OKLAHOMA OK? PART II

In my previous post, I delved into the bizarre career and behavior of Oklahoma's junior U.S. Senator Tom Colburn, M.D.

Today's post is about his equally dysfunctional senatorial partner from Oklahoma, James Mountain Inhofe.

The problem in writing or discussing Inhofe is trying to figure out where to begin and to sort out and give priorities to the massive amounts of lunacy and complete stupidity which are the foundations of his being.

First, a little background on his political career.

Inhofe was first elected to the Oklahoma House of Representatives in 1966 and then two years later to the State Senate. He ran for governor in 1974 and lost, and then two years later was again defeated in an attempt to win a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. He stopped the downward skid in 1978 when he was elected mayor of Tulsa where he served until 1984.

He then was the head of the Quaker Life Insurance Company which almost immediately went into receivership and was eventually liquidated.

Undaunted, he again ran for the U.S. House and won in 1986. He served there until 1994 and then rode the Republican Contract With America Express into the U.S. Senate. His campaign was based on "god, guns and gays." He has been entrenched there ever since.

To understand Inhofe (if that's possible) you must understand that he has gone from being a devout christian to being a fanatical christian. Every action he takes as a senator is the result of his convoluted thinking about religion (Christianity, more precisely) and his view of its role in American political thought and action.

Inhofe recalled several years ago in an interview with an Assemblies of God publication when he was smotten...or whatever it is that happens when god supposedly touches you.

EVANGEL: "Talk about your personal journey to faith in Jesus Christ."

INHOFE: "I accepted Christ on September 22, 1988, at 2:30 in the afternoon in the Members’ Dining Room in the United States Capitol. I was 54 years old. I always thought I had been a follower of Jesus and had accepted Him, then suddenly realized that that hadn’t happened. All the burdens of life were shifted, and I said, 'God, it’s Your problem now.' It worked."

I am struck by several things in reading this. First, what is it specifically about the Member's Dining room that lends itself to religious conversions? Second is the phrase "God, it's your problem now." What problem is that? Also, does this mean Inhofe sees himself as abdicating his responsibility as a public official to address and find a solution to "the problem" or any problems we face as a country? God, after all, will take care of everything so Jimmy Boy doesn't have to do a damn thing!

Inhofe's public mutterings really garnered attention right after Sept. 11, 2001. Not to be outdone by the likes of Jerry Falwell and Ann Coulter when it came to dumb ass comments about what either caused the attacks or what we should do in response, Inhofe, as always, used the bible as his source for the answers regarding the attacks.

"One of the reasons I believe the spiritual door was opened for an attack against the United States of America is that the policy of our government has been to ask the Israelis, and demand it with pressure, not to retaliate in a significant way against the terrorist strikes that have been launched against them."

Inhofe believes there are biblical passages from the Old Testament which specifically guide us in what we should do about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Never mind that this on-going 75+ year conflict unfolded long after the bible was written.

Inhofe has said from the floor of the Senate that god gave the West Bank to Abraham and his descendants, and if the U.S. doesn't get behind eliminating the Palestinians, it violates god's law.

To detail all of Inhofe's utterly absurd and deranged statements, actions and policy positions would mean creating a document as thick as War and Peace. Instead, here is a list of some of his most egregious acts.

It was Inhofe who personally blocked the nomination by President Clinton of James Hormel, who is gay, to be the U.S. Ambassador to Luxemburg. He tied the nomination up for weeks before Hormel was finally approved.

Inhofe portrayed Hormel's sex life as salacious. Later, his own staff was caught downloading tons of porno from the Internet onto their Senate computers. When pressed, Inhofe wouldn't comment saying to do so would be "in deference to legitimate privacy concerns."

Inhofe continually tries to promote and push his fundamentalism into the the U.S. government. He sponsored the Religious Freedom Amendment that would have required accommodation of religion in all government actions, especially in schools. When pressed as to whether this would include Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, etc., he responded that anything other than Judaism or Christianity isn't a "real" religion and wouldn't be constitutionally protected.

When the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City was bombed in 1995, Inhofe was asked how many people worked in the building. He jumped on this sudden opportunity to chastise bureaucrats saying "it depends on how many federal workers played hooky today."

Global warming is the one issue where Inhofe displays his profound stupidity. His war chest bulges with money given his campaign by oil and gas interests and Jumpin' Jimmy jumps as high as they ask. He has repeatedly argued that global warming is due to “natural changes.” “God’s still up there,” Inhofe said, and to the extent there is warming going on, it is “due to the sun.”

Finally, there was his response to the Abu Ghraib scandal. When the media, and then the public, raised hell over the actions by the military in Iraq when it came to the treatment of detained prisoners, Inhofe yelled out that he was "outraged over this outrage."

A good friend in Oklahoma summed it up best when he said "Jim Inhofe is a 15 watt light bulb that somehow thinks he is 50 watts."