Saturday, March 12, 2011

Extreme Unction

Today, at the Watauga County Republican Party convention, Congresswoman Virginia A. Foxx had an opinion about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan:

WHAT SHE SAID
It is a sign that God is still in charge.

WHAT SHE MEANT
Have you noticed how powerful I've become?

15 comments:

Brushfire said...

Wow! What was the context for that? What kind of God does she worship, anyway? The earthquake was more on the level of demonic action, seems to me.

Anonymous said...

You think it's shocking to see Republicans tearing through rights like a hot knife through butter? Believe me, you're not half as shocked as one group I know: the Republicans.

Republicans honestly never expected to be in this position. Sure, Fox News kept up the drum beat, but every Republican I know, every former candidate, every GOP campaign worker, every ex-office holder, every rank and file Republican... they had all given up. It wasn't just a few Democrats who thought the D-ticket had locked down the ballot box for the next decade or so. Well before Election Day in 2008, Republicans could hear the bell tolling. They expected to pack their bags, move to the wilderness, and reinvent themselves. Hello, 2020, we're Republicans, but not like those guys you knew before. Not at all.

And why not expect a long term on the sidelines? They understood well enough that they had screwed up. The conservative policy of using the military to solve every problem – even problems that didn't exist – had landed the nation in two protracted, exhausting, fruitless wars with neither a prospect of immediate victory nor even a good idea what victory might look like. Conservative foreign policy, founded on exceptionalism grown into overweening vanity, had weakened old relationships and pushed away even our staunchest allies. Conservative deregulation had turned the markets into a showplace for elaborate thievery, and the banks into shells stuffed with worthless paper. Conservative trickle-down economics had sent the wages of the vast majority of Americans into reverse, sent jobs by the millions winging overseas, opened a yawning gap between the ultra-rich and everyone else, and brought on the biggest economic crisis in eighty years.

Republicans had taken a prosperous, peaceful nation with a budget surplus and turned it into a nation tottering on the edge of economic catastrophe, with an overextended military and nothing but lint in the bank account. When President Obama came into the office with huge levels of support, it wasn't just that people got caught up in the spirit of the occasion. It was relief. The Republicans, whose every working principle had turned out to be not just wrong but dead wrong, were gone.

All Democrats had to do was to offer an alternative.

FoxxFann said...

Wow! Talk about "out of context"

You, or whoever reported her speech to you, really had to stretch to characterize what she said like that!

I heard her speak, and to me she was offering her sympathies to the people of Japan and, at the same time, recognizing that GOD controls the world, not us!

You are just being dishonest and hateful, grasping at any straw to denigrate your political 'opponents'.

amjp said...

Anonymous,what does your essay have to do with Foxx and God. I know from personal correspondence from her that she really believes that she has direct communication with the Supreme Diety, as she conceives it. Perhaps that's a good thing. If the Supreme Being is really watching her, she may be in for some big surprises. Heh! Heh!

Anonymous said...

FoxxFan, LOL.

I'm sure the people of Japan don't consider that statement much of a sympathy gesture. Bottom line is Foxx always has to blame someone else for whatever happens, and she has to do it fast before someone blames her. This time she blamed God. What a tool.

Haw Haw said...

Two out of three voters disagree with you. Want some cheese with your whine?

Anonymous said...

Boy! That Republican kick ass God still has it in for the Japs even after WW2......

Henery said...

Dear Virginia Foxx,
Have you ever heard of "fault lines"?

Do you know that Japan has, like 1,500 earthquakes every year?

Is maybe the cause plate tectonics, or is the hand of God doing them all? Or just this one big one?

How gauche can you get?

Anonymous said...

Wow, JW, you and your liberal commenters aren't just crass, you're stupid. The phrase "God is still in charge" means that "no matter how much we think we can control our lives, no matter how much we pretend to be in control, we're not, and shit happens." Unless you think that the people of Japan planned this earthquake, the quote seems perfectly apt.

Oh, and as someone with family in Japan during the earthquake, a big FUCK YOU for trying to score political snark off of this.

maybe not in your opinion said...

Henery, did God have anything to do with the creation of the world, including fault lines?

Henery said...

Dear Maybe,
The point is that we don't need a two-bit politician, who's a practising Catholic in Washington and a fake Baptist in Watauga, telling us all about God's will. I believe the most galling thing about it is her pandering to the religious right when everyone knows she wasn't so all-fired religious until she got elected. Now it's "God this" and "God that" every time she turns around ... which is often.

just wondering said...

Then, Henery, by your logic, is Obama still a Muslim as his school records indicated?

He portrays to be a moderate Christian, even if he did attend a racist church for 20 years.

Do you have the same disdain for his pandering as you have Foxx or are you a hypocrite?

G.I.G said...

IMHO, it is in very poor taste to use the tsunami as an excuse to make any political comment.I wonder how the Japanese feel about US politics at this trying time for them ?

Unknown said...

Fakey Christian Republicans think they can hijack and hold GOD hostage as their sole domain. These nitwits think they own the Intellectual Property Rights over what God's material is supposed to convey to the entire world's population. What a coincidence; it happens to be only their whackadoodle fundie nonsense the rest of us are supposed to stop resisting...'or else'.
"Um, bite me."
For years, these blithering idiots have been trying to claim singular ownership over the American Flag from the rest of us too. That really pisses me off and propels me to commit acts of passive-aggressive behavior specifically designed just to annoy the living hell out of them.
I added the blazing glory of an American flag sticker proudly above my Obama/Biden campaign magnet followed by a Wicca symbol displayed below. OMG...the reactions from some of the passing cars are just SO worth it! They all seem to be screaming "HERETIC!" in some form or another and it's absolutely hilarious. I can't help myself. It must be the Devil who makes me do things like that.

Sorry, Virginia. Nobody is buying this overworked 'Fear God!' crap any more. You have cheapened 'your GOD' to the point where nobody either trusts or wants anything to do with any God whose followers behave anything like you people do!

SHAME! SHAME! SHAME!

bettywhite said...

Hey Anonymous #1 - if you're going to copy and paste someone else's article, at least give them credit or offer a link to the original:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/03/13/954753/-And-have-not-love