Promoted from diaries. Want to keep interjecting, Senator Durbin? - Moe Lane
Instead we have a 2000-page bill from Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
On the Senate floor, Sen. Lamar Alexander, Sen. Judd Gregg, and Sen. John McCain discussed Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s massive health care reform bill. Sen. Dick Durbin had to drop in and hilarity ensued:
I’ve been meaning to give praise to Mitch McConnell since last week when he began voting against appropriations measures coming out of the Senate. This is a rare thing for McConnell, who normally sides with the appropriators.
But he stood up and voted no last week, siding with the Senate conservatives. It was a bold move worthy of praise.
Something has happened this week too. McConnell did it again. He sided with Jim DeMint and California farmers against a small fish.
What is pathetic and sad is that both Barbara Boxer and Lamar Alexander sided with the fish over the farmers.
Jim DeMint offered up an amendment to the Department of Interior’s budget appropriations to sidestep stupid environmental studies about a minnow that a judge used to stop water flow in California’s Central Valley, where 50% of the US fruits and veggies are grown.
Senator Feinstein called DeMint’s amendment “a kind of Pearl Harbor.”
California’s Senators would rather their farmers be unemployed and crops left to die of thirst than stop a judge from siding with a minnow. Both Boxer and Feinstein sided with the minnow over the farmers.
Lamar Alexander sided with them.
That’s the funny thing about the United States Senate. Too many senators side with their fellow senators instead of constituents. The fraternity of appropriators in the Senate is a stronger bond than a Senator to his constituents. The people of Tennessee now know where Lamar Alexander’s loyalties lie.
And the people of California know that its Senators would rather save a non-voting fish, than voting, working farmers. Chuck Devore should be able to exploit this one.
I have an endearing soft spot for Lamar! Alexander. Having grown up overseas, I was never familiar with guns. In college, while he was campaigning for President, Lamar! came through Georgia on the campaign trail. I got to go with him to a skeet shooting event. It was my first time sheet shooting. I did horribly. But Lamar taught me how to hold, load, and handle a shot gun.
Sometimes we have to smack down our friends who wander off the reservation. I always hate knocking Lamar!, but lately he’s been deserving of several fists of conservative anger to the face.
I did so last week when Lamar! played lapdog to Barbara Boxer and co-sponsored legislation that would clearly support taxpayer funded abortion.
Hogan rightly knocks him again today for going all Lindsey on us and supporting Sotomayor.
I guess he heard about the other Lindsay showing up on the doorstep of her lesbian lover, having a breakdown, and ol’ Lamar! got confused and decided to stick up for Graham.
The taxpayer funded abortion issue, playing lapdog to Barbara Boxer, and supporting Sotomayor are inexcusable for the third ranking Republican in the Senate.
Just as inexcusable is Lamar! siding with Democrats to destroy the coal mining industry.
Alexander has introduced legislation with Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.) to ban the controversial practice of mountaintop-removal coal mining. He said he hopes to stop the shearing of mountaintops in West Virginia and Kentucky and prevent a resurgence of the practice in Tennessee, which has relatively little mining but was the site of mountaintop removal in decades past.
This move will severely impact coal production, raise energy prices for consumers, and put many people out of work. It will also increase our consumption on foreign energy — something Lamar! says he opposes, but so far is doing nothing about.
Lamar! says he wants to offset this with more nuclear energy, but his allies on the coal mining issue have no interest in that. Undeterred, Lamar! has decided to shut down the industry, put people out of work, and jack up energy costs for you and me.
With Republicans like Lamar!, who needs the Democrats?
Can someone fly in some Honduran soldiers to load Lamar Alexander (R-TN) up on a plane and fly in to Costa Rica? Get him out of the country. Come on — if this is the future leadership of the Republican Party, we need a coup*.
Jim DeMint has scored some damn effective points against Barack Obama this week by calling healthcare Obama’s “Waterloo.” It got under his skin so bad, Obama flubbed his press conference and saw his poll numbers dip below 50% for the first time.
Independent types should read that as “Jim DeMint is on to something.” Lamar Alexander reads it as “time to get on my knees and kiss the Democrats’ backsides.”
Behold this exchange on the floor of the Senate.
