Bat-s**t crazy Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tx) is at it again.
The problem with this guy’s statements is that there are hundreds of thousands of disenchanted Republicans, mainly those who vote against their own financial interest and don’t like Barack Obama. They believe what they hear. Gohmert, Bachmann, Palin and every other Obama hater and Fox newscasters know this. Those people are their target audience.
History indicates that powerful people speaking out against a leader for ideological or political differences is basically harmless. However, when those statements about that leader turn into lies and rants with no basis in truth bad things can happen to the person being ostracized. Not by the hands of the powerful politician or media savvy news person but perhaps simply a guy who wants to put the “white” back in the White House.
I have to wonder if that’s the goal of some of those liars.
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) told aconservative radio program this week that the Obama administration “bungled” the investigation of the Boston bombing due to internal guidance from the Muslim Brotherhood.
Appearing on World Net Daily’s radio show, Gohmert speculated that Attorney General Eric Holder read bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev his Miranda rights to “shut him up” and undermine the investigation into the brothers’ possible ties to radical Islam. “It’s very clear to everybody but this administration that radical Islam is at war against us,” he said, before noting that Obama has displayed a “real pattern” of “incompetence” in responding to the threat from extremists during his tenure. He then suggested that members of the Muslim Brotherhood have infiltrated the administration and are leading the president astray:
Q: Some people are wondering whether or not the fact that it looks like radical Islam is once again a factor here is potentially a narrative that some folks don’t want publicly out there. Do you think that’s playing into this at all?
GOHMERT: I think it is… It’s very clear to everybody but this administration that radical Islam is at war agains us… Radical Islam is at war with us. Thank God for the moderates that don’t approve of what’s being done. But this administration has so many Muslim Brotherhood members that have influence that they just are making wrong decisions for America.
A Tea Party Congressman has joined a growing listof conservatives are seizing on the manhunt for the Boston Marathon bombing suspect to argue for looser gun laws. Appearing on The Blaze Thursday afternoon, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) suggested that the Bostonians on lock down need high capacity magazines to protect themselves from violence. Via Kyle Mantyla at Right Wing Watch:
What hit me this morning when I heard the residents there around Boston and in the area where they thought someone might be were ordered to stay in their homes, businesses were ordered closed, public transportation was ordered closed. Let me ask you, if you’re sitting in your home and you know there are only two possibilities for people coming, one is law enforcement and the other is somebody who has already killed Americans and continues to do so, how many rounds do you want to be limited to in your magazine as you sit in your chair and wait?
Watch it:
Earlier this week, Gohmert claimed that the Boston tragedy should give pause to immigration reform advocates who seek to reform the system, an argument that several Republican leaders are now advancing.
Tea Party member and United States Rep. Louie Gohmert has been spewing his crazy conspiracy theories for a while now. This is just the latest in a long list of delusional statements from the Congressman…
During an appearance on CSPAN’s Washington Journal on Wednesday, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) claimed that this week’s bombings of the Boston Marathon should give pause to immigration reform advocates who seek to reform the system.
“We have seen this in Israel,” Gohmert said of the Boston attacks and recalled visiting areas that had been struck by suicide bombers. “Finally the Israeli people said this is enough. They built a fence and the rest is a wall to prevent snipers from telling their kids. They finally stopped the domestic violence from people that wanted to destroy them. I am concerned we need to do that as well.”
The Tea Party favorite said he feared people entering the country illegally or posing as undocumented Hispanic immigrants could carry out “copycat things.” “We know Al Qaeda has camps on the Mexican border,” he said. “We have people that are trained to act Hispanic when they are radical Islamists.”
Gohmert criticized the bipartisan immigration bill unveiled by the Gang of 8 this week, arguing that it would give immigrants “a bit of amnesty.” “You have to understand that we want America to continue to be a haven for people that want to live free,” he added. “When you have the greatest liberties, you will draw people that want to destroy you.”
On Tuesday, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) also argued that the Boston attacks should slow down the immigration reform effort.
I also, I wonder why “the stupid” is more prevalent within the GOP than anywhere else? Joe Barton is the same Representative who apologized to BP for being charged with a $20 Billion claims fund after the spill in the Gulf of Mexico. He called it a shakedown. That’s the guy who is the subject of the following Piperni post…
Texas Rep. Joe Barton doesn’t believe in anthropogenic climate change. That’s partially because he is firmly in the pocket of Big Oil. The oil and gas industry is the largest contributor to Barton’s warchest.
…
However, Barton’s fervor to deny that humans have anything to do with climate change has taken a new direction. In a bizarre reference to the Great Flood of the Bible, Barton is using that as evidence that hydrocarbons don’t change the climate. How Barton draws that comparison is going to have to be left to the imagination. Barton doesn’t elaborate on what forty days of rain in antiquity has to do with the present-day earth warming.
Perhaps he is thinking that today’s rising sea levels are the same challenge that Noah had building an ark. If only the answer to climate change was so simple. Here is the great environmental insight from Barton:
“I would point out that people like me who support hydrocarbon development don’t deny that climate is changing. I think you can have an honest difference of opinion of what’s causing that change without automatically being either all in that’s all because of mankind or it’s all just natural. I think there’s a divergence of evidence.”
“I would point out that if you’re a believer in the Bible, one would have to say the Great Flood is an example of climate change and that certainly wasn’t because mankind had overdeveloped hydrocarbon energy.”
It’s probably impossible to pack more stupid into a single statement but that won’t stop Barton and his fellow Texas Republicans (Rick Perry, Louie Gohmert, Ted Cruz, Steve Stockman – to name a few) from attempting to do that very thing the next time they find themselves in front of a microphone. You can count on it.
Pro-gun rights politicians are wimps when it comes to facing the public with their gun advocacy stance, especially in the aftermath of a horrific event like the Newton massacre. Yet behind closed doors they accept “campaign contributions” and endorsements from the National Rifle Association (NRA) with no hesitation. The hypocrisy is astounding…
“We reached out to all 31 pro-gun rights senators in the new Congress to invite them on the program to share their views on the subject this morning,” he said. “We had no takers.”
Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) joined the show to discuss a greater need for gun control. She announced that Senate Democrats would intrduce a new bill banning assault weapons on the first day of the new Congress in January.
Pro-gun rights have been mostly quiet since a gunman walked into a Connecticut elementary school on Friday and shot 26 people, including children, and then himself.The NRA on Friday refused to comment on the shooting.
One exception? Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) told Fox News Sunday that he believed more guns are the answer to violence in schools.
“I wish to god she had had an M4 in her office,” he said of Sandy Hook Elementary School principal Dawn Hochsprung, who was killed in the shooting.
The following story is at best, aggravating but tolerable.
According to the following article, I might be part of the problem, however, this needs to said:
:::Rant:::
I don’t look forward to the renewed call for gun control and the bullying gun lobby shutting down the debate by threatening lawmakers that they will put them on a list and send it out to their NRA constituents if they vote against gun laws.
This shouldn’t be allowed in our Democracy. They got away with it during the Eric Holder fiasco and they recently tried to used their influence during another congressional vote.
Dems have to grow a spine and at least propose measures to ban assault weapons. In my opinion, there is no earthly reason civilians should be allowed to own assault weapons.
:::Rant Over:::
Now, back to the five most painfully self-serving reactions to the Aurora shooting…
Within hours of the tragic shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado last night, politicians and others rushed to stake out the tragedy as their own. Some pointed to the senseless murders as proof of their beliefs, while others have used it as an opportunity to gather donations and expand their mailing lists. Others have simply been unable to resist the powerful urge to rush to their computers or smart phones and say, “I told you so!” as loudly as they can.
Here’s Raw Story‘s round-up of the five worst opportunistic offenders at just barely twelve hours or so since James Holmes reportedly fired his first shot.
5. Iranian-American author and activist Reza Aslan
Aslan took to Twitter early and often this morning to make pointed jokes about the killings. “Guy shoots, kills 16 ppl in a Colorado theater last night but don’t worry folks he wasn’t a Muslim so obviously this is not terrorism,” he quipped just after 10:00 a.m., when most people were first waking up to the news.
About 15 minutes later, he followed up with, “I demand Peter King call hearings on radicalized Batman fans.”
Granted, Aslan has a point about the reluctance on the part of the media to brand any act of violence not performed by a brown-skinned person of Islamic faith as “terrorism.” As The Atlantic.com editor Max Fisher tweeted, “‘Shooter was not Muslim’ is a line I’ve seen in quite a few news stories this morning. Well, he wasn’t an Eskimo either.”
Nonetheless, the phrase “Too soon!” was invented for remarks like these.
4. Huffington Post blogger Cindy Handler
Every time there is a headline-grabbing mass shooting, responsible gun-owners everywhere groan inwardly and brace themselves for the deluge of hand-wringing columns and editorials calling for more stringent gun laws, as well as the equally self-righteous, defensive pushback that inevitably follows from The People Who Care Way Too Much About Guns. Thank you, Cindy Handler, for not wasting any time whatsoever in getting that process rolling.
Not that Handler doesn’t have a point when she says that law enforcement personnel “could be more effective in their jobs if it weren’t so easy for every idiot and his grandmother in this country to be packing,” but this column could just as easily have run on Sunday morning, couldn’t it? A day or two of reflection before the moralizing starts seems polite, at least. Plus it avoids the appearance of circling the block looking for a crime scene to hastily erect one’s soapbox in.
3. Ditto New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who didn’t even wait to finish his second cup of coffee Friday morning before clambering up on the moral high ground.
“Soothing words are nice, but maybe it’s time that the two people who want to be President of the United States stand up and tell us what they are going to do about it,” he said in his weekly radio address. “If it was one of your kids yesterday in Aurora, maybe you’d stand up and say I’m not going to take this anymore.”
2. The Brady Campaign
A great organization working for a laudable cause, but this morning’s petition sign-up seemed like little more than an excuse to gather email addresses.
“I Demand Congress Stop Arming Dangerous People” reads the petition, and who in their right mind doesn’t agree with that?
Of course, an aside at the bottom of the call for petition signatures notes quietly that those who ease their consciences by signing up will automatically be added to the Brady Campaign’s ongoing communications — including, one assumes, calls for donations.
1. Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX)
Our top honors go to Texas Congressman Rep. Louie Gohmert, who opted for the Jerry Falwell on 9/11 approach, which means to hang all responsibility for a senseless and complicated tragedy on your own personal set of pet issues.
In an interview with The Heritage Founation’s “Istook Live,” the Tea Party congressman blamed “ongoing attacks on Judeo-Christian beliefs” for the Colorado massacre, as well as for the escalating rate of suicides among active duty military personnel.
There is no doubt than Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert is one fry short of a Happy Meal. The Tea Party favorite has been spewing crazy rhetoric for the past two years…
Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert (R) on Monday said liberals should be opposed to the insurance mandate in the Affordable Care Act because it could be used against them by a future “redneck” president, according to The Hill.
“Let’s say you want to follow this administration’s idea of greatest good for the greatest number of people,” he said at a press conference. “It ought to scare liberals to come run and join conservatives, because what it means is when this president’s out of the White House and you get a conservative in there, if this president has the authority under Obamacare to trample on religious rights, then some redneck president’s got the right to say, ‘you know what, there’s some practices that go on in your house that cost people too much money and healthcare, so we’re going to have the right to rule over those as well.’”
The U.S. Supreme Court began hearing arguments on Monday on the so-called individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act.
Obama’s landmark law grants 30 million Americans health insurance for the first time, bringing universal coverage closer than ever before.
But its requirement that all Americans purchase personal health insurance or pay a penalty is seen by Republicans as a breach of the U.S. Constitution.
In Monday’s 90-minute hearing, the justices considered arguments on the narrow question of whether they have jurisdiction in the case, or must wait until the law has fully entered into force after 2014 to rule on it.
“My sense was that… they seemed to be, through their questions, indicating that they thought that the court ought to rule on this,” said Price, who attended the hearing.
On the Senate floor, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell attacked Obama’s signature legislative achievement as “a mess,” and said that while the president was right to seek reform, “the bill he gave us and that Democrats forced through Congress on a party-line vote just isn’t working.”
“Regardless of what the court decides, it needs to be repealed and replaced with common sense reforms that actually lower costs and that Americans really want.”
Senate Republican Jeff Sessions, who attended the hearing, expressed concern that “the courts have given too much deference to the power of the federal government and its reach.”
“This is going to be a challenge to this court to move away from the idea that anything the federal government wants to do, it’s empowered to do. That is not so,” he added.
Every Republican in the Senate and House of Representatives is on record opposing the health care reform law.
Obama’s Affordable Care Act “has become a malignant tumor, it’s metastasizing now and it feeds on American liberty,” said Iowa congressman Steve King, who has been instrumental in crafting anti-Obamacare legislation.
Imbecile Texas Republican Louie Gohmert is rolling around on the floor of his congressional office in a fit of snickering and spittle, because he figured out that no lawmaker had officially proposed Barack Obama’s American Jobs Act to Congress. This means that technically speaking, the name “American Jobs Act” did not yet exist in the files, because the Democrats are losers. Gohmert immediately pooped himself with puerile excitement and ran off to scribble “American Jobs Act: no more corporate taxes forever” on two sheets of paper and then handed it over to the House. BAM, filed. He wins, that’s it! The name is his!
Oh, he’s such a card, that Gohmert. His legislation consists entirely of repealing the corporate income tax, because of course it does. I’m not sure if he thinks this is a tremendous blow against Obama and his scary jobs proposals, or if he just wakes up each day wondering if there is some pissy little way to gum up the works of government a bit, and will take whatever small victories toward that end he can get.
Again, I point out: this is the stuff your Congress does instead of governing. I would at this point rather have the United States placed in the care of a high school “Model U.N.” conference, because I think they would almost certainly take the job more seriously than most of the narcissistic clowns that are there now. Or maybe the House should just go on permanent fundraising vacation: it isn’t like their September return from vacation has been one stick more productive than their month-long August absence.
GOP Representative Louie Gohmert, the man who went around inventing “terror babies” stories, until Anderson Cooper eviscerated him on national TV for making such an absurd statement, has now focused his insanity on House Minority Leader, Nancy Pelosi.
This guy is a prominent member of the Tea Party Caucus and he’s a real piece of work…
GOP Rep. Louie Gohmert told a conservative talk show host earlier this week that having Nancy Pelosi’s face on golf balls would put “oomph” into your game, and joked with the host that he would help him find a sleeve of Pelosi-stamped balls.
Earlier this week, Politico reported that a fundraiser attended by House Speaker John Boehner had featured golf balls with Pelosi’s face stamped on them. After Boehner’s office denied the story, Politico retracted the claim.
Gohmert, however, appears not to have heard about the retraction. Here’s the exchange he had with conservative host Lars Larson on Tuesday:
LARSON: My producer is from Ohio. He noticed that John Boehner was apparently using Nancy Pelosi golf balls at a recent fundraiser, and my producer wants to get a whole sleeve of those things. He thinks it might make him hit better.
GOHMERT: [laughs] I’ll bet you it’ll put a little extra oomph in it. No kidding, yeah. Well, I’ll have to check on that. I’ll have to see where we get those.
The exchange was first flagged by TruthTicker.com, which posted audio:
Standard & Poors has a specific justification fordowngrading the U.S. bond rating, and it’s deadly for Republicans. It wasn’t just that Congress showed itself to be reckless and dysfunctional, or that the GOP shows no sign of ever ending their anti-tax jihad. It’s that for a period of weeks, some lawmakers (read: Republicans) were quite literally shrugging off the risks of blowing past the August 2 deadline, running out of borrowing authority, and missing payment obligations.
“[P]eople in the political arena were even talking about a potential default,” said Joydeep Mukherji, senior directior at S&P. “That a country even has such voices, albeit a minority, is something notable,” he added. “This kind of rhetoric is not common amongst AAA sovereigns.”
This is unambiguous, and leaves little room for obfuscation. S&P’s original, lengthy statement explaining the downgrade cited political dysfunction in Congress quite broadly, but did not mention this specific element of the debate. For weeks, high-profile conservative lawmakers practically welcomed the notion of exhausting the country’s borrowing authority, or even technically defaulting. Others brazenly dismissed the risks of doing so. And for a period of days, in an earlier stage of the debate, Republican leaders said technical default would be an acceptable consequence, if it meant the GOP walked away with massive entitlement cuts in the end.
Of course, that doesn’t mean the GOP won’t try to sweep the mess they’ve made down the memory hole. Here’s Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA), who sponsored legislation that would’ve forced the Treasury to prioritize interest payments on U.S. debt in the event of a lapse in borrowing authority. “No one said that would be acceptable,” he said of a default. “What we said was in the event of a deadlock it was imperative that bondholders retain their confidence that loans made to the United States be repaid on schedule.”
That may be true for McClintock. Others were much more relaxed about the consequences of ignoring the August 2 deadline.
House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan said if “a bondholder misses a payment for a day or two or three or four,” it’s preferable so long as “you’re putting the government in a materially better position to be able to pay their bonds later on.” (Video below)
Ryan and others, including Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA), were echoing hedge-fund manager Stanley Druckenmiller, who was quoted in a widely cited Wall Street Journal article. Here’s Toomey: “The most high-profile advocate for this was Stanley Druckenmiller … one of the world’s most successful hedge-fund managers, extraordinarily wealthy from his knowledge of the markets, a big money manager now, and a big holder of Treasury securities — and he has said that he would actually accept even a delay in interest payments on the Treasuries that he holds. And he would prefer that if it meant that the Congress would right this ship.”
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) warned against default, but for a time was willing to go past August 2.
“The markets are not fooled by some date imposed to say that that is the trigger for the collapse,” he said at a Virginia jobs forum in May. “I think the markets are looking to see that there is real reform.”
Bat-s**t crazy Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tx) is at it again.
