Bradley Rees is running for the Republican nomination in the 5th Congressional District, where Tom Perriello is doing a fantastic job and hopefully will be reelected by a comfortable margin next year. Anyway, earlier today, Mr. Rees was on The Schilling Show (1070 WINA). Keep in mind as you listen (you may not want to, though; it's painful) that Schilling is very right wing and anti-Perriello. Also, keep in mind that there will likely be many other 5th CD Republicans throwing their hats in the ring, and that Bradley Rees probably doesn't have a snowball's chance in you-know-where of winning the nomination. With that, here are a few of the ridiculous comments made on the show by Mr. Rees and/or the host.Ridiculous comment #1: Rees refers to "career politicians" as one of the reasons why he's running (because "career politicians" are a bad thing, in his opinion). The only problem with that "reasoning" is that Tom Perriello has only been in office for 7 months - not exactly a "career politician." So why replace Perriello then? Got me. (Now, Virgil Goode on the other hand...lol. Also, I wonder if Rees thinks that John Warner was bad because he was in the Senate for 30 years)
Ridiculous comment #2: "I respect Virgil Goode a lot." No further comment necessary, except to point out that Goode is a right-wing extremist, xenophobe, homophobe, and anti-Muslim bigot (among his many fine qualities - ha).
Ridiculous comment #3: "I do want something from the government, I want the government to get the hell out of my way." Typical right-wing Republican blather. Yeah, so you don't want government to defend the country, provide a police force, build and maintain an interstate highway system and other essential infrastructure, protect us from diseases like swine flu, etc? Riiiight...well, good luck to you in your Ayn Rand "libertarian" paradise! :)
Ridiculous comment #4: The host claims Perriello missed 49 votes (8% of the votes that are taken). Rees notes that Perriello missed votes when his father died, but then says he doesn't think there were 49 votes held in that 1 1/2 weeks. So...I checked and, just for the record, Tom Perriello's father died on March 2, 2009. Congressman Perriello left DC in the last week of February to be with his gravely ill dad and his family. Between February 23 and March 6, Tom missed 38 votes, almost all of the 49 votes total that he's missed. Other than that, Tom has missed 11 votes, including 8 on one day (April 29). Wow, that's...uh...well, hardly any votes missed at all, except around the time of his father's illness and death. Horrible, huh? ;)
Ridiculous comment #5: Any and all discussion of the "fair tax." This is one of the worst ideas I've ever heard in my life, to "replace all federal income taxes[1] with a single national retail sales tax." That would be horrendously regressive, among other things. For more on the UNfair tax, see FactCheck.org's analysis. It's not pretty.
Ridiculous comment #6: Bashing of lawyers as the ones who - gasp! what a concept! - write the laws. Ha.
Ridiculous comment #7: Says the government has no place in the bedroom, but also that Roe v. Wade should be overturned. Huh? Isn't the point of overturning Roe v. Wade to allow state governments to interfere with a woman's decisions regarding her own body and specifically reproduction?
