Sam Brownback is making me sick.

[whometense]

Here's a question for those of you who regularly watch C-Span2. How can you stand it???

This is vile and disgusting (for those of you lucky enough to not be watching he's talking about how painful abortion is for the fetus.)

[Pirate Smile]

1. I'm watching Dumbass' press conference. I watch for the amazing

f#$k ups. You never know when one will happen.

[whometense]

2. Okay,

George Allen's spew is making me sick as well. Can't even drink my coffee.

[JI7]

3. i usually press mute when Republicans come on

[whometense]

4. Excellent plan.

Lugar is now talking about how many questions Condi answered.

Only problem is, SHE DIDN'T ANSWER ANY OF THEM.

I need to stay away from floor debates. Republicans are very bad for my health.

[TayTay]

5. Yeah, but we did a victory of sorts

The WaPo reports that only 8 SecState confirmation hearings have ever had dissenting votes in the Senate. Condi is about to become number 9.

I think that Kerry was kept off the floor because the Rethugs kept saying this whole discussion was sour grapes over the election. Guess JK thought he would only give them ammunition and would let his committee speech stand. Sigh!

[whometense]

6. I was going to blog about this later today,

but now that you mention it, check out this thoroughly obnoxious item from this week's oh-so-liberal TNR: http://tnr.com/doc.mhtml%3Fi%3D20050131%26s%3Dnotebook013105twp

It's subscription (my husband gets the magazine, and I can't help it - I look inside :-(), so here's the opening bit:

KERRY IDIOCY WATCH, PART I

Democrats had been successful at confining the sour grapes about the presidential election--and the loony talk and conspiracy theories those sour grapes sow--to the fringes of their party, leaving it to outliers like California Senator Barbara Boxer and Ohio Representative Stephanie Tubbs Jones to protest the awarding of Ohio's electoral votes to President Bush on the grounds that there had been voting irregularities in that state. But, this week, those sour grapes received a star endorsement when Senator John Kerry, in a Martin Luther King Day speech, declared that "thousands of people were suppressed in the effort to vote."

<snip>

Kerry isn't wrong about the fact that discrepancies in voting technology exist and that Congress and the Bush administration should work to make sure these long-standing disparities are eliminated. He also isn't wrong that the GOP has sometimes tried to suppress the Democratic vote. But, by using the word "suppressed" when talking about differences in voting technology, Kerry is promoting the unproven and utterly selfdefeating argument that these disparities are the result of intentional actions on the part of Republicans and that they somehow cost him the election.

:grr: :grr: :grr: :grr:

[whometense]

7. Then they follow up with this crap

on the same page:

KERRY IDIOCY WATCH, PART II

t the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's January 18 hearing on Condoleezza Rice's appointment as secretary of state, John Kerry, still exhibiting the dark sulk he has been wearing since November 2 (as if the election's outcome, as in 2000, were really in dispute), addressed the nominee by repeating the confusing tropes about Iraq that helped lose him his big place in history.

What a load of garbage. TNR editorially hates Kerry for some reason I have never fathomed, except for the fact that he isn't Joe Lieberman. Neither of these items is attributed.

[TayTay]

8. Not surprised

The Editor at TNR hates Kerry. Was the first one out of the box after the election to slam him hard.

It is what it is. But, I'm not going to get a subscription.

See, this is what people meant when they said Kerry had reasons not to oppose the election results without the hard and fast evidence. Even the Globe in the person of Joan Vennochi took after him last week and called the MLK day speech a disappointment. Sigh!

[whometense]

9. I hate Joan Vennochi.

I think she's MoDo without the writing talent. Snarky and condescending and completely worthless.

[TayTay]

10. And she has a vendetta against JK

She has always hated him. Hates his wife. Writes snarky, bitchy things about him. I wonder if she is just jealous? She used to be a business columnist, so maybe she just is carrying the David Warsh torch against Kerry column for the BGlobe.

[karynnj]

14. MLK Day speech

Well, you know MLK had nothing to do with voting rights. Why would Kerry think this was something that MLK, if he were alive, might have been concerned with.

It would actually have seemed like an elephant in the room, if Kerry attempted to not speak about something other than election reform to a MLK day group. Election results aside, I would assume that Kerry felt that it was wrong and unfair that inter-city blacks needed to stand in line for 4 + hours in the rain, while people in the near by suburbs vote in around 10 minutes.

[whometense]

15. great point! n/t

[karynnj]

11. Maybe Republican reading comprehension is slipping

"He also isn't wrong that the GOP has sometimes tried to surpress the Democratic vote. But by using the word "surpressed" ....unproven and selfdefeating argument that these disparities are the result of intentional actions on the part of Republican and that they somehow cost him the election" There logic is mindbogling. The GOP sometimes tries to surpress votes, but if Kerry USES the word he means 2 things that he has never said and has specifically denied!

Hasn't Kerry carefully prefaced all his voting statements by saying he does not question the result. He also seems to have been very carefull on not claiming that any surpression was due to deliberate actions of the Republicans. In both his and his brother's statments, it seemed they went out of their way to not accuse the Republicans of deliberate actions. Isn't this why DU has bashed him for 2+ months?

Maybe signals they want to make election reform impossible?

[TayTay]

12. Count on it

GEt the Dems to wear the tin-foil hat. However, election reform is one of the planks that the Dem Senators have in their new 10 point plan on their agenda for the 109th Congress. This does have to be done carefully.

[whometense]

13. Hooray for Harry Reid:

"Shut up and vote is not democracy."

Bravo, sir.