So do you remember when Sen. Tom Coburn, R-ExxonMobil, was telling teabaggers the other day to pray that “something” would happen to prevent a Democrat from making it to the Senate to cast their vote for cloture on health care reform? Sure you do. It was essentially a call to pray for the death of 423-year-old Sen. Robert Byrd, D-State Now Named for Robert Byrd.
Anyhoo, it was pretty despicable, and it made Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., pretty furious. I think Coburn thought he was being cryptic enough that nobody would catch on, but Coburn really isn’t that bright. I mean, even Treason-in-Defense-of-Slavery Yankee backed him in hoping for the death of the Senior Senator from Byrdland.
At any rate, it will not surprise you that teabaggers took Coburn’s call to pray to heart. It may surprise you, however, to find out that the prayers worked. A senator did miss a vote today. But not Byrd. Nor conservative bête noire Sen. Al Franken, DFL-Minn. Nor Patty Murray, Roland Burris, nor even Holy Joe Lieberman. No, the senator unable to make it to vote was Sen. James Inhofe, R-Chevron.
Yes, the lulz are serious with that. Coburn managed to encourage a prayer that took out his fellow Oklahoman-slash-Corporate Whore. But it gets better. Because of course, the teabaggers did pray. And they’re a little bit worried about the powers they are dealing with.
It is to laugh.
The best part of the video — which, for the YouTube impaired, features a tearful teabagger telling Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., that his group had “prayed real hard” that Sen. Byrd would die or be unable to make the vote — is the man essentially accusing Barrasso of not praying hard enough for Byrd’s death, thus causing God to punish James Inhofe for…something.
Of course, if I was a man of deep and abiding faith in a God who wants to influence the Senate by killing off its members one-by-one, I would tend to suggest that God making Inhofe sick is not so much evidence that teabaggers weren’t praying hard enough for a senator to die, but more that God has different ideas about which senators are expendable. It might even make me think that God kind of wants this bill to pass, and might support our nation’s slide into Muslim Marxist Communist Fascism.
Alas, I imagine that Inhofe is just under the weather. ((Which is proof that global warming doesn’t exist. Also.)) Still, while I don’t believe in a God that interferes directly in our lives, this tests my lack of faith; if I were God, making Coburn’s fellow Republican just a bit too sick to make the vote is exactly the sort of thing I’d do in response to Coburn’s prayer. The only change I’d make would be that Coburn himself would have food poisoning or a bad cold or some other temporary, non-lethal ailment.
But I suppose that would be too obvious — proof denies faith, after all. And God wouldn’t want that.
Hmm. You don’t think…?
Well played, God. Well played.
UPDATE: Inhofe evidently missed the vote because he had to fly with his wife back to Oklahoma, but he’s going to then fly back to DC to cast more votes. Now, I’m assuming his wife isn’t eleven years old, so I’m not sure why she can’t fly home on her own, other than the general conservative belief that women are not, in fact, people.
I’m not sure why she can’t fly home on her own
Well, neither my mother or I fly on our own because we both suffer incapacitating vertigo on planes from a hereditary middle ear defect – it affects the rest of our lives, too. Vomiting too hard to explain to a flight attendant that you can’t, in fact, make it to the toilet because you will fall on the floor is never fun, and it’s much better to travel with someone else. Why go out of your way to ascribe dark motivations to a politician’s personal life when you have a perfectly good post otherwise? If you want to talk about him valuing his wife over his job, that’s a different post. This is just a random, pointless slur.
Well done, God. This still doesn’t make up for that pillar of salt thing, though.
Hoax?
Maybe, but if it’s a hoax, it’s a damn good one.
Also, I think it’s interesting that Barrasso never so much as mentions that maybe we shouldn’t be praying for senators’ deaths.
While I agree there are reasons why some people can not fly alone, Senator Inhofe was facing an historic vote, on an issue his party has been fighting for most of this term. Surely the Senator has a secretary, or a friend or a subordinate or an intern that could have been spared so that Senator Infhofe could show his constituents where he proudly stands on the issue of HCR. One could also argue, that considering the importance of this vote, his wife could have taken AmTrack or rented a car if she could not fly home. If she had fallen ill and could not travel alone, she could have postponed her return home until after the vote. I’m not trying to imply something sinister, it may well be that the Republicans knew they couldn’t win this one and Inhofe saw no advantage to being present, but it is a little suspicious.
True, but if you think about it, if the issue is as fundamental as Harry Reid claims it is, then it certainly triggers even Thomas Jefferson’s justification for political violence (in defence of liberty). I mean, we fought a civil war over that.
But of course the issue isn’t that fundamental. Teabaggers, Jesse Jackson, Will Wilkerson, Alan Grayson, need to calm the fuck down.
For my money, Obama’s coming out of this looking pretty good–a grown up in a land of adolescents. Frankly, that was the change I heard him preaching.
Well looks like Alas is trying to be trendy by co-opting the highly offensive term retard to a title for one of their posts. I hope you realize that this makes it clear you have no place discussing issues of disability, when you allow people to post articles that mock people who are neurodiverse.
Would this be posted if it said “Prayer cripple” instead?
Jackie, the word prayertard has nothing to do with retard in this context. The phrase being riffed off of is “hoisted by her own petard.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petard
You have just committed the sin of complaining over niggardly.
Intentionalism FTW!
Hi Robert,
Thanks for your note on this subject; however, as it is a derail from this thread, further comments about moderation should be directed to an open thread (as should any responses to your attempted snark).
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