This may be the most awesomest moment in C-SPAN history. What you are about to watch is a tearful teabagger, noting that James Inhofe missed a health care reform vote sick, calling in to C-SPAN worried that his prayer group from Waycross, Georgia may have killed Inhofe by mistake after answering Cornyn’s Coburn’s call to pray for someone to miss a vote the other day:
I’m in tears.
And it is obvious to me that what really motivates these teabaggers is anti-corporate resentment. We should totally join with these guys to kill the bill. There is no doubt they will help us get a better bill.
*** Update ***
It could be, as noted below, a hoax. This does have a performance art sort of feel. But then again, so does standing in a town hall screaming “KEEP THE GOVERNMENT OUT OF MY MEDICARE!”
Xecky Gilchrist
Let this be a lesson to you: leave the Prayer Safety Catch on unless you really know what you’re doing.
C Nelson Reilly
The bastards killed Oral Roberts by mistake!
LT
I read about this earlier and figured it was someone fucking with him. It’s not?
Fuck. That’s actually scary.
LT
Wow.
Comrade Mary
He actually SAID his group was praying for Byrd to die or get sick? Fucker.
@C Nelson Reilly: Ha!
handy
I guess at this point I feel about these teabaggers what wingnuts believe about terrorists: “You cannot reason with them, you must destroy them” but without all the illegal wars against countries that don’t harbor them. I honestly don’t know what to do about them but to point and laugh and hope these people never get anywhere near real power.
media browski
Calamity Jane sure knows how to pick allies.
JD Rhoades
Well, these are some of the same people who believe God sent a hurricane to Miami to punish Disney for allowing in gays, when Disney’s all the way up in Orlando.
If you believe these idiots, God has the worst aim since Mr. Magoo.
Chuck Butcher
Me copycatting John Cole with view from my couch. I hope you’re flattered by the outright theft.
Jeff Fecke
You know, if I was a believer, I might stop to ponder this series of events. I mean, God answered your prayer by smiting one of your own guys. It sure looks like God is liburuls’ side, don’t it? Maybe, slugger, it isn’t that you aren’t praying hard enough. Maybe God’s just answering your prayer.
Just Some Fuckhead
Gotta be spoof.
FlipYrWhig
The sign of potential hoax is “teabag group.” But I didn’t catch that the first time through.
Mnemosyne
@Chuck Butcher:
You finally found a cat bigger than Tunch!
Just Some Fuckhead
Funny as hell tho. How did the host and senator keep a straight face?
handy
@FlipYrWhig:
Good catch.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
I never thought I’d live to see a theological friendly fire incident.
Mnemosyne
@Jeff Fecke:
Remember during the Democratic convention when they were all praying for a rainstorm to rain out Obama’s acceptance speech and instead they got a hurricane headed to New Orleans during the Republican convention? That was awesome.
Karatist Preacher
Oh jeez, that is definitely fake.
maya
Relax. Inhofe was probably over at the C Street Church praying up a storm with one of his loved ones.
gopher2
It’s obvious the dems used the “I’m Rubber and Your Glue Prayer Defense.” That, or the invoked Opposite Day Rules.
Very smart. Very, very smart.
El Cid
I turn on C-Span’s Washington Journal every morning at 7 am in hopes that it will hosted by the beautiful Greta Brawner (nee Wodele). That she is on while hosting teabagger tears is even sweeter.
HgMn
Wasn’t it Coburn that asked for prayers that the Dems not find their way to the vote ? — it would be rich indeed if Inhofe got buried in a snowdrift instead — I just find it amazing that a teabagger would believe prayers would be answered — are you sure this isn’t a setup?
Chuck Butcher
@maya:
Or stuck in a global denying snowdrift.
TooManyJens
I think Poe’s Law applies here.
Bubblegum Tate
@FlipYrWhig:
Yeah, that’s kinda the giveaway. This is still pretty funny, though.
Tiparillo
Thanks for this I needed a laugh this afternoon. And the sun is actually coming out in Portland today….a Christmas miracle
Xecky Gilchrist
@HgMn: I just find it amazing that a teabagger would believe prayers would be answered
I’d be not at all surprised to find that they consider praying for unnamed people to be smitten by the Hand of God to be an important governing principle.
danimal
If a Republican senator gets sick or dies in the next day or two, the theocons will spontaneously combust into flames.
Be careful what you pray for…
kommrade reproductive vigor
And filing a bazillion law suits claiming the president is really a Kenyan.
And comparing government funded health care to the Holocaust.
And screaming about family values between bouts of shagging people to whom one is not married.
And asking God to bring the Jews into alignment…
One day they’ll tear off their masks and 100,000 Andy Kaufman clones will grin and wave at us. And I will not be surprised.
Keith G
John, Wasn’t it Colburn who asked for that most non-WWJD prayer?
Loneoak
@FlipYrWhig:
That’s my favorite part: “My small teabag group.”
I don’t think it was a hoax. The content is suspicious, but the delivery is so spot-on.
gex
See, this is why I, as a liberal, support Death Prayer Control. But you can’t compromise with the National Death Prayer Association, so this is what you get – random people death praying and taking out Senators.
Zifnab
Haha! Epic Lulz.
Ok, whatever I said about health care being good or bad, it was all worth it for that clip.
Palooza
Prayers don’t kill people. People kill people with prayers.
Jorge
I actually spend the night in Waycross, Ga every other week for my job. These are the folks who overwhelmingly keep sending Jack Kingston back to DC every two years. This is absolutely not a joke.
Unfortunately.
arguingwithsignposts
head/desk!
I have no doubt that there are people praying for the death of Byrd to prevent HCR. If that is theatre, then it’s quite possibly some of the best theatre I’ve heard evah.
ETA: When prayers are outlawed, only outlaws will have prayers.
R-Jud
OT: Damn:
A Mom Anon
You’d be AMAZED at the number of people in my neck of the woods who plaster the backside of their SUVs with anti-gov,anti-Obama,pro-forced pregnancy,anti healthcare slogans. Healthcare IS NOT A RIGHT! Ban the UN! Fair Tax! It’s a Child,not a Choice! Rush is my co-pilot! Send the Fight to Them!!(I have no idea,lol)The nitwit next to me in traffic yesterday had a plush fetus toy hanging from his rear view mirror,complete with a little curly umbilical cord. Alot of these folks are not the sharpest crayons in the box,so referring to themselves as teabaggers in all seriousness is not out of the realm of possibility. It’s a freaking free for all festival of fucktitude in the South,it’s been worse since the whole tea party crap started. They’ve been validated by FOX and the dipshits on the radio and now they won’t shut up.
ds
I’m pretty sure that’s fake… right? I mean they don’t usually call themselves “teabaggers”?
Well I hope so.
But I’ve seen the same sentiment expressed on the right wing blogs. They’re trying to pray Byrd dead, even though the governor of West Virginia is a solid Democrat and could immediately appoint a successor.
A pretty fitting finish to their side of the health care debate. Morally depraved and completely unaware of the circumstances.
Peter J
The really big fucker here is Sen Barrasso. You have a guy, hoax or not, telling the Senator that his church group were praying for Byrd to die and he did not say anything to the caller about that, instead he explained that Inhofe wasn’t dead and why he was missing.
Fucker.
(I can only hope that the part with the Senator telling the caller that you shouldn’t pray for Senators to die was edited out.)
fraught
If this is a hoax, the guy should win an Oscar. I can see the bloated red face glazed with tears, the mussed up, slept in grey hair, the epic flappers trembling. The break in the voice was perfect.
demkat620
That is great. You’ve gotta love it spoof or not. It is genius.
Jeff Fecke
@fraught:
Agreed. The accent was spot on, too. It’s either the real thing, or the best spoof ever.
Incidentally, don’t think that “teabag group” is a giveaway. Remember, it’s only those damn liberal elitist homo scum who laugh at godfearing Amurican teabaggers for their unintentional double…dubbl…aw, hell, it’s a French word.
Garrigus Carraig
That didn’t surprise me at all. Isn’t that normal Republican behavior now?
les
Must be the same prayer group the Alabama gov. put together to end the southeastern drought, and got massive flooding. Loud STFU from god, I thought.
demkat620
@Peter J: Even better, that would be Dr. John Barrasso.
Guy’s an orthopedic surgeon.
Cervantes
Hamsher’s heart may be in the right place but her political judgment is … well … inerrant it’s not.
Cat Lady
I don’t think it was a hoax. The choking up anguish really comes through, and that’s hard to fake. I think that teatard actually thinks his pathetic little teabagger group killed Inhofe. LOL.
BTW Cole, it’s not Cornyn it’s Coburn, though for what it’s worth they all have that indistinguishable Republican stupid as a cow look about them.
ETA: No offense to cows, or Angus.
handy
Listening through it a third time now, I’m not so sure it’s a spoof. I think this is a disturbed, hopelessly lost individual baring his crazy for the world to hear.
jeffreyw
@A Mom Anon:
I’m using this every chance I get from now on.
Zifnab
@R-Jud: Is this a look into a parallel universe where wingnuts still run the show?
:-p I’m not overly surprised. China wants to grow it’s economy and it thinks it has the right to pollute just as much as its predecessors. They’ll adopt whatever technology is inexpensive, but – ultimately – that’s going to be coal for the immediate future. They aren’t going to back down on this when they’ve got 1.2 billion energy hungry mouths to feed.
The best we can do at this point is innovate solutions that China will consider attractive. I mean, the good news is that the Chinese are already blazing the trail in manufacturing cheap solar paneling. If the costs balance out, maybe they’ll just back off on their own accord.
aimai
It must be a hoax–he doesn’t say “Dr. Coburn” he says “Dr. Colbert”–but I’m just dying of laughter here. I can’t stand it. And I want to give a huge shout out to LeftTurnatABQ for “theological friendly fire.”
Still, even if its a hoax you have to love the blunt, teabagger attack “how hard did you pray, senator!” The one upmanship never stops.
aimai
Jeff Fecke
Inhofe evidently missed the vote because he had to fly with his wife back to Oklahoma, but he’s going to then fly back to DC to cast more votes.
Either his wife’s only eleven years old, or James Inhofe doesn’t think women are capable of flying in big, scary airplanes by themselves.
mellowjohn
@ #14: how does barasso keep a straight face? easy… he’s a fucking idiot, too.
JD Rhoades
Miracles? You want miracles? My son upgraded from Vista to Win7 over the weekend, AND THERE WERE NO PROBLEMS!
PRAISE JEEEEBUS!
EarBucket
I’m about 95% certain this is a joke, with the 5% only because every time I think the teabaggers can’t sink any lower, they surprise me. I’d be really shocked if this turned out to be real, though.
John Cole
@JD Rhoades: Windows Seven is just awesome. Best windows product I’ve used in decades.
SiubhanDuinne
@Jorge: Well, mercifully, I don’t have to spend a lot of time in Waycross, but apart from that I had the same thought as you — that the folks who elect and re-elect Jack Kingston to Congress are very likely to be members of “small teabaggers’ groups” and even more likely to cheer the idea of praying for the death or incapacity of Senator Byrd. I don’t think this was a hoax at all. I think the guy meant every tear-choked word.
By the way, what actually did happen to Inhofe? Was he actually taken ill, or lost in a snowdrift? This guy being interviewed, Barrasso, basically said that Inhofe didn’t bother to show up because shut up, that’s why.
demkat620
@John Cole: Is it possible you only think that because Vista sucks so much ass?
Because it does. It really, really does.
SiubhanDuinne
@les:
That was actually the Governor of Georgia, Sonny Perdue, who held the pray-for-rain thing in front of the State Capitol. Not that Bob Riley of Alabama wouldn’t have done the same thing if he had thought of it first.
John Cole
@demkat620: I had no problems with Vista, really.
Autboy
but real or hoax, it’s ‘great’ theater. god almighty what a freak show politics has become
SiubhanDuinne
@SiubhanDuinne:
Sorry, posted before I saw@Jeff Fecke:
He had to fly his wife back to Oklahoma? Seriously? There has to be more of a story than that.
gex
The sad part is this guy thinks his prayers have this kind of power. And all he can think to do with that power is wish people dead. Right wing Christianity is very unattractive.
Seebach
@R-Jud: Fuck China. They’re never going to become the superpower that they think they will. They’ll destroy themselves with their insane growth policies first.
joeyess
If I were Brasso, that call would’ve scared the living shit out of me.
What have the GOoPers created?
This is crazy-train-off the rails-falling into a canyon-nuts.
And it’s become mainstreamed.
Comrade Darkness
You can’t fake that accent.
I’ll put a check in the column for “honestly insane, but in a christian way that is supposed to be healthy . . . supposedly, somehow”.
The great being who is older than the universe, is larger than the universe, created the universe, actually listens to what the fuck you think should happen next. Right. And on Tuesdays you’re Napoleon, too, right?
Comrade Darkness
@John Cole: MS only produces when they absolutely have to. They only put out any kind of workable browser after mozilla/netscape had 90+% market share. Competition is absolutely key to consumer experience.
Joel
@John Cole: Vista gave my wife’s computer serious fits, but 7 remedies them all.
Great OS, windows 7.
Makewi
The original prayer request was for someone to miss the vote, not die. That Dana jumped to the conclusion that this can only mean wishing for the death of Byrd shows you were Dana’s head is at, not Coburns.
Todays lesson has been brought to you by the letter Z and the numbers 7, 4 and 16.
Anya
@FlipYrWhig: I thought he said “tea party group”
Anya
@fraught: Oh, my god, I had the same image. Someone give this man an Oscar!
Zifnab
@Makewi:
Indeed. Dana thinks you’re a jackass.
As for Sen. Coburn, I’m sure I’m not the only one who wakes up some mornings to flip on the news and utter the phrase, “What the fuck is that asshole thinking?”
noncarborundum
@LT: Scarier than this?
@Jeff Fecke: Dubya on tonder.
handy
@Makewi:
So the original prayer request was to ask God to cheat for them, that whole democratic process thing be damned?
James K. Polk, Esq.
Can we please get a “Theological Friendly Fire” tag?
It’s all I really want for Christmas.
gbear
Big Sky by the Kinks is all I got to say to these morons who want god to perform for them.
slag
It is hard to tell the hoaxes from the real thing.
We were listening to some Christian radio host predict when the rapture would begin, and someone called in and asked what time zone the host was referring to–“Because, for example, Australia’s time zone is different”. The radio host said that it didn’t need to get that specific, but listening, we were in tears unable to determine whether or not the caller was serious.
It’s a hilariously sad state of affairs we’re in.
Inhofe's Friendly Skies
What’s really bizarre is WHY Inhofe wasn’t there. He had to FLY his wife home. Is commercial first class or a private charter just for plebes like his constituents?
Roll Call reports that Inhofe “was absent to fly his wife home to Oklahoma in advance of the Christmas holiday but that he is headed back to Washington, D.C., for this week’s remaining votes.”
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/12/22/coburn-pray-inhofe/
Xecky Gilchrist
@handy: So the original prayer request was to ask God to cheat for them, that whole democratic process thing be damned?
That’s about the size of it. It got GWB “elected”, so why not?
D-Chance.
Hey, Green Shoots, baby!
Ted Kennedy’s corpse is smiling… he now has a successor in his NIMBY war on the planet.
Just Some Fuckhead
@James K. Polk, Esq.: Shouldn’t it be “Friendly Fire of the Gods”?
aimai
I think what always impresses me about people like Makewi is that they either know that they are lying, or they don’t know that they are lying and they are totally unaware of what their own side is actually doing. So they are either mendacious bastards, or totally, blindly, ignorant.
Yes, Makewi, people on the right side of the aisle were, in fact, praying for Byrd to die. Its been the talk of the right wing blogs. If you think its disgusting–and apparently you do–you might direct your ire at your co-religionists, or co-belligerents, however you conceive them. You are exactly like the racist assholes who stand in front of crowds of modern neo nazis and proclaim that “there are no racists in the GOP”. Its god damned “no cannibalism in the british navy” every day with you, while you and your friends are gnawing on some poor sailor’s leg.
aimai
Anya
Let’s forget for a minute whether this was a hoax or not; what’s disturbing is the fact that Sen. Barrasso did not admonish the caller for stating that he prayed for Sen. Byrd’s death? The call may be a hoax, but shouldn’t our elected officials be responsible or little ashamed about things like that. He could’ve at least denied that Cobern prayed for Byrd’s death.
handy
@D-Chance.:
Naturally, it’s the useless senator from CA pushing this.
Blue Raven
@slag:
I used to be a fundamentalist Christian, or at least I associated with them. In retrospect, I never really embraced it. But I was immersed in it long enough to assure you the caller in this comment and the video clip above were more than likely 100% dead serious. We are talking about a mentality that had a radio station a friend of mine DJed at in the mid-1980’s forbid him and his co-workers to play any song above 80-90 BPM because if it was too fast, it was Satanic.
Mnemosyne
@handy:
Why can’t we get anyone to primary DiFi?
Tony P.
Kudos to ThatLeftTurn for coining the phrase “THEOLOGICAL FRIENDLY FIRE”. It’s a gem.
My own favorite instance of it was back in ’05, when Pat Robertson prayed for a vacancy on the Supreme Court, and shortly afterwards the Good Lord chose to gather unto Himself the late Chief Justice Rehnquist.
I’ve always thought God has a wry sense of humor and an impish sense of timing. You’d think His fans would have figured out by now that He is like those deceitful genii of legend and joke, and have learned to be … precise … in their prayers.
–TP
Ana Gama
Slag,
A friend of mine called into a radio show during the campaign where they were discussing Obama being the anti-christ. My friend pretended to be an evangelical and said that her pastor was telling the congregation that as Christians they needed to allow the anti-christ to come to power, because that was the ONLY WAY for the rapture to occur. And so he was encourging his flock to work for and vote for Obama.
It was simply hilarious.
Makewi
@handy:
The original prayer request was that someone not be able to make the vote so that there wouldn’t be the required 60 votes. Pretty straightforward, if theologically questionable. Still a leap to go right for the wishing for the death of another premise.
Rosali
Thank you for this video. I’m nominating it right now for the 2009 Funniest Post category.
Makewi
@aimai:
Show me. I know you believe it, and I suspect that you wanted to believe it even before someone took the time to utter it.
AhabTRuler
@Zifnab: Well, I sure as hell don’t turn on the news when I wake in the morning, that shit’ll kill you.
MikeJ
@handy: Private group raises funds, buys land, donates it with the expectation that it will be set off limits to development.
Doesn’t sound like NIMBY. Since I see good arguments for both sides and don’t have all the data, I wouldn’t call the argument for either stupid yet.
Nethead Jay
@aimai: *Applauds* Beautiful smackdown.
AhabTRuler
@Makewi:
Yeah, OK. So, what’s yer point?
D-Chance.
Cole has ~850 followers on Twitter; a freaking clock has 33,457.
The internet is a fascinating thing.
gbear
@D-Chance.:
You reek of sour grapes.
John O
Gee, thanks, John.
I think I’ll go cut myself now. Performance art or not.
(BTW, if it WAS performance art, kudos.)
John O
@aimai:
Aimai, there are quite a few hideous things you could do before I turned on you after your infamous Joe Klein evisceration.
And your reply here gave you a few more hideous things to do to close the she’s a monster gap with me.
Merry Christmas in the most secular way to you, and those who frequent this blog, irrespective of your own ISW, or lack of one.
It’s the only blog I bother commenting on anymore.
Rick Taylor
Ok, now we have a Republican senator publicly calling on Americans to pray to God that a senator is unable to make a vote, and constituents interpreting this as a call to pray for the death of a senator. How much nuttier will it get?
The Raven
My witch girlfriend is of the opinion that “cursing anybody, whether through Christian prayer or satantic ritual, exacts a price.” To any would-be black magicians, she adds, “Are you prepared to pay it?”
Croak!
And Another Thing...
OMG – I nearly injured myself laughing !!! And “theological friendly fire” – I’m about to rip a lung.
They’re so motivated they’re praying for people to die – and drill bits on “our side” are drafting treatises on the meaning of “campaigned on” and running around screaming liar.
My vote is it’s authentic..the break in the geezer’s voice is so real. If it’s a scam, he’s a good enough actor that we’d recognize his voice from from video or voice overs. Plus he sounds old enough that it’s highly likely he doesn’t get the teabag connotation. When he says teabag he’s thinking Lipton.
Deschanel
Hoax or not, you have to love how his call was put through to the broadcast, vetted for his POV. I’ll bet he sounded like a real American to the screeners, not some DFH.
It’s a good thing these sorts eschew voodoo, which isn’t the sort of black magic they can sign on with, seeing as teabaggers are low-boil sorts of subtle racists. They have standards!
The Raven
@Deschanel:
Just wanted to admire that phrase.
Zuzu's Petals
@Tiparillo:
Ooh goodie, I was just packing my mittens and extra-warm sweaters for my trip up there tomorrow. Last year Christmas was snowed out.
ilsita
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Oh my gosh, that’s the funniest thing! Friendly fire!
Anyway, idunno… It’s not just that I think it’s real because I want it to be real. I think it’s real because I totally rubbernecked the African Press International thing about the Michelle Obama tapes, and found that these people are capable of stupefying lunacy. And they have taken back “teabagger” as an act of defiance against the commies.
celticdragon
@aimai:
Well done.
AnotherBruce
@John Cole:
Ummm decades?
I must have missed the Windows ’89 product launch.
Col. Klink
Looking at Barrasso I can’t help but think he was also the Warden in the Shawshank Redemption.
And why the hell is someone in Waycross (fitting name, no?) praying for Byrd’s death? Byrd was once an Exalted Cyclops in the KKK. Doesn’t that give you a lifetime pass with these kind of folk?
imp336
I live (happily) in the South, and have no problem believing that the caller was sincere. Almost all here are raised to be religiously insane. Fortunately, all are raised to be stubborn, so the True Crazy only takes ahold of a relatively small percentage.
One observation that may or may not add legitimacy to the speculation…the caller claims that he lives in Waycross, GA, and he speaks in a classic deep-low country southern accent that one would expect to hear along the Atlantic Coastal Plain from Southern Georgia to Eastern North Carolina. He’s not faking it.
Of course, he could be some kind of progressive prankster…but if he’s really from Southern Georgia, what are the chances of that?
peeticket
thats real.
Makewi
Still waiting for all that supposed death wishing from you aimai. Or is it that the one who is yelling LIAR is herself a liar?
aimai
Makewi,
We’ve all pointed out to you before that the entire of the google is available to you–why do you always want other people to do your research for you? Lazy, irresponsible, shiftless–typical republican. Did you think that now that Obama is in the White House your googling would be done for you? Oh, and fuck off.
aimai
aimai
But you know, charity towards all in this season:
Here’s the Confederate Yankee in a post titled “Byrd Dropping”
Funny–he ends the piece by linking approvingly to the WaPo article and says that he believes that Coburn was referring exactly to this hoped for conclusion.
Aimai
PS. In charity again, towards Coburn and towards all our friends on the other side of the aisle its pretty clear that the ability to say incredibly stupid shit in public and then whirl around and pretend you didn’t mean it is really typical of this crew. No doubt he was terminally embarrassed to have his words caught up and flung back in his face by an unsympathetic audience. That’s not because he didn’t mean the ugly implication but because he’s a coward and disingenous to boot.
Makewi
@aimai:
There is nothing wrong with asking someone to show someone why they are thinking what they are. In this case you were right, there was a right wing blogger wishing for the death of Byrd. CY’s statement is explicit.
Coburn’s is less so, even more when you consider the weather situation in DC at the time he made it.
aimai
In this case I was right? My dear, how generous of you. I’d like to point out there is a second proof that “I’m right” which is that the Republican Senator in the taped segment doesn’t *bat an eye* during the call and does not take the caller to task. Now, if *I* were a member of a party that was being slandered–slandered I say!–by people on such a subject wouldn’t it behoove me to correct the record, on TV,when I have a chance? What, would it have killed him to say “woah there, caller, whoever you are. I would never pray for the death of any of my colleagues and I assure you “Dr. Coburn” did not advise you to! Its all a liberal lie!”
Right there, he could have and should have said that. But he didn’t. Its Ockham’s Razor hacking at your pathetic excuses for your own party. Really, if you don’t like the shenanigans of the teapartiers who *openly wished for Ted Kennedy’s death as well* while he was dying you might consider moving over to a more congenial party. From your posts I’m guessing that would be the neo-randian, fuck you I’ve got mine libertarian, probably racist but won’t admit it, party of liars and dissemblers anonymous.
Makewi, you and your whole party disgust me. Really, deeply, disgust me.
Paul L.
Progressives love a fraud as long as he promotes the narrative.
C-SPAN Caller Who Pranked Sen. Barrasso Was Phony Republican