babbling blue

At a recent town hall meeting, Tom Coburn, Republican Senator from OK, spoke up in defense of Nancy Pelosi and cautioned people about getting their news strictly from Fox News.

Quoth Coburn:

“Come on now, [Nancy Pelosi] is a nice – how many of you all have met her? (Groans from the crowd.) She is a nice person. Let me give you a little lesson here, I hope you will listen to me. Just because somebody disagrees with you doesn’t mean they aren’t a good person.

This is worth repeating: “Just because somebody disagrees with you doesn’t mean they aren’t a good person.” Republicans, Democrats, and everyone in between should pay attention to that (I’m looking at you Tea Baggers! I mean, Tea Partiers…)

Coburn continued to show he has a brain:

What we have to have is make sure we have a debate in this country so that you can see what’s going on and make a determination yourself. So don’t catch yourself being biased by Fox News that somebody is no good.

In response to a town-hall participant who claimed the health care legislation aimed to jail people for not having insurance:

The intention is not to put any one in jail. That makes for good TV news on FOX but that isn’t the intention. … Don’t just watch Fox News or CNN, watch them both. I read two papers a day – the New York times, the Washington Post, and in between the Wall Street Journal. I get a perspective.

I wish more people felt this way, and I wish more elected officials&emdash;on both sides of the aisle–had the guts to talk like this to their constituents. I just worry that he will now have a target painted on his chest in the next election, as he dared to speak up (sort of) against the mighty Fox News!

Good luck Tom, and keep on keepin’ it real!

Source: CNN Political Ticker.

A conservative Chicago Tribune columnist wrote that she believed Sarah Palin was unqualified, and should step down. The result was an inbox full of hate mail, and even threats. Sad, very sad.

Allow me to introduce myself. I am a traitor and an idiot. Also, my mother should have aborted me and left me in a Dumpster, but since she didn’t, I should “off” myself. Those are just a few nuggets randomly selected from thousands of e-mails written in response to my column suggesting that Sarah Palin is out of her league and should step down.

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It’s been awhile, but I decided it’s time to make a return to political blogging. That is to say, blogging at least a little about real politics, not CTA foolishness and the bumbling idiots in Springfield.

I don’t normally watch many debates, but for some reason I felt compelled to watch both the Democratic and Republican debates this past week. They could not have been more different. The Democratic debate was first, on Monday. It aired on CNN and was moderated (if you can call it that) by Wolf Blitzer. The only participants were Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards. It was clear that the two front-runners are Hillary and Obama. They didn’t really view Edwards as much of a threat. For much of the debate, Hillary and Obama were at each others’ throats, flinging accusations back and forth like they were playing catch. At one point Edwards commented that there were three people in the debate, not two. The debate was in two parts. The first hour was supposed to be a traditional format with the moderator asking questions and the candidates having a certain amount of time to answer and rebut, if applicable. It turned out to be more of a barely controlled near-free-for-all. Edwards mostly stayed out of it at first, then ganged up with Hillary against Obama. Could he be looking for a ride on her ticket as VP? Maybe, but then later in the debate he turned on Hillary for a bit too. The second half of the debate the candidates were allowed to sit down and were supposed to basically just discuss issues amongst themselves, prodded along by Wolf. The main difference between the first and second halves were that the candidates were standing up in the first and seated in the second. The bickering was pretty unbecoming. The main issues discussed seemed to be health care and Iraq. And how the other candidates eat babies.
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