Sheldon Whitehouse gets a memo from the Dept. of We Can Fact-Check Your Ass

Kerry Pickett of The Washington Times does the kind of journalism conservatives supposedly don't do:

Video from Hot Air where Ed Morrissey has much more. Excuse me for saying that this elevated my mood from bleak despair to ecstatic hope.

Once I heard a preacher talk about the "God of the Valleys." When we are on top of the mountain, it is easy to suppose that our achievements are the result of our own excellence. But it is in that dark valley -- where we feel doomed and hopeless -- that we learn the true meaning of faith.

After you've cried out for help in the darkness of that valley, make a vow that if you should ever get to that sunny mountaintop, you will remember the God of the valleys, who delivered you from destruction when all seemed lost.

Most people won't see the relevance of that sermon to this Whitehouse video, but some people will. Remember: "It is history that teaches us to hope."

UPDATE: By way of exegesis, I worked for hours yesterday transcribing excerpts of Whitehouse's remarks and Jon Kyl's rebuttal. A congressional source had gotten me a rush transcript written in ALL CAPS, which meant that, in order to provide the text, I had to retype it all myself.

Tough work, but somebody's got to do it. Then I caught an hour's nap, so that I could file an 850-word column for the American Spectator immediately after the 1 a.m. cloture vote. Then I put up a post in the Hot Air Greenroom and a post here, linking both the Spectator column and the Greenroom post. All the while, I relentlessly promoted my work via Twitter and e-mail.

So you can imagine what a crushing embarrassment it was to discover that Ed Morrissey didn't even bother to link me in his 10:12 a.m. post at Hot Air. All that work, for nothing, you see? Add this terrible personal humilation -- "Why does Ed Morrissey hate me?" -- to the depressing reality of the 60-40 cloture vote, and I was feeling lower than a snake's belly.

Not only that, but a paycheck I'd expected in the mail didn't show up today, and the tip-jar contributions have slowed to zero the past two days, putting the Pasadena trip in jeopardy -- to say nothing of the fact that I can't even afford to buy my wife a Christmas gift.

Total and complete failure.

And then I saw Kerry's video, a hopeful omen at a moment of utter despair. "Angels unawares."

Meanwhile my blog buddy Jim Treacher just got a new job, and we congratulate him on his good fortune.

(Do you reckon ObamaCare will buy me dentures after I grind my teeth down to the gums?)

'It's astounding. Time is fleeting . . .'

". . . Madness takes its toll":

To Sen. [Sheldon] Whitehouse, "the rational pursuit of our well-being and safety" means ramming through a 2,000-page health-care bill before Christmas, by any means necessary, so that President Obama will have a major accomplishment to celebrate in his State of the Union Address next month. That is perfectly rational, according to Sen. Whitehouse and the Democrats, and therefore it is crazy to oppose them. . . .

That's from my Hot Air Greenroom post, which references the Rocky Horror Health Care Debate and links my latest American Spectator column:

Even before the Senate voted on cloture, the Democrats' health-care legislation was already delivering benefits in the form of a free mental-health screening delivered by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse: If you oppose this bill, you're a dangerous nut.
Such was the essence of Sunday's floor speech in which the junior senator from Rhode Island quoted at length from Richard Hofstadter's 1965 classic, The Paranoid Style in American Politics and offered it as a diagnosis of the health bill's opponents.
Whitehouse paraphrased Hofstadter's thesis, warning of "the dangers of an aggrieved right-wing minority with the power to create what [Hofstadter] called a political climate in which the rational pursuit of our well-being and safety would become impossible." . . .

Read the whole thing. I'm not exactly sure why those old lyrics from "The Time Warp" popped into my head in the wee hours. Probably because Sheldon Whitehouse is right: I'm crazy.

But you already knew that, didn't you? It's a pre-existing condition! We're all going to get free health care! And if you believe that, you're crazier than me . . .

UPDATE: Reaganite Republican:

You know, it takes one hell of a lot of nerve to ram deeply-unpopular spending down our throats . . . then engage in character assasination when we finally speak-up about it.

Yid With Lid is also on the case, linking Kerry Pickett, who actually interviewed the Yalie yutz:

I approached Senator Whitehouse following his speech on the floor, and his responses to my questions were puzzling, to say the say the least. Mr. Whitehouse said he stood by his speech, but would not admit that he was accusing anyone who was against the health care bill as racist. He did reiterate that birthers are part of the group that is against the bill and are attacking president.

Supporters of the bill include the SEIU thugs who beat up Kenneth Gladney, but nobody's blaming Sen. Whitehouse for that. Maybe they should.

More at Memeorandum., including commentary by Mark Steyn and Erick Erickson.

Democrat Senator says Nazi-like Republicans 'ruined' Christmas

Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) is a piece of work:

"Far from appealing to the better angels of our nature, too many colleagues are embarked on a desperate no-holds-barred mission of propaganda, obstruction and fear. History cautions us of the excesses to which these malignant, vindictive passions can ultimately lead. Tumbrils have rolled through taunting crowds, broken glass has sparkled in darkened streets. Strange fruit has hung from Southern trees. Even this great institution of government that we share has cowered before a tail-gunner waving secret lists. . . .
"We see it in Christmases and holidays ruined by the Republicans for our loyal and professional Senate employees. It’s fine for me. It’s fine for the president. We signed up for the his job, but why ruin it for all the employees condemned by the Republicans to be here?” (Emphasis added.)

More at the American Spectator blog.

Update: (Smitty) (h/t Dana Loesch)
Great business opportunity for someone to produce an all-joker deck of cards once the Senatorial sodomy subsides. Claire McCaskill makes a demented start: