Have you ever watched the Rev. Al Sharpton’s television show on MSNBC and wondered what you’d get if you combined his ignorance of American history with James Carville’s inability to quit speaking? If so, you’ve probably concluded, as I have, that you’d get someone who sounds a lot like Democrat Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas. (Yes, the same Congresswoman Lee who, while visiting NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratories in 2005, infamously asked whether the Mars Pathfinder had taken a photograph of the flag Neil Armstrong planted on Mars in 1969.)
And as I listened to Lee speak recently, February 8th, on Ed Schultz’s radio show, it dawned on me anew that responsibility for many of our nation’s current woes can be directly traced to the fact the we’ve placed congressional members and senators in power who know little to nothing about recent American history, much less events surrounding our nation’s founding.
For example, when Schultz asked Lee why anyone would think Congressional Republicans wanted to better the economy when their chief focus appears to be defeating the president, Lee concurred, in a round-about way, then said:
As I have scanned the annals of history, during the tenure of many presidents, obviously the recent presidents of JFK and Lyndon Baines Johnson, of Richard Nixon who was impeached, and subsequently Ford and Carter. I cannot find in the statement of a message of a minority leader, majority leader, or speaker, whose message has been defeat the commander-in-chief.
Wow. The “recent presidents” Lee referenced were JFK, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter. JFK died in 1963 and Carter left office in January of 1981. In other words, “recent” to Lee is somewhere between 31-to-49 years ago? Moreover, Lee said Nixon was impeached. Seriously folks, Nixon made history by becoming the first president in U.S. history to resign the office, and of course he resigned before charges of impeachment were brought against him.
text-align: -webkit-auto; background-color: #ffffff; font-family: georgia, ‘times new roman’, ‘bitstream charter’, times, serif;”>(For the record, the only two presidents in U.S. history who were impeached were Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton. And both of these presidents share a common denominator: their party affiliation was Democrat.)
But Lee kept going:
This is the most unusual historical period in our lifetimes. I frankly believe that it will be tainted, it will be known as the three ring circus, and it will be a shameful period. Because most times, no matter whether we are a divided government, which I’m arguing for vigorous take-back of the House by Democrats and the win of the president, because we have proven, in the 21st century by those who are elected by the Republicans, you can’t have an effective democratic divided government under the likes of this thinking.
What? The last time I heard something as broken and incoherent as this was when Miss Teen South Carolina tried to explain why a fifth of Americans can’t locate the U.S. on a world map: “U.S. Americans are unable to do so because some people out there in our nation don’t have maps, and I believe that our education, like such as in South Africa, and the Iraq, everywhere like, such as.”
Seriously folks, maybe Miss Teen South Carolina should secure a place in congress so she and Rep. Lee could talk about our recent presidents JFK and Lyndon Baines Johnson.
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