Sagebrush's Blog

Sagebrush Commented on Terry Says Obama Makes Attacks Inevitable; Also Serves Beer, Wings by Brian Beutler

2009-06-12T02:38:25Z

I can attest to one thing that Terry says in the course of his rant.

He said, "I can promise you this--there is visceral contempt for this administration,"

I have a close and dear friend who is a Catholic monk. Let's call him Friar Jim. We have known each other for just over forty years. Friar Jim is one of the kindest, most understanding, most forgiving men I have ever met. (And I have made my career in medicine, so my standards are pretty high on that score.) Like many religious Catholics, he has a visceral anti-abortion stance.

In all the years I have known Friar Jim, I have never, ever known him to be so enraged by a President as he is by Obama... not even Nixon, who completely INFURITATED Jim around the time I met him. (He and I once were on a hunger strike together in protest of the Vietnam War.)

Yet, Friar Jim's reaction to Nixon "back then" doesn't hold a candle (so to speak) to his reaction to Obama now. Friar Jim seems to place Obama somewhere between Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.

I must admit that I don't get it. But it's there, and it's real. And it's all about abortion.

Sagebrush Commented on Bachmann: Swine Flu Happens Under Dem Presidents by Eric Kleefeld

2009-04-29T04:08:17Z

Isn't it also an interesting coincidence that the really horrific banking/credit crises throughout our history - the ones that spread through the "real" economy like a pandemic - always happen toward the end of longish periods of mostly Republican rule? (1893, 1907, 1929, 2009)

Of course there is a difference between that and Representative Bachman's interesting coincidence. Democrats didn't actually cause the flu.

Parenthetically, I have to wonder if Bachman is giving a sly wink to religious wing nuts who see God's wrath (at liberals, of course) in every natural disaster, a la Phelps, Hagee, Robertson, and Falwell.

Sagebrush Commented on Tell Us Your Voting Stories, Part Two by Greg Sargent

2008-11-05T00:39:20Z

I vote in Woonsocket, RI, as I have since 1972. Tonight was typical in my experience. I walked into the polling place (the senior high school band room) at 7:03 PM (no line) and ran my ballot through the scanner at 7:05. If Rhode Island can get it right, ANYONE can get it right. The only thing I have to say about 5-hour waits is that they have to be manufactured.

Sagebrush Commented on Is The GOP Trying To Instigate Race and/or Religious War Accidentally Or On Purpose? by M.J. Rosenberg

2008-11-01T09:15:32Z

Last night on Bill Moyers Journal, Glenn Loury of Brown University said: "You do what you have to do to win an election. But then after the election the person has to govern. And now what has been said about that person continues to echo in the minds of citizens. And I'm worried that in this case the suggestion that Obama is somehow going to get in the White House and... sell out the country will hurt all of us should he win and need to govern."

On a more personal note: Tuesday will be the tenth time that I vote in a Presidential election. Thanks to the Republican campaign style, it will also be the tenth time that I have been told by the opposing campaign or its surrogates that my vote is somehow either naive, traitorous, perverse, un-American, or sinful. Like Loury says, you do what you have to do to win an election, but enough, already! How often do I have to be told that I'm voting against God?