In his never-ending quest to chase civility right out of our politics, Jim ‘Waterloo’ DeMint has now contributed the following:
“If the court throws it out, I think it’s a well-deserved slap in the face to the president and the Congress to make us think that what we’re here for is to honor our oath of office, which is the pledge to defend the Constitution, which limits what we can do,” DeMint said.
I realize that you can’t tell from that what the issue is. You might reasonably infer that Mr. Obama is trying to declare himself king or something, with that hyperbolic nonsense about honoring the oath of office and defending the Constitution. But these people talk like this; it doesn’t have to make sense.
No, the administration’s great sin here, the imagined flouting of the Constitution, is trying to address the inexcusable farce of the way we pay for health care in this country.
You know what? I think I’m going to become a straight-ticket voter. I’m going to vote against anyone who advocates Conan the Barbarian politics. You know what I mean: The sort of politics that holds that the greatest things in life are:
To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.
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Of course, he’s also including Congress as being among those who deserved a “slap in the face.” But then, who would disagree with him on that? 🙂
By the way, watch the video clip AFTER you read DeMint’s words, and perhaps you will perceive something that has struck me about him…
His mild-mannered voice and facial expressions completely belie the extreme things that he says. He looks and sounds so reasonable that it helps to read the actual words, divorced from his voice and visage. Then you see what’s happening.
It sounds as if he’s saying the ONLY thing Congress and the President should do is “defend the Constitution.”
which come to think of it, IS his platform. Ughhh
I have already begun weighting my vote based on how vicious and distorted each candidate’s rhetoric is. I have also tried writing Mr. Demint. It was a waste of time and paper. All I have ever gotten back were form letters that bore little or no relationship to my expressed concerns. I am so very tired of extreme, repetitive hyperbole, distortion, and lies that it’s becoming hard for me to vote for anyone. What kind of people are we electing who so (apparently) willingly besmirch their own reputations with this behavior?
The key moment comes around 4:45…DeMint says should Obamacare be thrown out, “we should not make the mistake of trying to do something immediately…there should be lots and lots of hearings…” etc.
In other words, a return to the GOP’s famous “sense of urgency” on health care reform that has been in place for lo these past 30 years or longer. And who can blame him? The people that “deserve” health care in DeMint’s mind are those who never had any problem to begin with. Those who find it difficult to afford health care deserve their own fate, according to modern mainstream conservative thought.
Repeal and Replace has become Repeal and Do Nothing. Republicans are content to allow 20% of all Americans to struggle along uninsured. That’s the business model that allows the greatest prospect for exhorbitant profits for big pharma, big insurance and big medical equipment manufacturers.
Was anyone else struck by DeMint’s remarks about having a health care plan that carries a person through retirement? Sounded to me like he’s suggesting the the abolishment of Medicare and that it would be a fait d’accompli under Republican rule.
Jim demint is tough for me.
I agree with his anti tax and limited government mentality. He is too much of a hardliner though.
I totally disagree with his “slap” comment. Its reminiscent of newt gingrich the way he disrespects the office. You don’t have to agree with the man but must respect the office of POTUS.
The truth is america has gone too far to enact austerity measures and save our way out of it. Only a bipartisan effort that includes medicare and social security and the huge entitlements is going to pull us back.
If that means modest fair tax increases to get savings and entitlement cuts so be it.
Jim DeMint needs a good kick in the nuts. Figuratively speaking, of course.
“Jim DeMint needs a good kick in the nuts. Figuratively speaking, of course.”
Line him up to Nancy Pelosi and do a 2 for 1.
How do you figuratively kick someone in the nuts?
And here I thought I’d at least see the link to this before now.
I’m no fan, but I have to admit, they were quite fetching in those miniskirts and boots. It didn’t much matter what they were singing.
Fortunately, the camera did not dwell on the guys, who were dressed in the heighth of nadsat fashion, circa 1975. In other words, like dorks.
You grew up in the 1970’s and don’t like ABBA?
What did you do with your platform shoes when you were through with them? The 1970’s, when everybody was over 6 feet tall.
Just to make everyone feel just a little bit older, the blonde is now 67 years old.
“height” has only two H’s…..
Kathryn! It’s a literary allusion (and don’t tell me I meant to type “illusion”).
By spelling it “heighth,” I’m making a direct reference to A Clockwork Orange. If you check Google Books, you’ll find that Burgess spells it that way well over a dozen times, usually in the context of “heighth of fashion.”
And my implied point was that fashion at that time was as absurd as in Burgess’ parody of such…
It was yet another affectation in Alex DeLarge’s inventive, rather rococo, use of language.
Was Kathryn a grade school teacher or a high school English teacher?
SD, I know for a fact that the blonde in ABBA, Agnetha Falstog is younger than 67. She’s either 60 or 61. Frida is probably about 67.
I just read Burgess’s piece in the New Yorker about the book, and he said the book was written to make money and just happened to strike a nerve and get made into a Kubrick film that was even more popular. He had no literary pretensions.
bud – Yep, she’s only 62. Your “facts” are about as good as mine on this matter.
He may have had no literary pretensions, but he achieved literature. I can’t think of anything I’ve ever read with a more mesmerizing use of language.
There was a flaw in the story, and it tends to be a flaw in other Burgess works. He’ll have things happen that make you think, “Huh?”
For instance, there’s the “happy ending” to the novel — which the original American edition left out, and which Kubrick left out of the movie, I guess because it spoiled the dark thrust of the story, and its symmetry.
And yet, in a weird way, that original ending may have been more like real life than the more artistically satisfying one. SPOILER ALERT!… Basically, Alex outgrew it. He became an adult and started to want things out of life other than sex, drugs and ultraviolence. It seemed particularly absurd for that to happen, because Alex was so extreme. But extremism was Burgess’ style.
Anyway, the change in tone and what you expected from the character was jarring.
But… even Huck Finn, THE greatest American novel, had a significant flaw from a literary standpoint — the beginning and end are written in a completely different tone from most of the novel. They are light and comical, whereas the middle is serious and profound. But that’s the way he wrote it, and its awesome.
Oh, and he probably would have told people he did it for the money…