Observations and inanities by a second-shift assistant supervisor in the Puppy-Grinding division of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy® (our motto: "Sure it's cruel, but think of the jobs!"), your host, Brent Rasmussen.
Jesse and God.
I've never paid a great deal of attention to former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura. I knew he was something of a maverick with libertarian leanings who seemed to piss off most of the establishment politicians in his state, and I remembered that he had a flap in the late 90s when he called religious believers "weak minded". But for the most part he has been below my radar, so to speak.
Yet recently there had been some chatter about the possibility of Ventura running for the Senate, and last night he went on Larry King's show where he said that he had decided not to run.
Now, what's interesting is that on NPR's Morning Edition today, they played a clip from the show (which I didn't see). This is what Ventura said, when asked whether or not he would change his mind and file to run before today's 5:00 PM deadline:
But if between now and 5:00, maybe God comes and speaks to me like he did the president and tells me I should run like he apparently told the president to invade Iraq, well then maybe at 5:00 tomorrow, Larry, don't call me a liar, just understand that God sent me to file.
Curiously, I had to transcribe that myself. The actual words Ventura spoke aren't on the NPR site, on the CNN site, or in any of the news reports I've seen covering Ventura's decision not to run. They just say something like this:
However, he noted he has until 5 p.m. Tuesday -- the deadline to file for the race in Minnesota -- to change his mind.
Interesting soft-pedaling of that backhanded slam at the role religion played in the Bush Whitehouse. Hmm.
Jim Downey
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Ah, the smell of "free speech"
in America. You have the right to say whatever you wish, and to be ruthlessly edited by your corporate masters.
Of course I'm sure that if he had made some comment that could be construed as any kind of threat or incitement against the Bush administration, it would be all over the news, with plenty of commentary on his lack of patriotism.
You can see the video here:
You can see the video here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/25687158#25687158
To me he seemed to sarcastic - I didn't think he was soft-pedaling.
I didn't say . . .
. . . or at least mean to say that Ventura was soft-pedaling the comment; I meant to say that the media reporting on his comment was soft-pedaling it. Yeah, it was pretty clear that he was being sarcastic in the audio version on NPR this morning.
Jim Downey
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