Simon Maloy takes down Senator Butters:
Sen. Lindsey Graham is terrified. The world as he sees it is just filled to the brim with terrifyingly competent terrorists groups who, without any warning and acting with unchecked efficiency, will make good on whatever threat they issue and waltz unimpeded into the United States and wreak havoc. He describes horrifying scenarios in which untold numbers of American citizens are killed. And Graham helpfully disseminates his disturbing visions of mass slaughter via cable news and the Sunday shows.
This, of course, is precisely the sort of abject terror that groups like the Islamic State do their damnedest to inspire, and Graham is proving himself to be very easily terrorized. In fact, as time goes by, the threat seems to grow in Graham’s mind, and the Islamic State becomes hypothetically capable of killing more and more American citizens, even as intelligence agencies insist that the group poses no immediate threat to the United States.
Here’s Graham on the June 24 edition of Fox News’ “On the Record” talking about the need to take on ISIS. According to Graham, the benefit to confronting the terrorist group was that we would be able to stop the next 9/11. “Do you believe that the people who are shooting folks in the head, killing children in front of their parents, beheading people by the hundreds, if not thousands, would not attack us if they could?” Graham asked.
Sure, that sounds bad, but on the spectrum of things Lindsey Graham is afraid of, “another 9/11” is actually pretty moderate.
In August, Graham was invited to Fox News Sunday to talk terrorism, and upped the Islamic State’s fantasy body count to an entire city’s worth. “When I look at the map that Gen. Keane described, I think of the United States,” Graham said. “I think of an American city in flames because of the terrorists’ ability to operate in Syria and Iraq.”
It goes on like that. And while McCain and Butters are awful, let’s all take a moment to say thank FSM Lieberman is no longer in the Senate.
Baud
I say we appease ISIS by giving them South Carolina.
Land for peace.
Mustang Bobby
Jon Stewart: “The poor man lives his life trapped in the Blair Witch Project. For God’s sake, I’ve seen chihuahuas in handbags who are less fretful and shaking.”
srv
I told you people we should have surrendered on 9/11.
Idris Elba IAmA on reddit, Friday 2pm EDT.
Corner Stone
Oh Sen Manchin…where is the glass I can crawl over to vote for you?
Corner Stone
@Baud: I don’t think they could fully appreciate Low Country cooking.
Corner Stone
@srv: That dude’s totes sexy. If he’s saying it, I’m good with it.
Violet
Didn’t he say ISIS was going to come here and “kill us all” or some crap? I wonder how many fainting couches he has in his home? He must need quite a few.
Baud
Say what you want about Graham, he was great as Jack Nicholson’s wife in The Shining.
gbear
Someone should convince Graham and McCain that the surest way to wind up on a terrorist hit list is to appear on a television news program.
Southern Beale
The Daily Show skewered Senator Depends brilliantly earlier this week.
jayboat
I keep hoping he will cack from a self-induced stroke.
MikeBoyScout
@Baud: Seriously. Butters, Sanford, Wilson, ….
The state is chockablock inundated with political Lilliputians
Roger Moore
Even if you believe that, they aren’t here killing us. That should tell you that they lack the capability to do so. It sure as hell doesn’t suggest that we should run around like our hair is on fire, jumping at the first suggestion of what might help. Even if you accept that ISIL is a serious threat, we have time to think things through and come up with a well thought-out strategy for what we’re going to do before they’re capable of carrying through on whatever ill intentions they may have.
mdblanche
Yeah, well you’d always be scared all the time of everything too if you were being bullied by Senator Cartman whenever he needed a target to take out his anger at America on for not electing him president.
@MikeBoyScout: Too small for a country and too big for an insane asylum…
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I think Lindsey’s hysterics are meant to promote the idea of total war. If O Mighty ISIS! is indeed an international threat capable wreaking havoc in Beaufort, Peoria and Fresno, what would half a million US troops in the Iraqi/Syrian borderlands do stop that threat?
Debbie
I can’t believe you would besmirch Butters Stotch by pinning his name on this clown.
trollhattan
@Baud:
Heh! Let’s not forget his work as Olive Oyl.
tybee
@gbear:
i like it. :)
srv
This could all be fixed very quickly if ISIS would just apply for a NRA Golden Ring of Freedom Membership.
Surely they have $500K to burn?
StringOnAStick
Seems like ISIS is currently most interested in slaughtering Shiites, and will get around to the West once those apostates are dealt with. It’s a multi-hundred year dream for Sunni’s of the militant sort.
As for Butters and Johnny RageHead, well, the irony of these big, tough military-loving (yeah, right) senators doing the collective pants-pissing act on TV every chance they get and trying to get all of us to do it too offends me to no end.
mai naem
Gawd, can’t we just somehow get Lindsay in some compromising pics and end his political career. I don’t want him to commit suicide or anything, just allow him to come out,find himself a nice boy(maybe a doctor!) and settle down somewhere nice like San Francisco or Providence. Maybe he can become a decorator and bring some of that Southern flair to some interior designing firm wherever he ends up.
Violet
@mai naem: He’s been pining away for John McCain for years now.
max
Sure, if they weren’t too busy shooting everybody they can find in the back of the head. Thank you for calling! ISIS is busy right now, but if you leave a message they can kill you later.
How? Do they have the world’s largest Molotov cocktail and a giant catapult?
let’s all take a moment to say thank FSM Lieberman is no longer in the Senate.
Yes. The rivers of bonus sanctimony would make me puke.
max
[‘All About Lindsay: a tale of personality disorders and repressed lust.’]
trollhattan
@mai naem:
He and the turtle seem so profoundly unelectable, yet keep gettin’ ‘er done time and time again. Must be impossible to lose a seat on those states.
Anoniminous
How many Depends® does Senator Graham get through? In a hour? (To the nearest dozen is fine.)
Bill E Pilgrim
The thing is that even were his fears entirely justified, the notion that raging across the world and bombing people including civilians is a way to decrease the things he’s afraid of, rather than a way to make them far more likely, is just as insane as the overblown fears themselves.
trollhattan
@max:
They share the same superpowers of those in Gitmo who can never, NEVER be tried in the States, because they’ll fly right out of those courtrooms and begin lasering us with their eyes. Pew-pew-pew
trollhattan
@Anoniminous:
All of them, Katie.
Felanius Kootea
@srv: Ooh – I’m looking forward to that! I didn’t realize he was British for a long time: saw him first in Daddy’s Little Girls – which put me off him for a while, but then I saw him in Guy Ritchie’s RocknRolla and was like “Oh!”
Anoniminous
@efgoldman:
Wikipedia:
Chickenhawkus maximus
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@efgoldman: @Anoniminous: Huh. I know Americans can serve in the Israeli army (Jeffrey Goldberg can’t be the only one). Could Senator Pittypat maybe volunteer for the Iraqi regular army with all his experience?
Google suggests it’s legal for Americans to serve in foreign military as long as the country is not at war with US
Mike in NC
@mai naem: Lady Lindsey has been perfecting his hand wringing act for the past four years. The only thing that scares him more than the Mooslem Menace is a bunch of elderly Tea Party fanatics still screaming for Obummer’s birth certificate.
I’m pretty sure he has a nice gated compound down at Hilton Head where he can retire to with his significant other with all the money he’s scammed in his Senate career. What keeps him in DC?
Anoniminous
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Which gives me a chance to provide some theme music for this thread.
PurpleGirl
@Violet: And lots and lots of pearl necklaces to clutch as he faints onto a couch.
Tommy
@PurpleGirl: It blows my mind. I often say I am a military brat. I think that framed how I was rasied. I am not fearful of much stuff. I don’t think I am a bad ass, I just refuse to live in fear.
Quaker in a Basement
Keep Calm and Carry On.
Unless you’re Sen. Graham.
grandpa john
@MikeBoyScout: Shit, don’t forget queen Nicki
grandpa john
@trollhattan: yep, SC has the dreadful habit of continuing to reelect senators until the die in office or finally get senile and decide to retire.
elmo
He wants to do something about roving lawless gangs who go around shooting people in the head? Good. I can’t wait to hear his proposal to reform Missouri law enforcement.
Eric U.
is it wrong of me to recall Atlanta in flames when he says that?
danielx
@Violet:
Exactly.
And to put the cherry on top of the sundae, consider this: if it’s all that easy for the bad guys to invade and conquer Des Moines or for that matter East Jesus Tennessee, say, we haven’t exactly gotten a great return for all the money spent and all the rights abandoned and/or trampled in order to “protect” us.
mai naem
@efgoldman: Providence/Provincetown whatever – the place that Sully vacations in during the summer, I think so anyway.
MattF
Yes, this:
Graham is acting like he’s on their payroll. It’s disgusting.
SRW1
Ah, now I get it! Graham wants American boots to be put on the ground there so that those people can!
JR in WV
I’m so tired of these R guys being so afraid of everything. Worst case is they pop a vein while trembling on Faux News. Or is that best case?
Sen. Manchin isn’t afraid, too stupid to imagine anything bad happening to him, ever. He’s a politician, no one can hurt him. Except for that lawsuit his brothers filed on him seeking repayment of the two million dollar loan to keep the family carpet store afloat. That can hurt him. Even for a Senator, $2Million is a lot of cash.
I remember when he was running for state-wide office for the first time, and bragged about knowing some rich person or other. Which rich successful person then said, “Yes, Mr. Manchin has visited our house – when he came to measure for carpets.”
Ow! That one hurt!