Monday, May 18, 2015

Maybe they meant "influenced by a blunt"

Image by duh at Thom Hartmann.

Headline at Washington Post Wonkbook:
Lindsey Graham’s comments on drones were very blunt
What the newly declared presidential candidate said:
"If I’m president of the United States and you’re thinking about joining al-Qaeda or ISIL [Islamic State], I’m not gonna call a judge," Graham said. "I’m gonna call a drone and we will kill you."
Followed after a beat by a truly spooky chuckle—you can hear it at NPR, along with Don Gonyea opining that the line is a display of Graham's "humor".

This line could be called "blunt" if you mean the opposite of "incisive", that is violent and destructive like a surgeon using a hammer instead of a scalpel (not that the instrument isn't delicate enough, but that there's no job the surgeon could use it for at all), but it is not humorous.

It is profoundly stupid and disrespectful of his audience. Graham knows, I'm pretty sure, that the president of the United States doesn't hear that somebody is "thinking about" joining some organization and decide to "call a judge", let alone a targeted assassination strike. "Hello, this is the president? I need you to get a Predator to Hackensack? To off a kid who's been having some unacceptable thoughts."

What he's trying to suggest to his listeners—that the US is soft on terrorists because the FBI is supposed to get a warrant from a judge before conducting surveillance on suspected possible would-be jihad recruits instead of just having them killed—is quite literally fascism.

What Graham also said, on the subject of his mother's death from Hodgkin's disease, when he was only 21 years old:
and the bills wiped us out cause we're underinsured so I don't need a lecture from the Democrat about health care. Fifteen months later my dad died. I'm 22, my sister's 14, my world came to—to an end, upside down. If it wasn't for family friends and faith I wouldn't be standing where I am today.
So this makes him an expert who doesn't need a lecture how, exactly? Because you'd think most people going through an experience like that would come out with a sense that health insurance ought to be easier to obtain, and that didn't happen to him. I guess he might be up for legislation to require people to have family, friends, and faith. Seems to me, though, that a lecture from "the Democrat" [sic in the audio! I wonder which one he had in mind?] is exactly what he needs, and a pretty stern one too.

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