{"id":1853,"date":"2009-12-24T13:04:23","date_gmt":"2009-12-24T18:04:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rationalitynow.com\/blog\/?p=1853"},"modified":"2009-12-24T13:04:23","modified_gmt":"2009-12-24T18:04:23","slug":"tea-baggers-praying-for-senator-byrds-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rationalitynow.com\/blog\/2009\/12\/24\/tea-baggers-praying-for-senator-byrds-death\/","title":{"rendered":"Tea baggers praying for Senator Byrd to die"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just a quick note to highlight a post by Jesse Galef<\/a> on The Friendly Atheist<\/a> blog.<\/p>\n

The Washington Post<\/a> reported an interesting statement by Senator Tom Coburn (emphasis mine).<\/p>\n

[Senator] Robert Byrd was wheeled in at 1 a.m. to break a filibuster on the manager’s amendment. Byrd’s presence was not required, especially considering that he’d clearly telegraphed his intention to vote to break the filibuster. But Republicans forced him to travel to the chamber. Indeed, shortly before he arrived, Sen. Tom Coburn headed to the floor to propose a prayer. “What the American people ought to pray is that somebody can’t make the vote tonight,” he said. “That’s what they ought to pray.”<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Putting aside the fact that prayer does nothing, that’s just nasty and uncalled for. Coburn doesn’t specifically say that he wishes Byrd would die or become too ill to make the vote, but it’s not hard to infer it from his words. Here’s a link to the video<\/a>, which also includes Senator Dick Durbin’s request for clarification of Coburn’s remarks.<\/p>\n

However, it gets worse. On a CSPAN program, a caller asked Senator John Barrasso what went wrong. Here’s the video. The transcript of what the caller asks is below.<\/p>\n

httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=r0uxURKIFqU<\/p>\n

The transcript of the caller’s words:<\/p>\n

CALLER: Yeah doctor. Our small tea bag group here in Waycross, we got our vigil together and took Dr. Coburn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s instructions and prayed real hard that Sen. Byrd would either die or couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t show up at the vote the other night.<\/p>\n

How hard did you pray because I see one of our members was missing this morning. Did it backfire on us? One of our members died? How hard did you pray senator? Did you pray hard enough?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Assuming the caller isn’t a Poe<\/a>, I find two things appalling about this call. First, obviously, that the caller and his “tea bag group” actually got together and prayed that Senator Byrd would “either die or couldn’t show up.” That’s a pretty good example of evil and immorality right there.<\/p>\n

The second thing that is just as troubling is the response from both the CSPAN commentator and Senator Barrasso. Neither<\/strong> of them even acknowledges the fact that a caller just openly admitted to getting a group together and praying for the death of a United States Senator. It’s as if they felt that it was a perfectly rational thing to do, therefore not deserving of any attention.<\/p>\n

Jesse Galef said…<\/p>\n

Obviously I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t believe prayer will have an effect, but it says a lot about the people praying. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s indicative of the sad state we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re in that I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t tell whether the caller was sarcastic or not \u00e2\u20ac\u201c those could have been tears or laughter making him choke up. But I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m astounded \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and disgusted \u00e2\u20ac\u201c that neither Barrasso nor the moderator commented on it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Astounded and disgusted, indeed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just a quick note to highlight a post by Jesse Galef on The Friendly Atheist blog. The Washington Post reported an interesting statement by Senator Tom Coburn (emphasis mine). [Senator] Robert Byrd was wheeled in at 1 a.m. to break a filibuster on the manager’s amendment. Byrd’s presence was not required, especially considering that he’d … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Tea baggers praying for Senator Byrd to die”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[214,233,271,403,461,632,638,699,810],"class_list":["post-1853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-congress","tag-cspan","tag-dick-durbin","tag-health-care","tag-john-barrasso","tag-politics","tag-prayer","tag-robert-byrd","tag-tom-coburn","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rationalitynow.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rationalitynow.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rationalitynow.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rationalitynow.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rationalitynow.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.rationalitynow.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1853\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rationalitynow.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rationalitynow.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rationalitynow.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}