The fine folks at Sadly, No! have done it again with their latest Two Minute TownHall. I just wanted to add my two cents on a couple of the screeds covered.
First up is Kathryn Jean Lopez (known to Sadly, Nosians as “K-Lo”) with this bit of “commentary” on Tweety’s ambush of Texas State Senator Kirk Watson (D - Austin):
The poor local pol’s answer was instructive (and accurate): “Well, I’m not going to be able to name you specific items of legislative accomplishments.”
Pfft. Accurate, my ass! It’s as accurate as me claiming to be Elvis Presley’s love-child! And I’m not the first to say it. In the immediate aftermath, some commenters at other (better-trafficked) blogs have provided reams of Sen. Obama’s legislative accomplishments, in particular, the Lugar-Obama Cooperative Proliferation Detection and Interdiction Assistance Act of 2006 (S. 2566) — aimed at keeping loose nukes out of the hands of terrorists — and the Coburn-Obama Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 (S. 2590), which mandates the creation of a searchable, publicly-available website “to track approximately $1 trillion in federal grants, contracts, earmarks and loans.” And that’s not all. The day after the Iowa caucus, former West Virginia State Legislator-turned Washington Post columnist Charles Peters pointed out Obama’s extensive list of legislative credits in his role as an Illinois state senator, with a special focus on Obama’s role in making Illinois the first state to require that police interviews with suspects be videotaped to ensure that any confessions are legit. (One can also find a good resource of Sen. Obama’s legislative record over at this diary entry at Daily Kos).
But then again, it never was about Sen. Obama’s qualifications to begin with, was it? Any Smear Will Do.*
If anything, the incident highlighted the need for the Obama campaign to better prepare their spokespeople for the kind of “Gotcha!” questions that right-wing tools like Chris Matthews will be slinging on a daily, if not hourly basis.
And then there’s Linda Chavez, the woman who via the miracles of Wingnut Welfare was transformed from The Most Holy George W. Christ’s failed initial choice for Secretary of Labor to the proud owner of a cushy gig at TownHall, where she’s free to question the patriotism of anyone to the left of Father Coughlin — such as, say, Michelle Obama.
I think the Sadly, No! summary says it all:
Shorter Linda Chavez: True patriots are ‘my country, right or wrong…’ conservative types. Then there are awful liberals like Michelle Obama who actually want America to conform to its ideals — who, in short, hate America as it is.
You just know that if she were a character in Babylon 5 she’d be on ISN nightly questioning Capt. Sheridan’s decision to wear civilian clothes instead of his EarthForce uniform during the early days of the Earth Alliance Civil War, and that she’d be the one of the first to accuse him of suffering from Minbari War Syndrome. In and of itself, that’s rather fitting, given the frequency with which anyone offering the slightest criticism of The Most Holy George W. Christ The Infallible is automatically dismissed as a sufferer of Bush Derangement Syndrome, and also most ironic given that the actor who plays Capt. Sheridan is no liberal.
* With apologies to Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice.
