"Sorry, haters, God is not finished with me yet."

Katherine Mangu-Ward | November 29, 2006

This one has been making the rounds, but it's too good to pass up, especially following on Dave's post about the self-destructive impulses of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Witness, the CBC's (now rejected) candidate of choice for chairman of the intelligence committee, Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fl.) upon learning that the post wouid not be his:

This institution is organic. Many opportunities are ever-present and changing. ...

Our nation’s national security is far more important than my professional security.

Best of all, I will be seeking better and bigger opportunities in a Democratic Congress. There is much to be accomplished and little time to re-set this nation’s economic and spiritual compass. I look forward to working with our new Speaker of the House and all of my colleagues to see that we do this at once.

Sorry, haters, God is not finished with me yet.

Comments

|11.29.06 @ 6:50PM|#

Best of all, I will be seeking better and bigger opportunities in a Democratic Congress.

The bribery joke writes itself, doesn't it?

|11.29.06 @ 6:53PM|#

"You wont have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference."

|11.29.06 @ 7:21PM|#

I wasn't even aware we were beta testing.

|11.29.06 @ 7:51PM|#

Slightly OT:

Now that defending Tom Delay is no latter a matter of great priority for the Republican Party, is there anyone who still believes the case against him is a bogus witch hunt by an out of control, partisan district attorney?

|11.29.06 @ 8:09PM|#

Joe,
Slightly OT my ass, very OT!
But no, I never did but at least DeLay's infraction was AFTER he was elected. Mr. Hastings was impeached, THEN elected to a higher seat of power. What the hell is wrong with Floridians*?

*I say this after living there for 15 years. This is the same state that gave us the illustrious Mrs. Harris and the impeccable Mr. Foley.

|11.29.06 @ 9:40PM|#

"Sorry, haters, God is not finished with me yet."

I've been reading that sentence all day, and I still can't figure out what it's supposed to mean.

Is God tormenting him? Then why would the haters be annoyed by that? Or is he saying that he's been blessed? By being denied the seat he wants?

Little help here?

|11.29.06 @ 9:52PM|#

I believe it's a line from a gospel song. It's also the title of several evangelical Protestant self-help books. Most pertinently, Jesse Jackson said it after one of his scandals (I believe it was the "Hymietown" remark), and I suppose Hastings is trying to invoke Jackson.

|11.29.06 @ 9:52PM|#

The "sorry, haters" part was probaly Hastings' addition.

|11.29.06 @ 9:57PM|#

The closest parallel in secular culture is "Ahll be bahhhk."

|11.29.06 @ 10:11PM|#

Little help here?

I took it to mean (in my best Dan Akroyd) "I'm on a mission from God", and THE MAN can't keep him down.

Makes Hastings a hater hater.

ed|11.29.06 @ 10:25PM|#

The black community's continuing dependence on a make-believe spiritual entity is both comical and tragic. I look forward to the day when the last witch doctor dies and forward-looking members of the community finally decide to become individuals.

|11.29.06 @ 10:27PM|#

"make-believe spiritual entity?" I wasn't aware the black community depended on the philosophies or Ayn Rand, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietszche, or similar secular philosophers.

|11.29.06 @ 10:33PM|#

joe,

As much as Delay disgusts me, campaign finance regulation is in the same bag as drug prohibition around here. He does seem to have broken a law that he voted for, so he does get hypocritical asshat points for that.

Hastings took a direct and unambigious $150,000 bribe in exchange for handing down a lenient sentence and returning seized funds to convicted racketeers.

At least they don't appear to have been violent fraudsters, but still there's a pretty huge difference between the crimes of these two.

|11.29.06 @ 10:41PM|#

ed,

As a fellow atheist, I can only barely repress the urge to beg you to shut the hell up. I do this because I recognize your right to openly disrespect those with whom you disagree and whose beliefs seem pathetic to you. I'll keep this in mind when a deist steps up and lets fly about how sad it must be to be mired in the "fallacy of atheism" and how the universal disrespect by atheists of deists is symptomatic of that sadness.

|11.30.06 @ 12:24AM|#

I second Rimfax's remarks.

|11.30.06 @ 1:49AM|#

"Sorry, haters, God is not finished with me yet."

Eh, Alcee, that is not necessarily a good thing?

|11.30.06 @ 2:44AM|#

joe, it's possible that two separate things are true: Tom Delay is a scumbag and the prosecutor after him, Ronnie Earl, is an out of control, partisan district attorney. I live in Travis County where Mr. Earl once indicted a whistleblower with a state agency for making a 15 cent long distance call to his father in an Austin exurb. Earl offered to drop the charge if the whistleblower stopped making life difficult for the State.

|11.30.06 @ 8:07AM|#

Didn't he also level a capital murder charge on some 11 or 12 year old based on a confession that was ruled inadmissible because of the police misconduct in acquiring it? (I shudder to think what the police must have done for a *Texas* judge to make that ruling!)

He also prosecuted and convicted himself for messing up on one of the laws regulating political campaigns. The punishment was a fine and not jail-time... Pity.

Since I think the campaign finance laws are wrong-headed and should be repealed, I would suppose I would be in the camp that the prosecution is bogus.

So I guess I am one of those who argue that it is a bogus, politically motivated prosecution by an out of control prosecutor.

However, I have no doubt that Delay is guilty of many crimes (in the Rothbardian sense), and more guilty than most federal legislators.

I know that I should be outraged by bogus prosecutions no matter how despicable the defendant is, but I just can't seem to work it up for Mr Delay. I guess I'm too much of a hater.

D.A. Ridgely|11.30.06 @ 8:13AM|#

Tom Delay is a scumbag and the prosecutor after him, Ronnie Earl, is an out of control, partisan district attorney.

Precisely. Except one might want to add "scumbag" to the part about Earl, too.

biologist|11.30.06 @ 9:50AM|#

I'm sure the subtext to Hastings' statement is "hate the game, not the player".

|11.30.06 @ 9:57AM|#

Is there an unspoken rule that to be an "authentic" black politician, you have to be able to talk like ghetto trash?

R C Dean|11.30.06 @ 12:24PM|#

"Sorry, haters, God is not finished with me yet."

I think its pretty apparent that Hastings is missing some pretty important parts - a sense of humility, ethics, that kind of thing.

So it that's what he meant, I agree with him.

|11.30.06 @ 1:19PM|#

I find this interesting. I'm not fan of Alcee Hastings and I thought that the effort to elevate him to chairman of the house intelligence committee was a grave error. However, for the most part I found his letter to be for the most part moderate. The line that the work of the Committee is far more important than his professional security showed humility, and as for the last line, many christians are here to do god's work, (I'm not a Christian by the way but a radical agnostic), for those who he may believe went after him for political reasons -- his statement seemed to reflect his sentiment that he's not going to go away. I seriously don't understand why this letter bugs anyone.

|11.30.06 @ 1:40PM|#

Amazing how you can count on phrases like "witch doctor" and "ghetto trash" to make appearances on threads about black Democrats.

rob? Where are you, rob?

|11.30.06 @ 2:05PM|#

Yeah, Alcee, when I'm finished with you a lump of charcoal will appear almost white.