Tea Party
CNN Tea Party Debate results
Last night, CNN and the Tea Party Express hosted their first Republican primary debate. Herewith the results of the CNN Tea Party Debate.
CNN Tea Party Debate prizes
Transcripts (Parts One, Two, Three and Four) come from Politisite.com.
Disclaimer: your editor apologizes to the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine for using two “awards” that it makes each year to a teacher and a student. Readers may guess which award goes to whom.
The Shovel Award
This goes to the man who can “shovel it on” with the greatest eloquence. Winner: Mitt Romney. He made you want to cry out in outrage, “That’s a lie!” But he never batted an eyelash nor missed a trick.
The Bucket Award
This goes to the man who can catch it with the greatest dexterity. Winner: Rick Perry. Everyone ganged up on him (even Michele Bachmann). Sometimes he deserved it—like when he had to defend ordering teen-age girls to get a vaccine against an STD (see below). Or when he tried to defend his “Texas DREAM Act.” At other times, he didn’t. But he handled himself very well. His defense of his Social Security position was brilliant. He alone (except maybe for Dr. Paul) was willing to give the American public a hard dose of the truth. (Hint: it is a Ponzi scheme.)
The Of Thee I Zing Award
This award takes its name from Laura Ingraham’s book of that title. It goes to the man who fired the “zingers” that struck home most often. Winner: Newt Gingrich. At every opportunity, he delivered a good one-liner. For example, Wolf Blitzer asked Gingrich whether it was “fair” for “oil companies” to get lots of “government handouts.” His reply:
You know, I thought for a second, you were going to refer to General Electric, which has paid no taxes.
The president of General Electric is one of Barack H. Obama’s cronies, and everyone knows it.
The Comeback Award
This goes to the person who made up the most lost ground. Winner: Michele Bachmann. She made up, at the CNN Tea Party debate, for the bad press she got after the “submission question” at Ames. She also gained the ground that the MSNBC moderators did not let her gain in Simi Valley.
Best Throw-back of a Red Herring
This goes to Dr. Ron Paul. It was also Wolf Blitzer’s low point as moderator of the CNN Tea Party Debate. “But—but—but Mr. Congressman, should society let an uninsured man die?” What tripe. Blitzer knows that the rule on a person who cannot pay for medical treatment is: treat him first, and collect from him later on. And Dr. Paul reminded everyone sharply that the members of a sound society know how to take care of themselves. (Even the Bible, though it tells everyone to help out with a really big load that no man can carry alone, also tells each man to carry his own regular-sized load.)
On the other hand…
The Order of the Lead Balloon
This also goes to Ron Paul. Rick Santorum challenged him about Jack Hunter’s blog post blaming America for the September 11 attacks. And Paul’s answer was an unmitigated disaster. First he said that if America did not stop offending the radicals, she would expect more of the same. Then he repeated Osama bin Laden’s grievances against the United States. When Paul got to the part about American support for the Republic of Israel, the crowd drowned him out with boos. And when he went on with what he had to say, he made a statement (about “hundreds of thousands of Iraqis” dying at American hands) that was simply not true.
A broken clock tells the correct time twice a day. Paul showed that even the best-designed clock can fail if one spring fails.
The Order of the Gadfly
One hardly need describe this award. Winner: Michele Bachmann. She attacked Mitt Romney on his hypocrisy on running socialized medicine in Massachusetts while campaigning to repeal it nationwide. Likewise, she attacked Rick Perry for (by executive order, yet!) ordering adolescent girls to accept a vaccine against Human Papilloma Virus, a sexually transmitted disease. With regard to that last: everyone knows that the best protection against any STD is a scrupulous chaperon.
The Life of the Party
This one goes to Herman Cain. No matter what he said—and he has some good ideas and better perspectives—he said it with his trademark smile. Even his voice smiles. And without him, the CNN Tea Party Debate might have turned into a knock-down drag-out brawl.
The Scapegoat
Who else but the man now holding office as President, Barack H. Obama. He took the worst abuse of anyone, though he was not even present. The one thing that everyone agreed on: whichever of them wins, all eight will pull together to make sure that Barack H. Obama will fail of re-election.
Terry A. Hurlbut has been a student of politics, philosophy, and science for more than 35 years. He is a graduate of Yale College and has served as a physician-level laboratory administrator in a 250-bed community hospital. He also is a serious student of the Bible, is conversant in its two primary original languages, and has followed the creation-science movement closely since 1993.
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So when Osama bin Laden said he was inspired to attack the Twin Towers after Israel destroyed the towers of Beirut in the 1982 Lebanon War, he was lying? That didn’t actually bother him and his true motivation for attacking America was because he hates our freedom?
The Clinton sanctions killed an estimated 500,000 Iraqi children. Madeleine Albright admitted to this when pressed in an interview, but she said it was justified. I think that counts as “thousands of Iraqis.”
Like Perry, Paul unabashedly speaks the truth no one wants to here. Just because the Tea Party is too jingoistic doesn’t make it any less true.
Osama bin Laden was merely giving the Excuse of the Day. All those things you mentioned, are incidental. The real purpose is that the Koran commands it. The Koran says, “Fight!” The Koran says, “Kill!” The Koran says, “Give an outworlder two chances to convert to Islam, and if he doesn’t do it, then kill him!”
The Bible says literally the same thing. It tells you to kill (usually by stoning) anyone who isn’t a Christian (Deuteronomy 13:7-12, Deuteronomy 17:2-5, Deuteronomy 13:13-19, 2 Chronicles 15:12-13).
Most old religious texts tell you to kill anyone of an opposing religion.
So let’s say the Chinese imposed a bunch of sanctions that ended up killing 500,000 American children (more than 150 times the number of people who died on 9/11). Would you want revenge against the Chinese because they killed mercilessly killed hundreds of thousands of your own people or because the Bible tells you to kill people who aren’t Christians?
Once again you fail to apply the context. The Fighting Words of the Koran are in a damning context: that of the Abrogation Principle and their occurrence late in the recital. The verses you quoted are in the context of:
A war that is long since settled,
Against enemies that practiced some of the most despicable policies imaginable. “Idolatry” (by Muslim lights) is one thing; human sacrifice (and I’m talking literal blood sacrifice) is another.
I write in the full context of ancient history, and I give it a lot more than the superficial treatment you just gave it.
Taken out of context? It explicitly tells you to kill non-Christians! If you can arbitrarily say those quotes are “taken out of context” why can’t Muslims? In fact, I did you one better. I cited which passages in the Bible command you to kill non-Christians. Can you cite which passage in the Qur’an tells you to kill non-Muslims?
Anyway, this is a waste of time. You didn’t answer my hypothetical. My point was that people don’t want to kill someone because of a different religion, whether they’re Christians or Muslims. bin Laden was a murderer and he deserved to die, but that doesn’t excuse the crimes the US has inflicted against the Middle East for the past 60 years.
Dante, now you’re lying. I don’t suffer fools gladly, and still less liars. How can Deuteronomy make any reference to Christians? Those verses make specific references to specific races of people. Your interpretation is the most ridiculous thing I have ever read in my life.
The fact of the matter is you are both right. Yes those Bible references are outdated, and you can tell from the context. So too, however, are the “commandments to kill” found in the Q’uran. Times have most certainly changed since the writing of both texts, and followers of both religions know this. Now to the real point, which is that we have committed crimes in the Middle East, it is NOT our business, and they had their reasons for attacking us. If someone killed your wife and you shot them in the head, I think you are guilty of murder. I don’t agree with murder. But I do think that THE REASON YOU KILLED THEM IS BECAUSE THEY KILLED YOUR WIFE. Freaking people act like America can do no wrong, and everything we’ve ever done was for the right reasons and the betterment of humanity… Get a clue..
You may think the “commandments to kill” in the Qu’ran are outdated. Now here’s the challenge: find the passage in the Qu’ran or the Hadiths that outdate them or supersede them. You can’t. They are the most recently written passages. As such they take precedence.
The First Coming of Christ supersedes the Deuteronomic passages. Nothing supersedes the Verse of the Sword in the Qu’ran.
And that is what Muslim clerics all say is sufficient reason to commit murder and treason against non-Shari’a governments and legal systems. Because the Qu’ran says so, and that is not outdated.
Much of what the militants allege against the West, they invent. The real issue is the same issue that Muhammad had against the Jews, when they rejected him as a fraud. On that occasion he penned the Fighting Words.
Osama bin Laden is no different from the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who collaborated with Adolf Hitler, and when HItler lost, roared,
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