife Roxanne has been diagnosed with swine flu, the congressman's office confirmed to CNN on Thursday.The South Carolina Republican who gained instant notoriety in September for shouting "You lie!" at the president told The Hill newspaper on Thursday that he plans to keep his distance from his wife when he returns home this weekend.
Biting... lip... harder. Clenching... teeth...
I've deleted snarkage three times already. I'll just walk away now.
UPDATE: I should add that I do wish Roxanne a speedy recovery, despite my disdain for her husband.
By GottaLaff
Thanks to the good people at HeroBuilder.com, if you are looking to part with a cool $39.95 on a needless recession-era purchase, you can now be the proud owner of a mini-fig that ably chronicles that time in American History where a guy yelled at the President during a speech to a joint session of Congress.[...]What next, a Glenn Blech doll that cries? Teabagger dolls that shout, "Nazi!"? A Boehner doll with optional bronzer?
You can listen to it here. Then, after fifteen minutes of shouting "You Lie!" the Joe Wilson action figure starts whining like a milquetoast and starts asking your other action figures to fight his battles for him.
By GottaLaff
Incivility is the new secondhand smoke. Everyone feels impelled to disdain it, but nobody is willing to do away with it entirely.Please read the whole thing.
Besides, it's profitable. Look at South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson. Two weeks ago, he was just a loudmouth with the bad taste to shout an insult at the president of the United States from the House floor. Since then, he's become a right-wing darling, and $2 million in new campaign contributions have flowed his way. Incivility apparently cuts both ways, though; his Democratic challenger has taken in more than $1.5 million. [...]
People enjoy incivility -- maybe because it's easy to remember; maybe because it's entertaining. [...]
These days, everyone seems to remember a time in the relatively recent past when civility wasn't in such short supply and when rudeness and boorishness of the Wilson variety wouldn't be tolerated. So the natural question is: How did we get here?
Actually, our recent descent into boorishness didn't begin on the political platform but on the stage -- not with our politicians but with our stand-up comics. [...]
From the perspective of cultural history, you can draw a straight line from Rickles' Las Vegas lounge act through Stern and Limbaugh and on to Wilson's big mouth. [...]
[O]ur electoral politics have always been essentially uncivil, from the founding of the country to the present day. The problem is that we suffer from an insufficient regard for the facts.
Without facts there is no argument, and without argument there is no persuasion. Argument plus civility is dialogue, and that produces compromise, which is what permits people of good conscience to live peacefully with one another even though they hold different views.
The growing culture of assertion and the death of persuasion, rather than the loss of civility, are what we ought to fear about our politics. Because there's no insistence on a common set of facts, we're perilously close to the point at which we stop even talking past each other and the language of our politics dissolves into mutually unintelligible dialects.
As the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan liked to say, "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts."
By GottaLaff
Johnson, a Georgia Democrat, wrote in the Atlanta Journal Constitution on Monday that he doesn't think that most of Obama's opponents are motivated by racism, but that he believes Wilson's comments "winked at a racist element" and that there is a small but "racially motivated fringe" among those who disapprove of the president and his policies.
"Wilson is a canny politician," Johnson said. "His outburst was a carefully calculated appeal to a particular constituency who question the legitimacy of Barack Obama's presidency. The symbolism of his act, which violated the rules of the House and attacked the dignity of the president's office, emboldened and validated those who believe that President Obama, despite having been lawfully elected, is an illegitimate occupant of the White House."
Johnson said that some feel "resentment that the president of the United States is a black man" and that the "risk of violence is real." He said he believes some of the angry protests during town hall meetings over the summer were also motivated by racism and warned that if that element of some opposition is ignored, it will "fester, grow and come back to haunt us in ways we haven't seen in decades."
Pfft. What a Commie fanatic biased alarmist. Next thing you know he'll start wildly speculating about the KKK's impending resurgence:
"I guess we'll probably have folks putting on white hoods and white uniforms again and riding through the countryside, intimidating people," Johnson said on September 15. "That's the logical conclusion if this kind of attitude is not rebuked."
By GottaLaff
Ivan Marte, the ex-chairman of the Rhode Island Republican Hispanic Assembly, has announced that he’s quitting the Republican Party because he was embarrassed by Rep. Joe Wilson’s “you lie” outburst at President Obama [...]Click on the letter to read it. It's a thing of beauty... if you're not a Rushpublic, that is.Marte wrote, “I do hope that my resignation served as a sign, that the Republican Party in this Nation need to reevaluate their position” on reaching out to minority groups.
By GottaLaff
Wilson may have a conflict of interest, however. Two months before he heckled Obama, he introduced legislation to keep Sainey Fatty, an illegal immigrant from Gambia, in the country. Fatty came to the U.S. for school in the early ’90s and lived here for seven years while under a deportation order, according to his friend Bill Cook’s blog.
In his bill, Wilson asks Congress to forgive Fatty’s immigration woes, drop the deportation order against Fatty and allow him to remain in the country legally.
What a big, mushy, soft heart he has! What a mensch. I'm starting to tear right up.
Wilson’s communications director Ryan Murphy told Raw Story in an e-mail that “Congressman Wilson does not support illegal immigrants getting access to a government taxpayer funded health insurance program.” He did not respond to questions about what motivated Wilson to keep Fatty in the country or whether Wilson supports Fatty’s ability to receive medical care in the U.S.
Of course not. That would underscore what a big Fatty hypocrite he is.
[...] Fatty’s friend Cook says in his blog that Fatty is allegedly a Christian convert who abandoned his Muslim roots.
Oh, okay, I see. He's nothing like President Muslim Hussein Obama, then. So I bet Joe the Hypocrite would never shout "You lie!" at Christain Convert No Longer Muslim Fatty.
Speaking of freedoms:
Cook did not respond to Raw Story’s request for comments, and restricted the public’s ability to view his blog after Raw Story left a voice-mail message at his office.Is it me, or is Lindsey Graham in every story we do here?
After South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham followed Wilson’s lead, Fatty gets to stay in the U.S. for at least the next 15 months. Graham introduced legislation similar to Wilson’s in the Senate, which essentially gives Fatty an automatic stay on the deportation order to give the Senate time to act on Graham’s bill. [...]
“By the grace of God, Fatty has been granted a stay on his deportation,” his friend Cook’s blog reported last month. “…Congressman Wilson and others reached out to Senators DeMint and Graham, who were able to secure a temporary stay–word reached Fatty less than 30 minutes before his flight out of the U.S. was slated to leave today. Praise God for His kindness!”
Oh man, wow! That's GREAT! Now that Fatty gets to hang out in America, he can get better health care!
Oh.
Never mind.
By GottaLaff
If you ask me, this guy short-circuited long before his little outburst:
Why did Joe the Mouther lose it?
[H]istorian Doug Brinkley was on Hardball Friday afternoon. And he gave what strikes me as the best explanation I've yet heard for just what happened and why when Joe Wilson famously blew his stack during the president's speech.
By GottaLaff
September 10, 2009Thank you so, so much, No Drama Zone. That was positively cathartic, and very apt. You're a good mom.
Joe Wilson, Member
United States Congress
212 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, D. C 20515-4002
Mr. Wilson:
I am an 80 year old mother and my older child is 51 years old; but, if ever I were to hear him call anyone a liar or rudely and obstreperously tell someone they were telling a lie, I would slap his face. My two children, 41 and 51 respectively, are very well reared as was I. I can remember as a little innocent child calling someone a liar. I only did it one time because the lecture in the form of a lesson in proper decorum sank in, and to this day, I have never called anyone a liar. My mother considered this the ultimate in rudeness and disrespect, not only for the person I called a liar, but for me, myself.
Having learned that lesson at such an early age, it made me cringe when you, at age 62, and a former military man, yelled to the President of the United States of America, “You lie.” As a military man, you know the chain of command; and, you were addressing the Commander in Chief of the Un ited States of America. Of course, President Obama who is a very refined gentleman did not respond and he kept right on target delivering the most brilliant speech I have ever heard. I can say this with a degree of authority because I have been witness to every presidency since Herbert Hoover. Never in the hallowed halls of Congress have I witnessed such coarse, gross, despicable behavior.
I don’t know if your mother is alive or not, but if she is, I’m certain that she hung her head in shame knowing that all over the world you have disgraced her, yourself, your wife, your four sons, your office, your constituency and your country. Children of good breeding, who are properly reared carry the teachings of their parents throughout their lives. At 80 everything I do is tested against, “what would my mother think of that?” I would never defame her precious memory by demonstrating lack of self control and a knowledge of the social graces that separate women from ladies and men from gentlemen.
My mother was a proper Southern genteel lady who commanded respect because of the way she carried herself. I would think that your being from the South, you would have gotten some of that good ole Southern hospitality and gentility that seems to be characteristic of in telligent people of the South.
I do so hope you will listen to the foreign media as I did late last night. You are an international disgrace because from Ireland to China and England, your crudity was the main topic of conversation.
I note that you have a law degree. I wonder how proud your alma mater, University of South Carolina Law School , was of you tonight as you showed to the world that education without character is vacuous and meaningless. There is a popular expression of people with degrees who lack common sense, they are referred to as “educated fools.”
If you were playing to the media and to the camera for attention, you succeeded because your worldwide legacy will be that you were the ill-suited and ill-placed person who demeaned himself in the halls of Congress for the first time in U S history.
Written with embarrassment for my country,
[No Drama Zone]
By GottaLaff
Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) voted against the daughter of House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) for a spot on the state Public Service Commission in 1998 when Wilson was a state Senator, contrary to a statement he made to Roll Call Wednesday.Now to be fair, maybe there's more to this story, but since I can't access it, and based on what I know about Joe the Mouther, all I can say is...
By GottaLaff
Via Taegan:
SNL goes behind the scenes with the Republican caucus to explain why Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) really yelled out "You lie!" during President Obama's speech last week before a joint session of Congress.
By GottaLaff
Rep. Joe Wilson's Democratic challenger Rob Miller has collected more than $1 million online since Wilson shouted "You lie!" at President Obama, but next week Miller will be raising money the old-fashioned way.The South Carolina Democrat, who has yet to make a public appearance since Wilson's outburst, will head to Washington for a pair of fundraisers on Capitol Hill.
A group of ex-staffers for former South Carolina Sen. Fritz Hollings and Rep. Jim Clyburn will host an event for Miller at a Capitol Hill restaurant on Wednesday, with a minimum suggested donation of $250, according to an invitation provided to CNN.
Later in the evening, Miller will head over to a Pennsylvania Avenue bar for a low-dollar meet-and-greet with "young professionals." The entry fee for that gathering is $20.10.
Unfortunately, Joe the Heckler has raised nearly $1.8 million. If that's not bad enough, he's raised a few thousand since his House wrist-slap.
By GottaLaff
CliffDoggie's back, and he goes after Joe "You lie!" Wilson... and more:
Cliff Schecter is a very talented political analyst, Democratic consultant/strategist, and author (The Real McCain). He's also a good friend... so good, in fact, that he convinced me to co-edit this very blog with him and Paddy a couple of years ago.
He's been busy working on Very Important Things, so he had to leave The Political Carnival (he may pop in again, though, stay tuned...)
I nicknamed him "Bulldog" because of his ability to go up against any political talking head, sink his teeth into him/her, and not let up. When given the chance, he devours his opponents. This video doesn't get quite as wild and woolly as usual, but he still gets to strut his stuff.
It's so good to see him back on air, especially on my Twitter pal David Shuster's show.
By GottaLaff
Mortimer Hayden Smyth (The Center For American Free Thought, Republicans Against A Public Option) wonders why the Right Wing can't seem to settle on which word they want to call Obama...I need not say another word. For more commentary on this subject, read The Boulder post.
By GottaLaff
Michele "You Da Man!" Bachmann does it again. "You da man!", meet "You lie!" If they ever mated, they'd have "You da lying man!" babies.
There is no end to her eye-widening lunacy:
Michele Bachmann spoke at a tea party in St. Cloud, MN at 10 a.m. on Sept. 12, 2009.You da idiot!
In her speech she said that Rep. Joe Wilson, the idiot Congressman who yelled "You Lie" at President Obama, is right and that she agrees with him.
Michele Bachmann has publicly stated that she thinks that President Obama is anti-American and now she says that he is also a liar.
By GottaLaff
It's good to know that some in the media are listening:
By GottaLaff
Joe Wilson, real name "Addison" presents himself as a hard boiled combat veteran, retired Army colonel and all around tough guy.He belongs to "white supremacist" organizations, fought hard to keep the Confederate flag in South Carolina and, when an aide to the notorious racist Strom Thurmond admitted Thurmond had a half African-American daughter, Wilson abused and threatened the woman in an attempt to shut her up.
Yeah, but at least he doesn't lie like President Obama does, right? So what if he's partial to white?
Born in 1947, Wilson was prime material for the Vietnam War. After taking deferment after deferment for college and law school, in 1972, Wilson was glided into a coveted Army Reserve billet, protecting him from service in Vietnam.
He quit in 1975 with the fall of Saigon and transferred to the National Guard where he was a Judge Advocate, a "lawyer."
Wow, he must be pooped after all that combat!
Wilson has one of the worst records in Congress, having voted against Veteran funding 11 times. The only "veteran" Wilson has helped is himself.
That's Rushpublican for "sacrifice".
Though ending up with full health insurance and a fat military retirement, Joe Wilson, like Senator Lindsay Graham, both passed more qualified serving officers who were deployed to combat and moved into high paying positions as full Colonels, all done using political clout.
That's Rushpublican for "self-made man".
This gives both Wilson and his good friend and reportedly highest ranking gay officer in the US military, Lindsay Graham, substantial "double dip" retirements without ever having to actually serve in the real military and, especially, not during the Vietnam War.
Quit being so petty. I'm sure his political rival never even set foot in a recruitment office, let alone a combat zone. What a girly man!
Wilson's opponent in the upcoming election is Rob Miller, 13 year US Marine with 2 combat tours in Iraq.
Never mind.
Wilson, close friend and confidant of Fox Entertainment reality show host Glenn Beck is a strong advocate of private health care.
In fact he received over $ 400,000 in political donations from the health care industry in support of his position.
That's Rushpublican for "sex".
Insiders say that Beck helped stage the Wilson "impromptu theater" during the Presidents address to Congress, offering full support from Fox News in exchange for Wilson's violation of traditional Southern good manners, something Wilson has little familiarity with.
That's Rushpublican for "honest".
About the author:
Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran and a regular contributor to Veterans Today. He specializes in political and social issues. You can see a large collection of Gordon's published articles at this link: VeteransToday.com.
He is an outspoken advocate for veterans and his powerful words have brought about change. Gordon is a lifelong PTSD sufferer from his war experiences and he is empathetic to the plight of today's veterans also suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
By GottaLaff
UPDATE: Here's the video:
Let's get this straight: When Joe the Mouther shouted, "You lie!" at the president of the United States, temporarily disrupting his health care speech, and more permanently disrupting the news cycle, that wasn't playing politics?
Yes, Joe, you go right on thinking that the Dems want to deflect from health care reform, the legislative win of their dreams.
Hyp. O. Crite:
Look for a showdown next week, assuming Democratic leaders follow through on their threats to formally scold Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) for breaking House rules.Hoo-ah! Hoo-ah!
Said Wilson on Fox News: "I am not going to apologize again."
Wilson accused Democrats of "playing politics" to take attention away from the health care reform battle.
By GottaLaff
Wilson's Democratic opponent in next year's congressional race, Rob Miller, said in a Friday night e-mail to supporters that he had received more than $1 million in small contributions in less than 48 hours.
A campaign aide to Wilson confirmed Saturday that Wilson has raised more than $700,000.
By GottaLaff
When Republican congressman Joe Wilson of South Carolina heckled President Obama during his address to a joint session of Congress this week, it was no surprise that the subject was immigration.Ding! Welcome to Election 2010.
It's also no surprise that while the House Republican leadership demanded that Wilson apologize for his intemperance and breach of protocol, pro-GOP talk-show hosts such as Rush Limbaugh and right-wing bloggers have defended him and urged him to stand firm.
For the moment, at least, the most effective opposition to the Obama administration comes not from the Republican Party establishment but from the talk-show/tea-party right, which -- if it has its way -- will convert the GOP into an almost exclusively white, zealously religious, mostly Southern party. For these people (including Southern Republicans such as Wilson) immigration is a red-meat issue.
With this sort of history as background, it's a little easier to understand how South Carolina, which flew the Confederate battle flag over its statehouse until 2000, has emerged as the place where Republican blood comes closest to flowing the talk-show-approved hue of red. [...]DING!
Healthcare reform may be this month's battleground, but immigration, abortion, gun control, separation of church and state, and jingoism decked out as patriotism are the articles of faith from which the talk-show right's catechism derives. Immigration remains a particularly resonant issue because it touches so many of this tendency's sensitive nerves: racial anxiety, gnawing questions of national identity and a generalized sense of traditions under threat. Thus, even now -- in the midst of economic crisis, mass unemployment, war and the healthcare debate -- the talk-show right continues to beat the anti-immigrant drums. [...]
What's odd about the obsession of GOP lawmakers like Wilson with this issue is that opposition to humane and realistic immigration laws is neither a traditionally conservative nor traditionally Republican position. [...]
If the GOP's cooler heads are wondering whether to draw back from where the talk-show right is leading them, they should consider the case of California. Former Republican Gov. Pete Wilson's strident advocacy for Proposition 187's sweeping anti-immigrant legislation not only permanently alienated most of the state's Latino voters from the GOP, but set in motion the forces that ultimately produced the country's most ideologically extreme state Republican and Democratic parties. That's one of the major reasons we have a state government in which the two parties no longer engage each other in any substantive way, and in which little that's genuinely important or constructive is accomplished.
The United States can ill afford to have California's dysfunctional present become its future.
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