HBK-79
War Child
I had to stop listening to her. I had to do the same with W.
Ditto. But at least W. made me laugh.
I had to stop listening to her. I had to do the same with W.
Pssst...check your own state Constitution's Bill of Rights. Section One: no religious tests for public office, no ineligibility for office on grounds of religion. You like constitutions Mr. Cook, right?When emails first appeared calling for dumping current [TX House of Rep.] Speaker Joe Straus in favor of "Christian conservative" leadership, Straus' more visible opponents initially dismissed accusations of anti-Jewish/pro-Christian bias...It seemed like things had died down, until I obtained an email exchange Tuesday between two members of the State Republican Executive Committee—Rebecca Williamson and John Cook. After Williamson sent a fact sheet to SREC members defending Straus, Cook responded by dismissing her claims and saying that "We elected a house with Christian conservative values. We now want a true Christian conservative running it."
...When I posted the emails, Cook had not responded to phone calls—but today I got to speak with the SREC member at length..."When I got involved in politics, I told people I wanted to put Christian conservatives in leadership positions," he told me, explaining that he only supports Christian conservative candidates in Republican primary races. "I want to make sure that a person I'm supporting is going to have my values. It's not anything about Jews and whether I think their religion is right or Muslims and whether I think their religion is right...I got into politics to put Christian conservatives into office. They're the people that do the best jobs over all." Then he asked me if I was a Christian. "I just need to know who I'm talking to so I can understand," he explained. "The Bible is true to me. God exists, Christ is His Son and the Holy Spirit is in the people who are Christian." As a general rule, I don't disclose my religion, but I explained I would do my best to understand his point of view.
...Cook said his opposition was not about Straus' religion, although he prefers Christian candidates. "They're some of my best friends," he said of Jews, naming two friends of his. "I'm not bigoted at all; I'm not racist." But during the primary season, Cook said, "I try to select every time a Christian conservative to help." In a general election, however, he'll support the Republican even if the candidate is not a Christian—so long as the candidate shares his values...If someone couldn't see the connection between Christianity and government then "you don't like our founding fathers," Cook said. "They were Christians. Why would I not what to be like our founding fathers?" Christians, Cook says, "are the only people in the history of the world that take in all forms, that believe everybody is made by God." [ ???] When it comes to non-Christians, Cook said, "We have to witness to those people, that's our calling by the Bible...[but] I'm a Christian, I embrace all people and love all people." Cook was absolute that his position was not bigoted. "My favorite person that's ever been on this earth is a Jew," he said. "How can they possibly think that if Jesus Christ is a Jew, and he's my favorite person that's ever been on this earth?"
It's not anything about Jews and whether I think their religion is right or Muslims and whether I think their religion is right...
"I got into politics to put Christian conservatives into office. They're the people that do the best jobs over all."
"I'm not bigoted at all; I'm not racist."
^ Actually, what I was more getting at is how startling it is for a high-level state GOP official to not recognize why it's a constitutional problem for him to tell the media: Well, the voters gave us a mandate to pursue a certain agenda, so we're gonna make sure a Christian conservative takes the Speaker of the House position, not this Jewish conservative. Of course, any reasonably clever party organization could figure out ways to achieve just that without ever using the words "Christian" or "Jew," but he doesn't even get why you'd bother doing it that.
Still thinking
^ Actually, what I was more getting at is how startling it is for a high-level state GOP official to not recognize why it's a constitutional problem for him to tell the media: Well, the voters gave us a mandate to pursue a certain agenda, so we're gonna make sure a Christian conservative takes the Speaker of the House position, not this Jewish conservative. Of course, any reasonably clever party organization could figure out ways to achieve just that without ever using the words "Christian" or "Jew," but he doesn't even get why you'd bother doing it that way.
Reportedly, David Barton, a pseudoscholar of American history and the Constitution who speaks at Christian Identity conferences as well as on Glenn Beck's show, initially led the behind-the-scenes charge against Straus (Barton is himself a former Texas GOP chair), so, I don't doubt your take on it either, as far as it goes.
Rarely do you see a politician quite this honest: Last Wednesday, just hours after securing the position of chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Spencer Bachus, R-AL, told the Birmingham News that "in Washington, the view is that the banks are to be regulated, and my view is that Washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks."
In the very next paragraph, the newspaper reported that Bachus "later clarified his comment to say that regulators should set the parameters in which banks operate but not micromanage them." But the damage was already done. Bachus' quote rocketed around the lefty blogosphere, and on Monday night the 62-year-old Congressman earned a coveted "Worst Person in the World" award from Keith Olbermann on MSNBC's "Countdown."
The candor of Bachus' initial statement is eyebrow-raising, no doubt about it, but the fuss and bother over his revelation is a little bit disingenuous. We don't need to listen to the Alabama Republican's words to understand just which master he intends to serve--all you need to do is watch his actions. Together with his fellow Alabaman Republican, Sen. Richard Shelby, the powerful ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, he's part of a dynamic duo of market fundamentalist crusaders who will likely set the tone for how banking reform and regulatory oversight aimed at Wall Street are implemented for the next two years.
Immediately after the midterm elections were over, and long before his confirmation as chairman, Bachus got quickly to work on his anti-regulation agenda. The day after the election, in fact, Bachus sent a letter to the Financial Stability Oversight Council, that, as I wrote last month, was written as if dictated by bank lobbyists. His main target: the so-called Volcker rule, which, as economist Simon Johnson has so eloquently put it, "in principle would force big banks to get out of the business of betting their capital in ways that can bring down the entire financial system." Three weeks later, Bachus co-authored letters to the inspector general offices at the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve, demanding detailed information about how the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is being set up. "History indicates that the process of setting up a new government agency is extraordinarily challenging and difficult," the two lawmakers wrote, according to Bloomberg. "To date, we know very little about the activities being undertaken by the Treasury to establish the Bureau."
But don't be fooled by Bachus' lament about "a clear absence of accountability and transparency" surrounding the establishment of the CFPB. The clear intention is to harass and block the CFPB interim director, Elizabeth Warren, at every step of the way. Over in the Senate, Richard Shelby has made no attempt to hide his disdain for the very idea of consumer protection or his distaste for Warren, but he's been relatively powerless to do anything about it. Bachus, however, will have plenty of opportunities to create friction. The reports are due Jan. 10. Hearings will undoubtedly follow. Want some must-see CSPAN TV? Watch Warren, with her Oklahoma twang, fend off the hostile questions soon to come from the deep-drawling Bachus.
...The Birmingham News tell us that Bachus is the first Alabama Republican to chair a House committee since the 19th century. This is mostly an accident of history. Deeply conservative Alabamans have previously run the primary committees overseeing banking in both the Senate and the House--but they were Democrats back then, since there was no place for Republicans in the post-Reconstruction South. The chain of events set in motion by the Voting Rights Act that eventually transformed the Democratic South into a sea of red states changed all that. (Richard Shelby, it's easy to forget, was a Democrat as late as 1994, when he switched sides after the big Republican victory in the midterms of that year.)
The most famous Alabaman to influence how Washington regulated Wall Street was probably Henry Steagall, whose name resonates through history from its inclusion as part of the name of the Glass-Steagall Act that separated investment and commercial banking for the better part of 60 years. Both Bachus and Shelby voted to repeal Glass-Steagall, and both of them have worked hard to make sure that the spirit of regulation birthed in the Great Depression, and revivified by the Great Recession, dies stillborn. Henry Steagall was no flaming liberal, but it is hard to imagine he'd be too pleased by today's Alabama agenda.
Rarely do you see a politician quite this honest: Last Wednesday, just hours after securing the position of chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Spencer Bachus, R-AL, told the Birmingham News that "in Washington, the view is that the banks are to be regulated, and my view is that Washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks."
Bachus' quote rocketed around the lefty blogosphere, and on Monday night the 62-year-old Congressman earned a coveted "Worst Person in the World" award from Keith Olbermann on MSNBC's "Countdown."
Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., is set to assume the chairmanship of the House Homeland Security Committee in January, and today comes the news that he intends to launch an investigation of "radicalization" among American Muslims. In some perverse sense, King, who has represented part of Long Island in Congress since 1993, may be just the man for the job: He spent years openly supporting the terrorist Irish Republican Army.
The journalist Alex Massie has ably documented King's history with the IRA, a group that he did not break with until 2005:
In the 1980s, he was a prominent fundraiser for Noraid, the Irish-American organization that raised money for the IRA and was suspected of running guns to Ulster, too. Indeed, King's rise to prominence within the Irish-American movement was predicated upon his support for the IRA at a time when New Yorkers were softer on terrorism than they are now. Noraid helped win King his seat in Congress, making him, in some respects, the terrorists' Man in Washington. ...
In 1982 he told a pro-IRA rally in Nassau County, New York, that "We must pledge ourselves to support those brave men and women who this very moment are carrying forth the struggle against British imperialism in the streets of Belfast and Derry." That same year, an IRA bomb killed eight people in London's Hyde Park. Two years later, the IRA almost succeeded in murdering the British prime minister.
If "IRA" were replaced with "Hamas," the sort of fundraising King did would these days earn you a lengthy prison sentence for material support for terrorism. Ironically, King has since emerged as the member of Congress perhaps most willing to toss around the "terrorism" label; he recently called for the designation to be extended to WikiLeaks. A few years ago, he also made the ludicrous claim that "80-85% of mosques in this country are controlled by Islamic fundamentalists." After Sept. 11, he floated the idea of using "tactical nuclear weapons" in Afghanistan.
In another literary twist in the tale, when King did finally break with the IRA in 2005, it was over his frustration with the lack of Irish support for the American invasions of two Muslim countries, Iraq and Afghanistan. King's fear of Muslim terrorism had finally overwhelmed his support for Irish terrorism.
he intends to launch an investigation of "radicalization" among American Muslims. In some perverse sense, King, who has represented part of Long Island in Congress since 1993, may be just the man for the job: He spent years openly supporting the terrorist Irish Republican Army.
When I lived in NYC (which was in the late 80s, before he was elected to Congress), I remember hearing that Nassau County and especially its 'Paddy' police force were hotbeds of IRA support. Ethnic tribalism is rampant in NYC though, so that allegation should be taken with a prudent grain of salt--i.e. could therefore easily be true, but could also therefore easily be anti-Irish rumor-mongering.
The Republican Party has completely lost the plot. They are immoral, from top to bottom, behave in shameless ways on a daily basis and their co-opting of 9/11 has been disgusting.
This doesn't mean that the Democrats are anything to write home about - they are pathetic.
But the Republicans are a group that belongs in a century many centuries ago.
The Republican Party has completely lost the plot. They are immoral, from top to bottom, behave in shameless ways on a daily basis and their co-opting of 9/11 has been disgusting.
This doesn't mean that the Democrats are anything to write home about - they are pathetic.
But the Republicans are a group that belongs in a century many centuries ago.