Last Call: Randsplaining 101

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul!  Storied and famous traditionally black college Howard University!  What happens when you put the two together?

Randsplaining 101!  Benjy Sarlin documents the atrocities...

As Rand Paul told it, the biggest problem keeping African Americans from voting Republican is that they didn’t know Republicans have long been leaders on abolition and civil rights. As students at Howard University heard it, the problem was that Paul was condescending, misleading, and removed from the issues facing their community.


Paul devoted almost none of his speech Wednesday at the historically black college in Washington, D.C., to explaining the GOP’s thorny relationship with black voters over the last fifty years, and most of it arguing that “the Republican Party has always been the party of civil rights and voting rights.” His history lecture focused almost entirely on the period before 1964, when the GOP began to champion the states rights arguments of southern whites. Echoing a popular conservative talking point, Paul repeatedly reminded the audience that Democrats passed Jim Crow laws in the south and that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, as were the first black legislators and the founders of the NAACP.

“Would everyone know here they were all Republicans?” he said at one point, referring to the NAACP’s founders.

“Yes!” came the booming response from nearly the entire audience, who appeared offended Paul would even raise the question. 

And on it went from there, as Rand Paul discovered that a roomful of college students at one of the most prestigious universities in the country (historically black or otherwise) actually do know something about American history.  You know, more than Rand Paul did.

In a way, I'm hoping that this was a humbling experience for the Junior Senator from the Commonwealth, but the odds of that are miniscule at best.  Transcript of the speech is, of course, at Reason Magazine's website.  My fav paragraph:

I come to Howard today, not to preach, or prescribe some special formula for you but to say I want a government that leaves you alone, that encourages you to write the book that becomes your unique future.

Yeah, and on that book was "Died from neglect."

I'm Just A Bill, Just A Lonely Ol' Bill

But I want to become a law so badly I'll blackmail an Oklahoma state Senator in order to win, is that how the song goes?

A co-founder of the Sooner Tea Party was charged Tuesday with blackmail over an email that he admits sending to a state senator.

Al Gerhart, 54, of Oklahoma City, also was charged with violating the Oklahoma Computer Crimes Act.

Both counts are felonies.

Gerhart, a carpenter, denied any wrongdoing after coming under investigation last week. He had not been arrested yet Tuesday evening.

Gerhart sent the email March 26 to Sen. Cliff Branan, promising to make the senator a laughing stock unless the Senate Energy and Environment Committee passed a bill dealing with a United Nations plan.

Branan, R-Oklahoma City, is chairman of the committee. The senator turned the email over to the Oklahoma Highway Patrol.

Misspelling one word, Gerhart wrote: “Branan, Get that bill heard or I will make sure you regret not doing it. I will make you the laughing stock of the Senate if I don't hear that this bill will be heard and passed. We will dig into your past, yoru family, your associates and once we start on you there will be no end to it. This is a promise.”

Yeah, that's how the FREEDOM and LIBERTY party rolls, yo.  You do their bidding or they destroy you and move on to the next state lawmaker.  And hell, this guy was going to crush him over some tinfoil nonsense dealing with sustainability. 

We'll crush all dissent unless you stop this bill that might mean the end of our ability to dissent, if you squint at it just right!

Idiots...but dangerous.  And increasingly, they're running YOUR state government.

StupidiNews!

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