Patty Murray is a United States Senator.
Speaking to a group of high school students in 2002, she explained the appeal of Osama bin Laden to his followers, thusly:
“He’s been out in these countries for decades, building schools, building roads, building infrastructure, building day-care facilities, building health-care facilities, and the people are extremely grateful. He’s made their lives better. We have not done that.”
Day-care facilities. Yeah, women in Taliban-controlled areas like the convenience of dropping the kids of at the day care center before they check themselves in for the whipping or the stoning.
Murray’s deficiencies of understanding are not limited to foreign policy matters. Michelle Malkin:
” I’ll never forget interviewing her many years ago when I worked for the Seattle Times editorial board. We were talking about federal entitlement spending. I asked her about FICA taxes. She didn’t know what I was talking about; when I said “payroll taxes,” she still had a frozen blank look on her face.”
Another example of Murray’s ignorance shows her also to be a nasty bigot. When lobbying against a contract award for an Air Force tanker plane to Northrop Grumman, she said:
“I have stood on the line in Everett, Wash., where we have thousands of workers who go to work every day to build these planes. I would challenge anybody to tell me that they’ve stood on a line in Alabama and seen anybody building anything.”
This blogger responds:
Perhaps Senator Murray has heard of “Hyundai.” They manufacture “automobiles.” She might be shocked to learn that Hyundai has a “manufacturing plant” in Montgomery, Alabama. She might also find it surprising to learn that Mercedes-Benz has a huge, state of the art manufacturing facility just outside of Tuscaloosa. The last time I heard, manufacturing plants had “lines” where people “build things.” In fact, according to the Manufacture Alabama! website, Alabama has a strong manufacturing base.
Patty Murray is chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. What do you think are the chances that this individual is able to understand the complexities of the Federal Government budget, or that she is willing to work seriously and objectively to analyze the issues involved?
Of course, not ALL the dumb politicians are on the Democratic side of the aisle…though they certainly do seem to have a lot of them…for example, the Congresswoman who thought Ben Bernanke had been CEO of Goldman Sachs, and the Senator who is unable to comprehend the difference between “carbon” and “carbon dioxide.” Of course, there are some dumb politicians on the Republican side, too.
But it is especially the Democratic Party…and most especially the “progressive” wing that now dominates that party…that wishes to restructure American society in order to give ever-increasing power to the political class. Which means giving ever-increasing power to people like Patty Murray.
I have the bad luck to live in WA where our senior Senator gives Senator Barbara Boxer a run for her money.
If you had only mentioned “Boxer” I would not have had to click the link. Boxer gives women suffrage a bad reputation.
Murray is rather typical. I doubt if she understands much of what goes on around her. Propped up by a staff of hustlers cloaked in ideology, she thinks what she says is progressive wisdom, but all she is really doing is tweaking a demographic.
Cris – you nailed it.
“He’s been out in these countries for decades, building schools, building roads, building infrastructure, building day-care facilities, building health-care facilities, and the people are extremely grateful. He’s made their lives better. We have not done that.”
To an extent that’s true. If you are poor its a religious school or no school. A one bed clinic or no clinic. Gravel for the one road or a mudhole.
However for us to do that requires we pay off officials to allow it, the Taliban can just kill them.
“Murray is rather typical. I doubt if she understands much of what goes on around her”
She goes a long way toward explaining Hagel.
Patsy, not Patty. Why did she change it?
@Mrs. Davis,
Because “patsy” was too descriptive.
Rmark…maybe there are a few people who joined Al Qaeda because of a desire to receive or provide social services, but I doubt this is a primary motivation for most. Surely much more common is a desire to take sadistic pleasure in the bullying and killing of others, the desire to feel like a member of an elite group, and the security blanket of an ideology that leaves no room for individual thought or doubt. Plus the promise of a reward in the afterlife, of course.
Murray really gives herself away with the line about “day-care facilities”…she obviously lacks the kind of mind that can grasp the existence of cultural values quite different from those of the SWPLs who keep re-electing her.
@David – she is probably like those two journalists working for Al Gore’s network who – when caught near the North Korean border, are taken inside and brutalized – and afterwards, when Clinton got them out – expressed shock that such a regime could be so brutal.
This is a perfect example of the political elite which claims the right and authority to regulate and manage ever more and more of our social and economic lives.
They don’t know what they’re doing, and never have.
‘Rmark…maybe there are a few people who joined Al Qaeda because of a desire to receive or provide social services’
I didn’t say they joined, just that the services provide goodwill toward the jihadists.
Local Seattle Blogger Jim Miller wrote one of the better descriptions of our Patty back in 2003: Patty Murray explained
Didn’t Patty Murray run originally as a “grandmother in tennis shoes?” She seems to be maintaining her reputation.
Hagel suggests that this is not limited to Democrats.
I was once a member of a medical group that met with Dave Durenburger when he was Senator from MInnesota. He explained to us that he was the only member of the Senate who knew anything about health care. He suggested that most Senators choose one member who knows about the issue and just votes with him (or her). I do wonder why Murray was chosen to be a committee chair.