I See Dumb People

"Congressmen who willfully take action during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs, and should be arrested, exiled or hanged," that's what President Abraham Lincoln said during the War Between the States.

J. Michael Waller, "Democrats Usher in An Age of Treason." Insight magazine, 23 Dec. 2003

Apparently no matter how many times it crops up and then immediately slammed down, this like many other bogus Lincoln quotes has a life of its own. it was used in the 2006 Washington County, PA Commissioners race by Diana Irey. She subsequently apologized. The most egregious use, and most current, is by Representative Don Young (R-Alaska). Who, when called on it, let his spokesperson do the talking:

Young's spokeswoman, Meredith Kenny, said the congressman took the quote directly from an article he read in The Washington Times on Tuesday, which as of Thursday had not been corrected.

"Now that he's been informed these are not the actual words of Lincoln, he will discontinue attributing the words to Lincoln. However, he continues to totally agree with the message of the statement... Americans, especially America's elected leaders, should not take actions during a time of war that damage the morale of our soldiers and military -- and that is exactly what this non-binding resolution does."

Quoted from The Sleuth, Honest It Wasn't Abe

It should come as no surprise that "Alaska's Third Senator" was ranked as the third worst member of Congress, dubbed Mr. Pork by Rolling Stone. A note to Republicans stop quoting crap from the Mooney Herald, otherwise known as the Washington Times. Really it gets you nothing but trouble.

The second dumb statement comes from the font of silliness our President. Its not so much the rest of his answer that is idiotic, it's not. Here lies the problem, when you say stuff like "money trumps peace", you lose everybody in the sheer amoral nature of the statement, and no one listens to the rest of the answer. I do not agree with his hellbent for leather saber-rattling with Iran. I do believe that brinkmanship is sometimes necessary, but trying to force a Gulf of Tonkin II is not in the United States best interests. Anyway here is the exchange:

Q A lot of our allies in Europe do a lot of business with Iran, so I wonder what your thoughts are about how you further tighten the financial pressure on Iran, in particular, if it also means economic pain for a lot of our allies?

THE PRESIDENT: It's an interesting question. One of the problems -- not specifically on this issue, just in general -- let's put it this way, money trumps peace, sometimes. In other words, commercial interests are very powerful interests throughout the world. And part of the issue in convincing people to put sanctions on a specific country is to convince them that it's in the world's interest that they forgo their own financial interest.

Press Conference February 14th. 2007

If Republicans want to know why they lost in November 06, or at least one of the many reasons why they lost, it is saying amazingly amoral, unnecessary, illogical, and moronic things. In short republicans take notr, I quote Walt Kelly's Pogo: We have met the enemy and they are us.