Another Stranger than Fiction Moment in Congress

People sometimes confuse the wonderful Borowitz Report fantasies with reality.  This is why.

South Carolina's own Joe Wilson, who everyone in the world knows for the class clown act of yelling "you lie" at the President of the United States during a Congressional speech, is at it again.

On Wednesday, at a House Foreign Affairs committee hearing, he posed a "question" to Secretary of State John Kerry, asking whether President Obama was working the Syria angle to in effect take our attention away from Benghazi and Obamacare.

Well, even Borowitz couldn't have dreamed that up.

John Kerry, who has up to now been able to narrate lists of evidence about the worst atrocities in his infamous monotone, responded in kind to this nonsense.

However, when Wilson's buddy from South Carolina Jeff Duncan held forth with the same accusations, Kerry had had it (4:20):

It's good to know that South Carolina is heavily represented in the House Idiot Caucus, but it's a bit upsetting to think that these guys also serve on the committee that asks the questions that will determine the vote on intervention in Syria.

I like to think that back in the home districts, constituents are looking a little embarrassed and not high-fiving each other in the streets.

Meanwhile, it was good to see John Kerry get his blood up.  This decision is far too important to stand on Congressional form and politeness.

The Sequester Backfire

Looking back on it, President Obama signing the sequester bill was a bit like an angry parent sending a child to their room to be with their computer and television.  He pretty much gave the right wing-nuts exactly what they wanted.

When people lose much needed income and benefits, South Carolina's own Tea Party idiots like Trey Gowdy, Mick Mulvaney, Jeff Duncan, and of course our poster boy of denial, Tim Scott, are cheering on the cuts.  Scott has the nerve to call it posturing when the President talks about cuts to police, educators and firefighters.  I guess if a job doesn't directly effect Mr. Scott, it really doesn't matter.

These clowns will come out cheering the austerity measures, and bragging on how they engineered the reduction in the deficit, while people are losing needed income and government services, and subsequently tightening their belts, leading to lost dollars for businesses.  The fact that austerity resoundingly did not work where it was put into place in Europe has no relevance for these fools, who have never felt the need to use facts to make an argument.

It's sad for our country, sad for the state of South Carolina, and sad for the voters who trusted that these people maybe knew what they were doing, and would have the courage to do what was best for their constituents rather than what made them look tough.

South Carolina's Idiot of the Month

I found election night depressing.  I thought everybody in the country would be depressed, until I watched the national news the next day.  It seems I had forgotten that I now live in South Carolina.

Here in South Carolina, we are proud that our relationship with God means that we can be ignorant.  And the poster child for that philosophy is re-elected US Representative Jeff Duncan.

He is a proud Tea Party member and fondly helped along by the ever-so-radical FreedomWorks, so right-wing he arm-wrestles Jim DeMint for the title of biggest right-wing-nut in Congress.

His claim to fame nationally was just about a year ago, when he asserted that allowing "illegals" to stay in this country was like letting vagrants and animals into your house, maybe looking for food, or maybe just wanting to do your dishes.

Closer to home, in 2007 Duncan sponsored a bill to allow guns to be carried concealed into any public school.  This was his empathic, God-directed response to the mass killing at Virginia Tech.  His logic of course was that had there been  some good ole' boy carryin' his weapon, that shooter would have been taken down, pronto.  Even in South Carolina, that bill was quietly put to sleep.

Jeff doesn't think up things like that all on his own.  He will tell you ad nauseum that he does pray for God's help in making decisions in Congress.  Amazingly, God has never disagreed with Duncan's view on any proposed legislation.

Jeff Duncan was disappointed in the presidential election outcome.  I doubt that Mitt would have tickled his fancy either -- far too left-wing for our Jeff.

So Congressman Duncan has decided that it's going to just be up to the House of Representatives to carry on the fight for democracy.  That means things like drilling closer to shore, a national sales tax, ridding us of that "job killing and socialistic" Obamacare, and of course getting those nasty illegals out of this great Christian land of ours.

It was with some pleasure, then, that I found five minutes from Duncan on You-Tube from last November:

Our representative was horrified, just horrified, that our President had failed to give thanks to God during his Thanksgiving address to the nation.

The thing that most tickled me about this, and reminded me that South Carolina does not a country make, is that there were about four times as many "dislike" ratings than "likes."  Having lived here for some thirteen years now, I sometimes lose my perspective.  So thank you, the rest of the country, for reaffirming that Jeff Duncan is a jackass.

Also, though, keep an eye on him this month, because November seems to be when his stupidity and arrogance busts out all over, kind of like a reverse spring.  I guarantee he will have lots more to say about what's wrong with everybody but him and those other crazies in Congress, and I for one, will not want to miss it.

So, Jeff Duncan, congratulations on being November's South Carolina's Idiot of the Month.