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Saturday, December 26, 2009

Saturday Night Card Game (Sheldon Whitehouse)

This is the latest in a series on the use of the race card for political gain:

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) took to the floor of the Senate earlier this week and delivered a speech which would have made Alan Grayson and Keith Olbermann blush. Following in Harry Reid's footsteps, Whitehouse used the race card to attack those who disagree with him politically.

Whitehouse compared opponents of the Democratic health care bill to those who hung black from trees in the South and the Nazis who ran through the streets on Kristilnacht:

History cautions us of the excesses to which these malignant, vindictive passions can ultimately lead. Tumbrels have rolled through taunting crowds. Broken glass has sparkled in darkened streets. Strange fruit has hung from Southern trees. Even this great institution of government that we share has cowered before a tail-gunner having secret lists. Those malignant movements rightly earned what Lord Acton called "the undying penalty which history has the power to inflict upon wrong."
For his coup de grâce, Whitehouse showed his race card, insisting that those opposing the health care bill were racists who could not stand that Barack Obama existed:

And why? Why all this discord and discourtesy, all this unprecedented destructive action? They are desperate to break this president. They have ardent supporters who are nearly hysterical at the very election of President Barack Obama. The birthers, the fanatics, the people running around in right-wing militia and Aryan support groups, it is unbearable to them that President Barack Obama should exist.
For this despicable speech, Whitehouse gets the Saturday Night Card Game award tonight.



Update: h/t to a commenter for these words from Kevin Dowd (not Maureen) in the NY Times, with his year-end reflection:
To Sheldon Whitehouse: You, senator, are an idiot.
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Related Posts:
Saturday Night Card Game
Sheldon Whitehouse Becomes Alan Grayson
Sheldon Whitehouse Voted to Defund The Troops in 2007

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4 comments:

  1. I don't quite understand how Senators like this dingus and the one that compared our troops to Nazis (his name escapes me) are in such safe states that they can get away with this indefinitely. You'd think there'd be some ambitious Democrat who would be willing to take them on just to get a crack at the Senate seat.

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  2. Maureen Dowd let her brother, Kevin, write her column in today's NYT in which he sums up the past year in politics. It turns out her brother is the sane one in the family. Most of his criticisms and praise for the newsmakers of the past year are supported by a sentence or two why he feels the way he does.

    For Sheldon Whitehouse, he simply says, "you sir, are an idiot". The whole thing is worth a read.

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  3. "Whitehouse compared opponents of the Democratic health care bill to those who hung black from trees in the South...."

    [raises hand in the back of the class]

    Um, Senator, they were Democrats who used lynching.

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  4. A gift that keeps on giving. Rhode Island is missing it's idiot, he is in DC.
    I have never seen such stupidity out of supposedly well educated people in my life. A brand new Ensign has more smarts.

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