James Inhofe
“”[A]rguably the dumbest person to sit in the Senate for a long, long time.
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| —Historian Erik Loomis[1] |
James Mountain "Jim" Inhofe (born 17 November 1934) is the batshit crazy wingnut who currently serves as the senior senator from the state of Oklahoma.
He is one of the leading global warming deniers in Congress, and is well known for having called it "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." He is also one of the Republican Party's leaders in the culture wars, and is bucking to be a candidate for the Légion des Crèches Américain with crossed Tannenbaums in the War on Christmas. This should come as no surprise considering that he's a member of the fundamentalist bloc called The Family.
In the hours following the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Inhofe made a statement on TV that pissed off a lot of federal employees. When asked about casualties, he said that he doubted that there would be many because, since the federal offices opened at 9 a.m., most of the employees would probably still be somewhere else drinking coffee.[2] (The bombing occurred at 9:02 a.m.) However, when Bill Clinton said that the demagogy on conservative talk radio contributed greatly to this act of domestic terrorism -- a claim that Clinton reiterated on the fifteenth anniversary of the event[3] -- Inhofe was outraged both times because he thought that Clinton was trying to politicize the bombing.
Inhofe is a licensed commercial pilot who learned to fly while serving in the U.S. Navy. An objective account of his Navy career is difficult to find. (He doesn't even mention it on his official Senate website.) But, since he was 17 years old when the Korean War ended and about 31 when the Vietnam War heated up, it's likely that most if not all of his Navy career was limited to peacetime non-combat duties. Still, because he actually served in the military -- unlike some of the other numerous too-busy-to-volunteer-for-military-service non-veteran backers of the War on Terror -- it's difficult to say that his hardcore support of sending troops into harm's way qualifies him as a chickenhawk.
Inhofe also made a stupid risky (but alas, non-monetary) pair of predictions, namely that Mitt Romney would win by a "substantial margin" (undefined, of course) in the midst of taking a predictable shot at Barack Obama on Bryan Fischer's Focal Point.[4] He also said that Republicans will win control of the Senate, though, so he currently has a sizable (but knowing Inhofe, personally unnoticed) case of Foot in Mouth Disease.
[edit] See also
- Marc Morano, his hired propagandist
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ Erik Loomis. "America’s Worst Senator." Lawyers, Guns and Money. 2013 February 3.
- ↑ SourceWatch bio on Inhofe
- ↑ Mark, David. "Jim Inhofe: Bill Clinton comments 'unconscionable'", Politico.com website, posted 20 April 2010.
- ↑ Inhofe: Obama 'Has Tried to Destroy Every Institution that Makes America Great', Right Wing Watch