Remember ‘Taliban Dan’ Webster? He Still Can’t Manage His Mouth
Rep. Alan Grayson got in a lot of hot water with the press back in 2009 when he called his Bible-thumping opponent, Christian extremist Dan Webster, “Taliban Dan.” The Beltway’s biased pearl-clutching over a nasty liberal’s indecorousness sent Grayson to the sidelines for one session of Congress. Thankfully, he’s back. Unfortunately, ol’ Taliban Dan is still on Capitol Hill, where his gibbering piehole propagates breathtaking five-alarm stupid:
“So this is far more than the NSA. Far more than their metadata, which only collects phone numbers but not names, far more because they have no re-authorization, far more because there is no appropriation restrictions placed on it. This is more than just NSA-style, this is more Gestapo-style collection of data on individual citizens who have no clue that this is happening.
Yeah, we did a spit-take, too. What the heck is Webster breaking Godwin’s Law over? Hunter @ Daily Kos explains:
He seems to be talking about the National Mortgage Database, an effort to build, well, a database of mortgage information, including information about the lender, borrower, borrower’s credit profile and updated payment history. This is deemed necessary because of the revelation that the banks themselves are Goddamn Bad At knowing which of them owns what mortgage, as we all learned in spectacular fashion not all that long ago. Having someone, somewhere keep a valid list would seem to be a pretty good bit of consumer protection, but, alas, the more pressing federal concern is to monitor the mortgage market in aggregate, lessening the chance for regulators be caught off guard by similar industry-wide bungling in the future. The information it contains about borrowers is intended to be anonymous.
In other words, yes, there’s something to complain about. Just not what “Taliban Dan” is ranting about.
Which earns him today’s coveted quintuple ayatollah facepalm.
