Currently viewing the tag: “isn’t”
Consider the caliphate: its very existence would usher in a state of constant hostility. Both historically and doctrinally, the caliphate’s function is to wage jihad, whenever and wherever possible, to bring the infidel world under Islamic dominion and enforce sharia.
Raymond Ibrahim
Raymond Ibraim addresses the question of how is the West is supposed to respond, now that it has an increasingly clearer picture of what Islamists are after. Specifically, just what is it the West is supposed to do about the resurrection of the caliphate?
Would it be willing to launch a preemptive offensive—politically, legally, educationally, and, if necessary, militarily—to prevent its resurrection? Could the West ever go on the offensive, openly and confidently—now, when it has the upper-hand—to incapacitate its enemies?
One may argue in the affirmative, pointing to the preemptive Iraq war. Yet there are subtle and important differences. The rationale behind the Iraq war was physical and practical: it was limited to the elimination of suspected WMDs and against a specific government, Iraq’s Saddam regime. War to prevent the creation of a caliphate, on the other hand, is metaphysical and impractical: it is not limited to eliminating material weapons, nor confined to one government or person.
The fact is, the West does not have the political paradigms or language to justify an offensive against an ideological foe in religious garb. After all, the same international culture that saw to it that an autocrat like Egypt’s Mubarak stepped down—simply because he was handicapped from responding to the protestors in the name of human rights—certainly cannot approve a preemptive offensive by the West articulated in terms of a “religious” threat.
Actually, while the West might not have the political paradigm to deal with an enemy with a religious ideology, it does have a paradigm for dealing with an enemy with a political ideology: Communism.
And that is exactly the problem. The US was badly burned by the war in Vietnam-and the whole idea of going to war in order to prevent the spread of an ideology has been near totally discredited.
In the end, the West did in fact win and the ideology of Communism itself has been almost totally rejected around the world. But even though in the end the victory was achieved through less violent means in the West, it required enormous bravery and sacrifice from the men and women who lived under its rule.
The protests today in the Middle East are not comparable to those protests, not least because today they are revolting against totalitarian rule per say, and not Islamists-if anything, Muslims are generally ready to have Islam applied in politics to some degree. Also, there is the point of whether the Arab world is ready for true democracy yet.
The fact remains that the West has little appetite for dealing with another ideology intent on spreading and imposing itself on the world. Whether you are talking about a cold war or a hudna-the West is more weary than wary.
And the Islamists know it.
Technorati Tag: Islam and Caliphate.
The Dalai Lama’s suggestion that his successor may be appointed while he is still alive or even elected is, unsurprisingly, not so popular with Tibet’s Chinese rulers:
But Padma Choling, the Chinese-appointed
governor of Tibet, said that the Dalai Lama had no right to abolish the
institution of reincarnation, underscoring China’s hardline stance on
one of the most sensitive issues for the restless and remote region.
"I
don’t think this is appropriate. It’s impossible, that’s what I think,"
he said on the sidelines of the annual meeting of China’s parliament,
when asked about the Dalai Lama’s suggestion that his successor may not
be his reincarnation.
"We must
respect the historical institutions and religious rituals of Tibetan
Buddhism," said Padma Choling, a Tibetan and a former soldier in the
People’s Liberation Army. "I am afraid it is not up to anyone whether
to abolish the reincarnation institution or not."
China’s concern for preserving Tibetan religious traditions here is truly touching.
Bob Schieffer on Sunday asked Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) if he believed President Obama was serious about the budget negotiations currently going on in the nation's capital.
When McConnell explained why he doesn't believe that's the case, the "Face the Nation" host responded somewhat incredulously, "That really is a pretty serious charge at this stage to say that you don't even think the President is serious. What is it that makes you say that?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
BOB SCHIEFFER, HOST: Well, all we know, of course, is about what is being said in public. We hear the back-and-forth that’s being going on in public. But you and the other leaders have been meeting behind closed doors with Vice President Biden. I guess I would ask you this question. What is your take on the administration right now? Do you believe that President Obama is, in fact, serious about trying to get something done here?
SENATOR MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KENTUCKY): No, I don't.
SCHIEFFER: Really?
MCCONNELL: I have now had a number of private conversations with the President and the Vice President. I was hopeful that we would step up to the plate here, if you will, and use this divided government opportunity to do something big about our long-term problems. I don't have any more complaints about the conversations with them; I've had plenty of conversations with them. What I don't see now is any willingness to do anything that's difficult.
Look, this is the perfect time to do it. We control part of the government. They control part of the government. It could be done in a very, very effective way, and for those who are concerned about the 2012 elections survived politically because both sides will have embraced it. I haven't given up hope but frankly I'm not optimistic.
SCHIEFFER: Well, you know, that really is a pretty serious charge at this stage to say that you don't even think the President is serious. What is it that makes you say that?
MCCONNELL: Well, look, I've had a number of conversations with people who count at the White House, and I think that so far I don't see the level of seriousness that we need. For example, they're in denial about Social Security. They are saying Social Security is not a problem. The Congressional Budget Office said it's running a $ 50 billion deficit this very year. Medicare, Social Security are unsustainable. Medicare, Medicaid is unsustainable.
You step back and look at what this administration has done, they've sort of pumped up the government. Bob, you would be interested to know that unemployment among government workers is half what it is among private sector workers, and most of those unemployed workers are state and local workers who have been laid off. The federal government has in fact added 100,000 jobs in the course of this administration while the American people have shed millions of jobs. Our priorities are out of whack. When my friend John Kerry says cutting government spending is reckless, I'm wondering what planet is he living on?
SCHIEFFER: Alright. Well, I tell you, I asked you for a response and you certainly gave me one. Senator McConnell, it's always good to have you here, and I thank you.
Schieffer's reaction here was rather absurd. Numerous news organizations on both sides of the aisle felt Obama punted on serious debt relief with the budget he proposed last month.
A Google search of "Obama punted on budget" produces 465,000 results. Interestingly, one of them is an article posted at CBS News's blog Political Hotsheet entitled "On Fourth and Long, Obama Punts":
There's an old saying in Washington: When the tough get going, the going turn to sports analogies. That's where we were yesterday as President Obama unveiled his fiscal year 2012 budget.
Despite the fact that the document is just a plan and has no power over what Congress actually does, the drama was intense. Many said the proposal reflected a decision to kick the can down the road, to deal with the tough problems another day. But a sports analogy, naturally, won the day.
"We got a punt," said House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), who is still has the Packers Super Bowl victory on his mind. "The president punted on the budget and he punted on the deficit and on the debt, that's not leadership that's an abdication of leadership." One budget expert said that the president punted instead of dealing with the biggest costs to the federal government: entitlements of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
Let's take this a bit further. In football, when does a team punt? When they are facing an fourth down and long – and the odds are against them getting a first down and continuing to drive the ball. Punting often puts one's opponent in bad field position and avoids a failed fourth down attempt which would give the other side a better chance at a score.
Most people would say that the president did in fact punt, but in this situation it may not be that bad a call.
This was written by Robert Hendin, a CBS News producer who just this week joined "Face the Nation."
If one of Schieffer's own producers wrote about Obama punting in February, it certainly shouldn't be all that surprising the leader of the opposition Party in the Senate would feel the same way.
On the other hand, maybe it's a reflexive instinct for liberal media members to automatically defend the current White House resident even when the facts suggest they shouldn't.
Yes, that was a rhetorical observation.
Throughout the early stages of his campaign, Republican Phil Moffett, a Louisville businessman running for governor in Kentucky, has tried to portray himself as the heir apparent to Sen. Rand Paul (R). Moffett has espoused typical Tea Party positions and railed against the excesses and abuses of the establishment wing of the Republican party.
The comparison might not seem like much of a stretch. Like Paul, Moffett had never run for political office before launching his bid. Paul challenged a mainstream Republican in former Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson, who collected high profile endorsements from the likes of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Dick Cheney. In his own primary, Moffett faces Kentucky Senate President David Williams (R), a longtime fixture in the state’s GOP establishment. Moffett even hired David Adams, who managed Paul’s successful primary bid, to run his campaign.
“It’s the same state. It’s the same voter base, same volunteer base within the state,” Adams said. “And kind of in the same wave in terms of voter sentiment.”
But for all the similarities on the surface, most political experts say Moffett doesn’t pose a serious threat to Williams in the race to determine the challenger to Gov. Steve Beshear (D). Here is a look at some of the factors that will likely prevent Moffett from repeating Paul’s insurgent primary victory:
Name Recognition: While Paul had never held elective office before, he had almost immediate name recognition, thanks to his father, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas). Fresh off a presidential run, the elder Paul had established himself as a Tea Party icon by the time his son decided to run for Senate. Moffett, on the other hand, was a virtual unknown when he entered the gubernatorial race – and he remains so to many voters in the state.
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed Friday, Sen. Jim DeMint argued that if PBS, CPB, and Sesame Street can afford lavish salaries for their executives, then surely they have the money to survive as private, non-commercial broadcasters. (He doesn't even mention how people chipping in $ 25 to "save" shows like Sesame Street might feel misled if they saw the salary numbers.)
PBS President Paula Kerger even recorded a personal television appeal that told viewers exactly how to contact members of Congress in order to "let your representative know how you feel about the elimination of funding for public broadcasting." But if PBS can pay Ms. Kerger $ 632,233 in annual compensation—as reported on the 990 tax forms all nonprofits are required to file—surely it can operate without tax dollars.
The executives at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which distributes the taxpayer money allocated for public broadcasting to other stations, are also generously compensated. According to CPB's 2009 tax forms, President and CEO Patricia de Stacy Harrison received $ 298,884 in reportable compensation and another $ 70,630 in other compensation from the organization and related organizations that year. That's practically a pittance compared to Kevin Klose, president emeritus of NPR, who received more than $ 1.2 million in compensation, according to the tax forms the nonprofit filed in 2009.
Harrison was a wildly controversial choice when she was appointed to the CPB by President Bush in 2005, since she had been co-chair of the Republican National Commitee from 1997 to 2001. Once appointed, she quickly "went native," becoming a fierce protector of the subsidized liberal sandbox. DeMint continued:
Despite how accessible media has become to Americans over the years, funding for CPB has grown considerably. In 2001, the federal government appropriated $ 340 million for CPB. Last year it got $ 420 million. As Congress considers ways to close the $ 1.6 trillion deficit, cutting funding for the CPB has even been proposed by President Obama's bipartisan deficit reduction commission. Instead, Mr. Obama wants to increase CPB's funding to $ 451 million in his latest budget.
Meanwhile, highly successful, brand-name public programs like Sesame Street make millions on their own. "Sesame Street," for example, made more than $ 211 million from toy and consumer product sales from 2003-2006. Sesame Workshop President and CEO Gary Knell received $ 956,513 in compensation in 2008. With earnings like that, Big Bird doesn't need the taxpayers to help him compete against the Nickleodeon cable channel's Dora the Explorer.
PS: The sad state of the National Lampoon brand is proven by an attempt by "humorist" Philip Rodney Moon to explore how terrible PBS will get if conservatives defund it, including a show called "Mr. Roger Ailes' Neighborhood."
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed Friday, Sen. Jim DeMint argued that if PBS, CPB, and Sesame Street can afford lavish salaries for their executives, then surely they have the money to survive as private, non-commercial broadcasters. (He doesn't even mention how people chipping in $ 25 to "save" shows like Sesame Street might feel misled if they saw the salary numbers.)
PBS President Paula Kerger even recorded a personal television appeal that told viewers exactly how to contact members of Congress in order to "let your representative know how you feel about the elimination of funding for public broadcasting." But if PBS can pay Ms. Kerger $ 632,233 in annual compensation—as reported on the 990 tax forms all nonprofits are required to file—surely it can operate without tax dollars.
The executives at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which distributes the taxpayer money allocated for public broadcasting to other stations, are also generously compensated. According to CPB's 2009 tax forms, President and CEO Patricia de Stacy Harrison received $ 298,884 in reportable compensation and another $ 70,630 in other compensation from the organization and related organizations that year. That's practically a pittance compared to Kevin Klose, president emeritus of NPR, who received more than $ 1.2 million in compensation, according to the tax forms the nonprofit filed in 2009.
Harrison was a wildly controversial choice when she was appointed to the CPB by President Bush in 2005, since she had been co-chair of the Republican National Commitee from 1997 to 2001. Once appointed, she quickly "went native," becoming a fierce protector of the subsidized liberal sandbox. DeMint continued:
Despite how accessible media has become to Americans over the years, funding for CPB has grown considerably. In 2001, the federal government appropriated $ 340 million for CPB. Last year it got $ 420 million. As Congress considers ways to close the $ 1.6 trillion deficit, cutting funding for the CPB has even been proposed by President Obama's bipartisan deficit reduction commission. Instead, Mr. Obama wants to increase CPB's funding to $ 451 million in his latest budget.
Meanwhile, highly successful, brand-name public programs like Sesame Street make millions on their own. "Sesame Street," for example, made more than $ 211 million from toy and consumer product sales from 2003-2006. Sesame Workshop President and CEO Gary Knell received $ 956,513 in compensation in 2008. With earnings like that, Big Bird doesn't need the taxpayers to help him compete against the Nickleodeon cable channel's Dora the Explorer.
PS: The sad state of the National Lampoon brand is proven by an attempt by "humorist" Philip Rodney Moon to explore how terrible PBS will get if conservatives defund it, including a show called "Mr. Roger Ailes' Neighborhood."
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed Friday, Sen. Jim DeMint argued that if PBS, CPB, and Sesame Street can afford lavish salaries for their executives, then surely they have the money to survive as private, non-commercial broadcasters. (He doesn't even mention how people chipping in $ 25 to "save" shows like Sesame Street might feel misled if they saw the salary numbers.)
PBS President Paula Kerger even recorded a personal television appeal that told viewers exactly how to contact members of Congress in order to "let your representative know how you feel about the elimination of funding for public broadcasting." But if PBS can pay Ms. Kerger $ 632,233 in annual compensation—as reported on the 990 tax forms all nonprofits are required to file—surely it can operate without tax dollars.
The executives at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which distributes the taxpayer money allocated for public broadcasting to other stations, are also generously compensated. According to CPB's 2009 tax forms, President and CEO Patricia de Stacy Harrison received $ 298,884 in reportable compensation and another $ 70,630 in other compensation from the organization and related organizations that year. That's practically a pittance compared to Kevin Klose, president emeritus of NPR, who received more than $ 1.2 million in compensation, according to the tax forms the nonprofit filed in 2009.
Harrison was a wildly controversial choice when she was appointed to the CPB by President Bush in 2005, since she had been co-chair of the Republican National Commitee from 1997 to 2001. Once appointed, she quickly "went native," becoming a fierce protector of the subsidized liberal sandbox. DeMint continued:
Despite how accessible media has become to Americans over the years, funding for CPB has grown considerably. In 2001, the federal government appropriated $ 340 million for CPB. Last year it got $ 420 million. As Congress considers ways to close the $ 1.6 trillion deficit, cutting funding for the CPB has even been proposed by President Obama's bipartisan deficit reduction commission. Instead, Mr. Obama wants to increase CPB's funding to $ 451 million in his latest budget.
Meanwhile, highly successful, brand-name public programs like Sesame Street make millions on their own. "Sesame Street," for example, made more than $ 211 million from toy and consumer product sales from 2003-2006. Sesame Workshop President and CEO Gary Knell received $ 956,513 in compensation in 2008. With earnings like that, Big Bird doesn't need the taxpayers to help him compete against the Nickleodeon cable channel's Dora the Explorer.
PS: The sad state of the National Lampoon brand is proven by an attempt by "humorist" Philip Rodney Moon to explore how terrible PBS will get if conservatives defund it, including a show called "Mr. Roger Ailes' Neighborhood."
The most discouraging thing about conducting the struggle against Islamic supremacism is the fact that you’re forced to read about atrocities every day. Indeed, Jihadwatch frequently looks like a kind of global police blotter, chronicling the latest outrage conducted by mobs in Gaza, kangaroo courts in Afghanistan, shariah conspirators in Pakistan, or bandit-gangs in Iraq. On days when the Islamic body count is low, there is nearly always some statement by a revered religious leader to a Muslim audience calling for violence against unbelievers, making outrageous demands of a Western government, or hurling false charges at Westerners who push back against their aggression. On the Islam beat, there’s never a shortage of evil. I’m reminded of what I read in the memoirs of an exorcist, who warned of the exhaustion, depression, even suicidal despair that can threaten those who stand on the front line confronting the Enemy. I’m convinced that that danger applies here. I hope the unbelievers among my readership will indulge me here, and regard what I say next as a charming but harmless piece of Christian superstition:
I believe with all my heart that a spirit did indeed appear to Muhammad and inspire the Qur’an. I accept his account of how that spirit guided him to make its early suras amiable and uplifting, and then as his military power grew, ever darker and more intolerant. When I read how Muhammad sometimes showed some humane scruples—for instance, about stealing his stepson’s wife—and the spirit urged him to go ahead and seize what he wanted… I believe that spirit was real. I think it is still with us, that Muhammad’s private “bin Screwtape” still abides and watches over the mass movement he created.
Whenever we score a victory, he is enraged, and he afflicts us—where he can, by goading us into extreme statements or unjust actions that will discredit our cause with decent people. When we fall for that, when we lower ourselves to the level of our enemies, we do more than make some tactical mistake; we begin, I believe, to serve in some way the same spirit of hatred that inspired the Verse of the Sword. Even if we convince ourselves we are aiming that sword at Islam, in fact we are beginning to be mesmerized by it. Mirroring Islamic intolerance, and aiming it at Muslims, is at once a crime and a blunder. Let’s remember that it wasn’t the fanatically anti-German bigots of the Action Francaise who in fact formed the Resistance after 1940; members of that group disproportionately became instead collaborators.
Since most of us aren’t actually prone to genuine hatred, the next tactic “bin Screwtape” tries is to grind us down with defeatism, to convince us that the struggle is unavailing, that the blindness of our fellow Westerners and the lazy, pleasure-loving short-sightedness of our society will never be a match for the disciplined, fertile fanatics whom he urges to enslave us. This too is a grave temptation. It pays to remember that anti-Communist hero Whittaker Chambers was wrong when he said he feared he had joined the losing side of history, that Moscow’s fighting faith would prevail against the flaccid and hedonistic West. As early as 636, Abu Bakr warned the Persians he was attacking, “I have come to you with an army of men that love death, as you love life.”
Let’s resist the urge to romanticize such evil, and grant it a power it doesn’t really have. Remember that the fatalistic, samurai culture of Japan that inspired the kamikazes was utterly crushed by the America of Benny Goodman, the Lindy-Hop, and Abbott and Costello. The Carthaginians, who sacrificed their infants to ask their gods for victory, were defeated by Roman family farmers who fought to defend their Republic. The power that evil seems to grant us is in the long run an illusion, like the “high” one gets from a hit of coke or a joyride in a stolen car. Reality has its revenge.
Yes, fecklessness and weakness, cowardice and short-sighted selfishness can doom a culture—and make it prey to neighbors with sharper teeth and more fertile wombs. But such a victory isn’t inevitable. There are enough signs of life left yet in the West—and to prove my point I’d like to show you one.
The video below appeared in Salon under the hysterical headline: “This is What Anti-Muslim Hate Looks Like.”
The video depicts a patriotic rally held outside a fundraiser for the Islamic Circle of North America, which supports the imposition of sharia law in the U.S. The keynote speakers for the evening—supposedly meant to raise money for women’s shelters—were Imam Siraj Wahhaj and Amir Abdel Malik Ali. As the Orange County Register reported:
Wahhaj is an imam at a mosque in Brooklyn. A U.S. attorney named him and 169 others as co-conspirators in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing…. Malik Ali is a Bay Area Islamic activist who spoke at ‘Israeli Apartheid Week’ at UC Irvine in 2010. There he said he supports Hezbollah, which the CIA labels a terrorist group.
The footage was shot by the local chapter of Hamas-linked CAIR—who were strongly motivated to find the ugliest images and most obnoxious quotes they could…. And this is the best they could do: A group of Americans peacefully gathered behind a barricade, chanting to the suited men and hijabed women who trooped into the event, “No sharia!” and “Go home!” Given that the event featured foreign-born supporters of terrorism and sharia law, these were not outrageous sentiments for Californians to express. Anything less would amount to servility.
Note that the rally was not a picket of a mosque full of peaceful Muslims, with no connections to militant groups, or public aspirations to impose Islamic law. It was aimed at a group of activists, who make no secret of their Islamic supremacism. The most “offensive” thing I could find on the video were some verbal references on the part of protestors to Muhammad’s marriage to Ayesha, and the fact that she was at the time only 9 years old. Now as good Americans and good sports, this might seem like it’s a “low blow.”
But is it really? Sharia law as it is interpreted in Iran (Hezbellah’s chief sponsor) indeed allows the marriage of girls at 9—a “reform” the Ayatollah Khomeni enacted shortly after coming to power. Given that ICNA calls for sharia in America, the protestors’ remarks were entirely fair. They were the cold, sober truth—which I’m proud and heartened to see Americans cast back in the teeth of our enemies here at home. The protestors in Orange County don’t hate people, they hate evil—an evil they see imposing itself by force in countries across the world. They hate “bin-Screwtape.”
Yes, it’s rude to insult the founder of someone else’s religion. But I don’t see Evangelicals or Russian Orthodox lining up outside Mormon temples to denounce Joseph Smith—whose religion they surely find almost as alien as Islam. Now why, do you think, is that?
Could it have something to do with the fact that in majority Muslim countries like Pakistan, you can be executed for criticizing Muhammad? That government ministers who oppose such laws are gunned down with impunity, and are praised for committing murder by high-placed Muslim clerics? As long as Muslims keep friendly relations with co-religionists who engage in such acts of violence, as long as they call for laws imposing that kind of tyranny on our shores, they should expect to reap the dragon’s teeth they have sown.
A former boss of mine used to describe her philosphy on interpersonal relationships this way, “I can handle people who are nasty, and I can handle people who are stupid, but I just can’t handle people who are stupid and nasty.” Well, looking at the latest revelations about Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, my boss would have hated the progressive Representative from Texas.
Its been well known the Ms Jackson Lee’s brain lights are set to dim. Some would say that she rivals Barbara Boxer for the title of dumbest person in Congress. Jackson Lee who once wasted the Congresses time with a piece of legislation to honor the late Michael Jackson (A Tribute to an American Legend and Musical Icon) that made the accused child molester seem like Mother Teresa. Then there was the time she stood on the floor of the house discussing how North and South Vietnam are living peacefully side by side, even though there hasn’t been a North and South Vietnam since Gerald Ford was President. Then there was the one earlier this month where she told the House Judiciary Committee that the “penalty” in the health-care law enacted last year by Congress imposes on individuals who do not buy health insurance is not in fact a penalty.
Now the law itself states: “If an applicable individual fails to meet the requirement of subsection (a) [having a government-approved health-insurance policy]… there is hereby imposed a penalty with respect to the individual.”
Elsewhere, in a section entitled “Payment of Penalty,” it says that individuals failing to carry a government-approved health insurance policy must pay a maximum penalty of $ 750.
But in Sheila Jackson-Lee’s twisted logic, a penalty is not a penalty even when it’s called a penalty.
“I would make the argument, one, that instead it is an incentive to do right-that it is not penalizing because penalty is punishment,” Jackson-Lee told the Judiciary Committee.
HUH??? See what I mean?
Today, the Daily Caller examines Jackson-Lee’s management skills, and it “ain’t pretty.”
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas also hands out nicknames to the people who work for her. The Houston Democrat addressed one of her employees as “you stupid motherfucker.” And not just once, but “constantly,” recalls the staffer, “like, all the time.”
Another Jackson Lee aide recounts the time her parents came to Washington to visit: “They were really excited to come to the congressional office. They’re small town people, so for them it was a huge deal. They were actually sitting in the main lobby waiting area….[Jackson Lee] came out screaming at me over a scheduling change. Called me a ’stupid idiot. Don’t be a moron, you foolish girl’ and actually did this in front of my parents, of all things.”
Yet another staffer remembers requesting a meeting early on in her tenure to ask how best to serve the congresswoman. Jackson Lee’s response: “What? What did you say to me? Who are you, the Congresswoman? You haven’t been elected. You don’t set up meetings with me! I tell you! You know what? You are the most unprofessional person I have ever met in my life.” With that, Jackson Lee hung up the phone.
The report say that the Texas progressive may be the most demanding insensitive boss on Capitol Hill, a building known for nasty bosses.
One staffer recalls a frank conversation with his doctor, who told him he needed to quit. “It’s your life or your job,” the doctor told him, warning that the stress and long hours were wreaking havoc on his body.
Out of the scores of staffers contacted by the website only one offered a tepid defense of her. Bug most talked about her abusive narcissistic manner.
“I am a queen, and I demand to be treated like a queen,” Jackson Lee once said, and apparently she wasn’t kidding. Her employees describe waiting for their boss for hours on end, sometimes late into the night, while she attends events or even sits in her office watching TV.
“You worked really, really, really late for her. When she was in town, you were in the office. So that meant, two, three, four o’clock in the morning – we were there,” one former staffer said.
“She liked to hold her staff meetings — she would individually pull in the deputy chief of staff, myself and some other people individually to go over different parts of her day. But she would literally wait until super late at night. None of us could go home, because she wouldn’t tell when she was coming back or if she wasn’t. And if she called and you didn’t answer, it was like World War III,” the source said.
….One woman who interviewed for a job in Jackson Lee’s office arrived at 5:00 p.m. but ended up waiting for hours. “I sat there, no kidding, from 5:00 p.m. until 10:30 p.m. They had me waiting, and this was just for the interview. Her staffers there kept telling me to be patient, that she puts everyone through the ringer…She actually went out to dinner while I was sitting there waiting for an interview,” the woman said. A Lee staffer called the woman at 11:15 p.m. after she’d just arrived home to beg her to come back. The congresswoman was finally ready.
….“I would have to wait for hours,” says Gladys Quinto, a former staffer whom Jackson Lee instructed to write a memo about why she was incompetent in front of other staffers. “I missed the last metro once. My roommate had to come pick me up.”
Nathan Williams, who quit his job when Jackson Lee threw a cell phone at him, told the Houston Chronicle in 2002, “I don’t think I ever got home before 11 o’clock at night.”
One unusual thing about Jackson Lee is that unlike most vampires, she likes garlic:
Jackson Lee’s requests don’t stop at the end of a normal working day. “In the middle of the night, people had to go get her garlic. She’ll call you at two in the morning for garlic because she takes them as supplements,” a former staffer said. Jackson Lee’s garlic runs were confirmed by other staffers, too, though no one could remember the exact brand of the supplement. The deputy chief of staff “would have to go get it, and he would have to go drop it off. It was some kind of a multi-vitamin,” another former staffer said.
Jackson Lee loves to play the race card even when the issue is not political but her lack of intelligence:
In 1997, for example, The Hill reported that the newly-elected congresswoman asked NASA officials whether the Mars Pathfinder photographed the American flag astronaut Neil Armstrong had planted on the surface of Mars. When it was pointed out that the flag in question was on the moon, not Mars, Jackson Lee cited bigotry. “You thought you could have fun with a black woman member of the Science Committee,” her then chief of staff wrote in a letter to the editor.
Then there was the time in 1993 when she demanded that more Hurricanes be named with African American-sounding names. I agree, we should name a hurricane nasty, dumb Jackson Lee after an African American Congresswoman.
Given Jackson Lee’s apparent touchiness on racial questions, there’s a certain irony in the fact that aides claim she is far harsher to the African Americans who work for her. “’You stupid mother-effer’ was like a constant,” says one. “Like, all the time. But the interesting thing is she would really project that behavior more towards her African American staffers. She would have other ethnic groups in the office, like interns or whatnot. But it was really her African American staffers who she felt comfortable enough to really curse out…. This is something we always talked about. We chalked it up to her just feeling more comfortable acting out her aggression toward a certain group of people versus others.”
Oh so she is a racist ! Wait she can’t be racist, she doesn’t disagree with Obama.
Not surprisingly, Jackson Lee has one of the highest staff turnover rates in Washington. Over the last ten years, at least 39 staffers have left within one year. Over that time, Lee has employed at least nine chiefs of staff, eight legislative directors, and 18 schedulers or executive assistants, according to records of federal disclosure forms published by the website Legistorm. Nine staffers left within two months, 25 within 6 months.
The many veterans of Jackson Lee’s office meet regularly for drinks and stories. We “still get together to have a cathartic release,” says one. “We sit around and tell these stories and just work ourselves into a state of rage.”
YIKES, it seems to me that someone who abuses staffers like that shouldn’t be allowed staffers. Maybe they should take them all away and then if she complains ask her how many staffers she has, it will probably take her weeks to count from one-to-zero.
Please email me at [email protected] to be put onto my mailing list.
Feel free to reproduce any article but please link back to http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com![]()
Feel free to reproduce any article but please link back to http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com
The presumptive face of the most biased and propagandist television news outlet in America had some harsh words for the media organization that bests hers in ratings virtually every hour of every day.
In a piece published by the Daily Beast Sunday, Rachel Maddow hypocritically told Howard Kurtz that Fox News has "become a McCarthyite chamber of horrors… You can't really call yourself a news channel if that's what you broadcast":
In the Olbermann tradition, Maddow is increasingly denouncing Fox, saying that Glenn Beck, in monologues about Muslims, has been "running baroque conspiracies that are designed to freak people out about bogeymen coming to get them, conspiracies that are unsupported by the facts." Fox, she charges, has "become a McCarthyite chamber of horrors… You can't really call yourself a news channel if that's what you broadcast." Maddow's repeated attacks have not provoked a response from Fox.
This coming from a woman that has recently been skewered by NewsBusters, Politifact, and the Baltimore Sun's David Zurawik for her highly-partisan, often false statements on air.
In the past ten days alone, Maddow has come under fire for a number of clearly erroneous comments she's made about the union battle in Wisconsin. Kurtz even addressed this on CNN's "Reliable Sources" Sunday, but failed to point it out in his rather glowing column:
While the host devours information online, stuffing printouts in thick folders, there are missteps. She touted an item on the website ChristWire urging Sarah Palin to speak out on Egypt—unaware that it was a satirical blog with such headlines as ARE FACEBOOK SEX GANGS USING "WIKILEAKS" TO TARGET YOUR TEENS? (Maddow good-naturedly confessed her error on Twitter.)
Indeed, but that was weeks ago and clearly a trifle compared to what she stepped in last Thursday when she claimed Wisconsin had a budget surplus.
As Kurtz was going to be interviewing Politifact's editor about this episode on the same day his profile of Maddow was to be published, it is quite curious why he didn't mention it in his piece.
Consider, too, that Politifact has to date reviewed eleven statements by Maddow finding four false, one barely true, three half-true, two mostly true, and only one completely true.
That means she was scored 100 percent right in only nine percent of their analyses.
And this woman has the nerve to say Fox isn't a news channel.
The presumptive face of the most biased and propagandist television news outlet in America had some harsh words for the media organization that bests hers in ratings virtually every hour of every day.
In a piece published by the Daily Beast Sunday, Rachel Maddow hypocritically told Howard Kurtz that Fox News has "become a McCarthyite chamber of horrors… You can't really call yourself a news channel if that's what you broadcast":
In the Olbermann tradition, Maddow is increasingly denouncing Fox, saying that Glenn Beck, in monologues about Muslims, has been "running baroque conspiracies that are designed to freak people out about bogeymen coming to get them, conspiracies that are unsupported by the facts." Fox, she charges, has "become a McCarthyite chamber of horrors… You can't really call yourself a news channel if that's what you broadcast." Maddow's repeated attacks have not provoked a response from Fox.
This coming from a woman that has recently been skewered by NewsBusters, Politifact, and the Baltimore Sun's David Zurawik for her highly-partisan, often false statements on air.
In the past ten days alone, Maddow has come under fire for a number of clearly erroneous comments she's made about the union battle in Wisconsin. Kurtz even addressed this on CNN's "Reliable Sources" Sunday, but failed to point it out in his rather glowing column:
While the host devours information online, stuffing printouts in thick folders, there are missteps. She touted an item on the website ChristWire urging Sarah Palin to speak out on Egypt—unaware that it was a satirical blog with such headlines as ARE FACEBOOK SEX GANGS USING "WIKILEAKS" TO TARGET YOUR TEENS? (Maddow good-naturedly confessed her error on Twitter.)
Indeed, but that was weeks ago and clearly a trifle compared to what she stepped in last Thursday when she claimed Wisconsin had a budget surplus.
As Kurtz was going to be interviewing Politifact's editor about this episode on the same day his profile of Maddow was to be published, it is quite curious why he didn't mention it in his piece.
Consider, too, that Politifact has to date reviewed eleven statements by Maddow finding four false, one barely true, three half-true, two mostly true, and only one completely true.
That means she was scored 100 percent right in only nine percent of their analyses.
And this woman has the nerve to say Fox isn't a news channel.
