Thursday, March 02, 2006
Senate Republicans
I read Bob Herbert in The New York Times and thank God for him. He excoriates Conrad Burns, the republican senator from Montana, for being a racist. Just read the quotes, ladies and gentlemen. They speak for themselves. Ipso loquitor.
And God bless ExxonMobil, which runs ads daily in The New York Times in a mad effort to spend some of that 360 billion in market capital to rehabilitate its rapidly degenerating image. According to ExxonMobil, in today’s ad, oil production hasn’t reached anything near its peak, despite what every non-industry funded expert says. The future is limitless for oil. You can trust ExxonMobil.
I laughed out loud when I read their ad, and I thank them for the joke. I don’t know who is buying this snake oil or who they think they can sell this to but I appreciate the effort. Our own president, the most shameless corporate shill in U.S. history, told us that we have a dangerous addiction to oil, but the people that sell you that oil beg to differ. Of course you do, ExxonMobile. I understand. Maybe you better stay on the low-down for a few years and sell that stuff to the only people who have ever bought it: the politicians who cash your checks. The rest of us aren’t so willing to vacuum our brains out of our skulls to buy that nonsense when we’re not getting paid by you.
But back to Burns, who reminds me of a point I’ve made in the past but not adequately supported: congressional republicans are a degenerate mob of racists, homophobes, and corporate shills.
I’ve described many of them in the past: Olympia Snowe, Pat Roberts, Chuck Hagel, Mike DeWine, Lindsay Graham, you name it. But I could really go down a list of all the republican people in congress and point out glaring examples of shamelessness.
Burns gets me because of his poorly veiled racism. It’s really just not very subtle at all. But the people of Montana keep sending him to Washington because they’re racist hillbillies, too.
That’s right, you heard me. I hold voters who send white supremacists to Washington accountable for their votes. I don’t care if they back Burns or others because they are effective legislators or whatnot: racism is racism, and it is and should be an absolute deal-breaker for your fitness to serve in congress. Period. This is not a debatable point.
Racism is just part of the program for the party of the Southern Strategy, however. That’s just a wart on the face of a party with a truly black heart. Let’s look at the other conservative senators in congress and check them out, shall we? Let’s go down that list. I’ve included only the 27 worst offenders.
Jeff Sessions, Alabama: Hah! I love Jeff Sessions. He’s one of the most conservative senators in Washington. Speaking on antiwar protestors in September of last year, he said “I don’t know what they stand for, other than to blame America first,” echoing the conservative talking point of the last five years. He was one of the few vocal enemies of John McCain’s anti-torture amendment, which as my very few readers out there will know places him in a very special part of Hell. Sessions has labeled the ACLU and the NAACP as “un-American” and “Communist-inspired.” Is any of this a surprise coming from a senator from Alabama?
Tim Hutchinson, Arkansas: I love this guy too. He actually graduated from Bob Jones University. I am laughing right know as I try to type this.
Richard Luger, Indiana; Chuck Grassley, Iowa; Mitch McConnell, Kentucky;: These republicans are not ideologues, but they are loyal politicodrones of the GOP who backed every radical program the Executive could devise: they all voted to confirm Janice Rogers Brown to the Appellate Court, a woman who is so radically conservative she has said she wants to dismantle the New Deal; they all voted to confirm William Pryor, the radical Christian judge who fought the federal government tooth and nail to post the ten commandments in his court; they all were the driving force behind slashing taxes for the top bracket and businesses while driving up the federal deficit.
Sam Brownback, Kansas: Brownback, Like Rick Santorum and several others, is a rigid social conservative who, in addition the opposing abortion, opposes stem-cell research. He is an advocate of the flat tax.
Pat Roberts, Kansas: Probably the worst member of the senate in living memory. He has defended the President’s illegal wiretapping, stonewalled the investigation into intelligence leading to the war in Iraq, denied that Valerie Plame was ever undercover, voted to deny patients the right to sue HMOs and collect punitive damages, and voted against campaign finance reform repeatedly.
Olympia Snowe, Maine; Susan Collins, Maine: Both moderate republicans who nevertheless voted along party lines repeatedly with regards to confirming Pryor and Brown.
http://www.vote-smart.org/issue_keyvote_member.php?vote_id=3532
Trent Lott, Mississippi: Aaah, Trent. A soft-spoken, charming gentleman from Mississippi who nevertheless has a long, sad history of supporting segregation. When this came to light in 2002 with his endorsement of Strom Thurmond he was forced from his leadership position in the Senate.
John Ashcroft, Missouri: Ashcroft came to national attention in 2000 by losing his senate bid to a dead man, which shows that the voters of Missouri might be smarter than we think. Drinky thought this man would make a great Attorney General and nominated him for the post, which he won on a razor-thin 52-48 margin in a party-line vote. Democrats were hung up on Ashcroft’s opposition to desegregation, no biggie. Ashcroft promptly anointed himself with cooking oil, as he does whenever he is sworn into an office. He covered the semi-nude “Spirit of Justice” statue with a curtain because of its scandalously exposed breast.
Ashcroft is one of many nearly delusional right-wing Christian conservatives in the GOP. He is a fierce advocate of the war on drugs and has a tough-on-marijuana stance and has enacted stricter mandatory jail time sentences for drug users. He focused on cracking down on casual drug users as Governor of Missouri. As Attorney General he was the strongest advocate for expanded law-enforcement powers of the Executive Branch.
Conrad Burns, Montana: We’ve already covered Burns before, a man who has the odious task of getting along “with all those niggers in Washington.” As an aside I will note the perhaps curious fact that all the most racist and “conservative” senators in the Senate like Burns have been the loudest advocates of the imperial power of the presidency with regards to the NSA wiretapping scandal, immunity to investigation for intelligence manipulation, etc.
Chuck Hagel, Nebraska: a political “maverick” who, somehow, has had the courage to criticize the president on the war in Iraq but saw no problem with the President’s wiretapping, and vociferously defended it.
Jesse Helms, North Carolina: Wow. That is all I can think of when mentally reviewing the record of Jesse Helms, an unapologetic racist and xenophobe. He became infamous as a conservative commentator on WRAL-TV insulting blacks and other minorities. In one of his editorials he called the University of North Carolina the “University of Negroes and Communists.” He opposed the creation of a holiday for Martin Luther King. He has the “humorous” habit of calling all African-Americans “Fred.” After gaining the chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee he blocked the payment of U.S. dues to the U.N. Now, Elizabeth Dole took his seat in 2003, so I’m breaking the rules by including him here, but I just wanted us to take a look at a lion of the GOP for the past thirty years, the longest-serving popularly-elected senator in North Carolina, and a stain on the record of this country and the Republican Party that will take a generation to expunge.
Mike DeWine, Ohio: A “yes” vote on the “Defense of Marriage” Act. I just can’t wrap my head around the Orwellian language there. This “defense” act was written to outlaw gay marriage with a constitutional amendment. A million names would have been more accurate, like “The Definition of Marriage Act,” or “The Gay Marriage Ban.” But instead they choose a name that states that there is some kind of assault on marriage taking place and marriage must be defended! Little things like this make me mad.
DeWine, like Hagel, is a “maverick” who simultaneously broke with party lines to raise the minimum wage and not allow drilling in ANWR while simultaneously defending the Preznit’s wiretapping. With DeWine, however, I’ve heard a Come to Jesus call directed at him from the RNC after the nuclear option compromise. Come to think of it, Hagel is probably suffering from the same threat and they both have decided to become good soldiers in face of an electoral threat.
Tom Coburn, Oklahoma: Coburn, the doctor who can detect lies just by your breathing rate and body language! Coburn has said that he favors the death penalty for doctors who perform abortions and homosexuality is the greatest threat to America. I am not making this up. Coburn paused from doing his crossword puzzle during the hearings on John Roberts and sobbed publicly as he decried the partisanship of Congress before returning to his crossword puzzle and partisan politics. He has said that “I thought I would just share with you what science says today about silicone breast implants. If you have them, you're healthier than if you don't.” He has said that global warming “is just a load of crap.”
You know what, I just can’t keep up with all of this. Get to wikipedia’s article on him. I am beginning to laugh so hard at the lesbian epidemic in Coalgate, OK, that I can’t type.
I actually agree with him, completely, and I think that every woman in America should get them. I also think there should be an official investigation into the medical schools that granted a medical degree to Bill Frist and Tom Coburn.
Rick Santorum, Pennsylvania: You probably already know too much about Santorum, but let’s refresh our memories.
Santorum was the lead senator working with Tom DeLay at crafting the K Street Project. He’s a far-right Christian conservative who, of course, is pro-life and anti-gay. And I mean Anti Gay. He doesn’t just oppose gay marriage and civil unions: he thinks homosexual acts should be illegal. He thinks being homosexual should be a crime, though he thinks this should be legislated at the state level. He’s a strong advocate of Intelligent Design. He’s advocated for a partial privatization of welfare. He was, along will Bill Frist, the pointman for Dobson in ramming the Terri Schiavo Bill through the Senate. Despite two centuries of Supreme Court rulings to the contrary, he doesn’t believe a “right to privacy” exists in the Constitution, and thus opposes the Supreme Court’s efforts to defend birth control rights and abortion, among other things.
His son, Gabriel Michael, was stillborn in 1996. He took the corpse home and spent time with it and his family, singing songs to it and cradling it.
Read that last sentence a couple of times and just let it sink in.
What do you think are the chances that he gets along just famously with John Ashcroft?
Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania: another so-called “maverick.” After the last six years of utter sycophancy and complicity in the republican Congress I simply don’t think “moderate republicans” exist. Specter is “pro-choice,” but he voted to confirm Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, the most openly pro-life nominee in recent history. He was initially hostile to the revelation of the President’s illegal wiretapping, but has since decided that it’s okey-dokey.
Forget about Arlen Specter. The man who criticized the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton and voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1990 knows when he has run the length of his leash, and that time has come. The Massa is making Specter heel and we shouldn’t forget what that “R” at the end of his name means.
Bill Frist, Tennessee: I tire of Bill, and I’ve already written about him too much. So, Bill! Does she respond or doesn’t she?
Orrin Hatch, Utah: One of the most vocal defenders of Preznit Drinky through his worst excesses. You name it, Hatch has never deviated from the party line.
More later…
# posted by BitterHarvest @ 5:22 PM 
