Former Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-PA), the man, the myth, the oratorical legend is the subject of a new post by Charlie Martin at PJM’s Tatler blog:
Tom Maguire at Just One Minute made a good catch this morning: a New York Times Op-Ed calling for “civility” by (ex) Representative Paul E Kanjorski (D-PA), who last fall said of gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott:
“That Scott down there that’s running for governor of Florida,” Mr. Kanjorski said. “Instead of running for governor of Florida, they ought to have him and shoot him. Put him against the wall and shoot him.”
Continuing my theme of stealing good material, a commenter on today’s Mike Rosen show called the Legacy Media and the Democrats “Vampires. When they look in a mirror they can’t see anything.”
But then, like Duffman, Paul Kanjorski says a lot of things. Here’s a reprint of a post I wrote on the former Congressman back in November:
As we’ve seen before, Paul Kanjorski, the fortunately lame-duck Democrat congressman from Pennsylvania is definitely a quote machine. But does ObamaCare cover free foot in mouth removals? Because he definitely needs a few; here’s his latest gaffetastic moment:
Congressman Paul Kanjorski, the Pennsylvania Democrat who just lost his seat to Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta, a Republican, had another target on his mind before he lost his election.
Curiously, that would be Rick Scott, now the Republican Governor-elect of Florida. Kanjorski is clearly not a Scott fan. In fact, he has suggested that the Governor-elect should be…shot.
You read that right. Here’s the quote, which seemed to vanish in the pre-election haze. It was reported at the time in the Scranton Times:
“That Scott down there that’s running for governor of Florida,” Mr. Kanjorski said. “Instead of running for governor of Florida, they ought to have him [sic] and shoot him. Put him against the wall and shoot him. He stole billions of dollars from the United States government and he’s running for governor of Florida. He’s a millionaire and a billionaire. He’s no hero. He’s a damn crook. It’s just we don’t prosecute big crooks.”
The people of Florida, apparently, have a slightly different view.
Add that quote, which sounds like Kanjorski is ready to play the John Wayne role in “The Shootist,” to Kanjorski’s earlier greatest hits. After the Democrats temporarily retook the house in 2006, Kanjorski gave the game away:
“I’ll tell you my impression. We really in this last election, when I say we…the Democrats, I think pushed it as far as we can to the end of the fleet, didn’t say it, but we implied it. That if we won the Congressional elections, we could stop the war. Now anybody was a good student of Government would know that wasn’t true. But you know, the temptation to want to win back the Congress, we sort of stretched the facts…and people ate it up.”
Video here:
[youtube Nc5lHXkrdQ8]
After being called on the above quote by an enterprising blogger with a video camera, Kanjorski was, shall we say, less than contrite:
[youtube alO9asqx_g4]
And after reliving the New Left’s glory days of the post-Vietnam era, Kanjorski was ready to set the controls for the heart of the 1930s:
“All we’re doing is going into the basket and saying, ‘Damn, what did they do in ‘32, what did they do in ‘34, what did they do in ‘36,’ and we’re pulling them out, dusting them off, giving them a paint job, correcting the fenders a bit, and we’re using them,” Congressman Paul Kanjorski (D-PA) said. “To get us through the horrendous problems we may have over the next several years, we’ve got to make these old programs work, and we’ve got to be as inventive as hell.”
Mind you, this was in May of 2008, when the Dow was over 12,700, unemployment was at 5.5 percent, and the collapse of the fall of 2008 was still nothing but a Sorosian fantasy.
In June of 2010, Kerry Picket of the Washington Times spotted this rather harsh rhetoric from Kanjorski:
[youtube ewmj4x4XJ0E]
As Kerry wrote at the time:
Connie Hair at Human Events has posted this shocking video of Rep. Paul Kanjorski, Pennsylvania Democrat, at a Wednesday conference committee hearing to merge the House and Senate versions of the recently-passed financial regulation bills. Here he talks about the debilitating effects of the recession on his constituents. Unfortunately, Mr. Kanjorski may not have realized he offended those he was trying to impress:
“We’re giving relief to people that I deal with in my office every day now unfortunately. But because of the longevity of this recession, these are people — and they’re not minorities and they’re not defective and they’re not all the things you’d like to insinuate that these programs are about — these are average, good American people,” Kanjorski states.
Clearly, the soon-to-be former Congressman has quite a penchant for unusual phrasing, given his latest violent, eliminationist rhetoric concerning the Republican governor-elect of Florida. Like his fellow Democrat Alan Grayson, the recently defeated Congressman from (coincidentally) Florida, Kanjorski has assembled the perfect demo reel for the left’s favorite TV network.
Which brings us to January of 2011. As Kanjorski wrote for this morning’s New York Times:
We all lose an element of freedom when security considerations distance public officials from the people. Therefore, it is incumbent on all Americans to create an atmosphere of civility and respect in which political discourse can flow freely, without fear of violent confrontation.
Seems like excellent advice. Please let us know when you’ve internalized it.
Finally, Tom Maguire adds:
And let’s not skip past the Krugman connection. Yesterday Professor Hate told us this:
It’s hard to imagine a Democratic member of Congress urging constituents to be “armed and dangerous” without being ostracized…
Looks like that ostracism thing is strictly in Krugman’s imagination. The same guy who called for a Republican to be shot down is now lecturing the rest of us about preserving civility – in the pages of the Times!
Join the conversation as a VIP Member