03 January 2007

The Meter -- Wooooo! Sabbath Rules!


Pat Robertson: 2. So I guess this means that, if I want to go to Vegas, blow a grand at the craps tables, find some high-class hookers (plural!), and go on a three-day bender, I should get it in before August. Geez, Pat, that's awful helpful of you. Thanks! And I always knew you had a little devil in you. [Hat Tip: Wonkette.]

Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) / Library of Congress: 10. For those of you who have followed this story, apparently it is still going. Usually, when somebody sticks his foot in his mouth, as Virgil Goode (R-Va.) did last month, you get a climbdown in a few days. (See, e.g., Kerry, John.) But yet Goode persists. And so the glorious news comes that Ellison will not only use a copy of the Koran at his (unofficial) swearing-in photo op, but will use one owned long ago by Thomas Jefferson.

Virgil Goode: 0. I believe the Library of Congress has just unpimped your auto.

(In order to atone for resetting the VW commercial, bold prediction time: Virgil Goode will not keep his trap shut tomorrow and will do something stupid, along the lines of prior statements. Perhaps handing out Bibles. Perhaps entering a motion requiring the use of Bibles during the official swearing-in on the House floor. Perhaps holding a Bible aloft has he takes his oath, as a taunt. I may be wrong, but I think I'm going to be closer in my prediction than Pat is on his.)

James S. Robbins: 0. Yo, dude. Rep. Goode doesn't need any help. And yet here you are, helping him:

"The Bashaw of Tripoli’s justification for war on American trading ships in the Mediterranean two hundred years ago, according to Thomas Jefferson, was that 'it was founded on the Laws of the Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners.' By all means let Keith Ellison swear in using Jefferson's Koran, maybe afterwards he can look up the passages that discuss smiting the infidels at the neck and make great slaughter among them. Probably underlined."

OK. One last time. Keith Ellison is from Minnesota. The closest thing he has gotten to criminal activity (since moving from Detroit, natch) was being an extra when they shot Fargo. Or maybe on a tour of Paisley Park when somebody gave Prince a hamburger, and he went apeshit.

Look: Minnesota Nice is not a stereotype; it is a way of life. Just try to think of one notable guy from Minnesota who is mean. And not theatrical mean like Jesse Ventura was back in the day. Honest-to-God mean. Minnesota is the home of Spam, Scotch Tape and (insofar as the U.S. is concerned) curling. Curling, for God's sake--as bland and unoffensive as it gets.

Point is: get off Ellison. Let him have a nice first day, because the next two years, as a House freshman, are going to be painful.

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