Senator Slime just keeps on sliming

[Long Run]

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) compared his Republican colleagues to greased pigs during remarks on the Senate floor Tuesday.

While speaking on the Keystone XL pipeline, Reid explained the logistics of a "greased pig contest."

"The organizers get a little pig, piglet, and they cover this little animal with tons of grease. It's a greasy little pig. And then they turn the kids loose, they invite these children to chase one of these pigs," Reid said. "Pigs are really slippery to begin with, when you cover them with grease they're really slippery."

Then, he told why Republicans are a lot like those little piglets.

"Oft times, working with my Senate Republican colleagues reminds me of chasing one of these little pigs in a greased pig contest," Reid said. "Regardless of all our efforts, anytime we get close to making progress, it seems as though we watch it slip right out of our hands and Republicans scamper away."

That Harry Reid would argue anyone is greasy, slimy or lacks integrity is the height of chutzpah and a fine example of throwing stones while living in a thin glass house. It is good of him to explain the greased pig story otherwise no one would understand the reference. Maybe there is a method to his madness -- say so many outrageous things that the voters focus on his ridiculousness rather than the other problems that beset his party as the election nears. Quite a bet since the swing elections could move him from Senate leader to near-nobody, and he certainly is adding cause to make that happen.

[Lord Jim]

Still waiting for Tailgunner Harry to reveal the anonymous source he cited on the floor of the Senate when he claimed during the height of the 2012 election that Mitt Romney had paid no federal income taxes for 10 years...

A claim publicly denied at the time by Pricewaterhouse, the firm who prepared Romney's tax returns...

(Personally I'm inclined to believe Pricewaterhouse, since they, unlike Reid, actually have a reputation worth protecting...)

Reid's motive here, (like with his recent rant against the Koch brothers) is clear...

He can read the poll numbers as well as anyone else, (one recent poll has the GOP with a 23 point lead over the Dems among independents who say they will "definitely" vote this coming November; and the Republican party has a larger lead on the generic ballot then they did at this time in either 1994 or 2010)

And with the sane wing of the GOP finally getting it's act together to confront the nuthouse types, (and prevailing) The Senior Senator from Nevada is savvy enough to realize (as I pointed out in another thread) that he can't count on GOP primary voters to provide him with the nuthouse candidates he needs to hold on to his Majority Leader status...

So he, (and he's not alone in this, it's part of a piece; the whole Demo leadership Hee Haw Gang...The White House, Pelosi and DNC Chairman Debbie Pinnochio-Schultz are all singing from the same hymnal) are trying to figure out some way...

Any way...

To throw red meat to the base and somehow get them to turn out in larger numbers then the electoral history of off year elections suggests they will...

And of all the Demo leadership, he is at present the most shrill, outrageous, and cynically dishonest, not just because that's his nature, (though that certainly plays a role) but because he has the most to lose....


I've got a better chance of being cast to play the lead in The Marilyn Monroe Story then Pelosi has of regaining The Speakership next November, and Obama will still be President no matter what happens in the vote...

But Harry could easily be out on his ass, and he knows it...

(This might be a good time to point out that if it hadn't been for the Tea Party types nominating the wingnut Sharon Engle in a plurality primary to face off against Reid in 2010, we like as not wouldn't even be talking about Harry...)

[Lord Jim]

Here's an excellent article from The New York Times from a few months ago about The Odious Harry Reid...

Regular readers of this space will recall my detailed post about how Reid single handedly assured defeat for the "public option" in the original Obamacare bill, (throwing Olympia Snowe under the bus in the process)

I'm not going to argue that some of the GOP Filibusters haven't been excessive; but there's no question but that Reid's attempt to run The Senate as though it were The House have contributed mightily to the problem; (and when Republicans cross the aisle to work with him, he cuts them off at the knees, just as he did to Olympia):

Reid’s Uncompromising Power Play in Senate Rankles Republicans

By JONATHAN WEISMANJAN. 9, 2014

WASHINGTON — With his strong-armed change to the filibuster rule and an iron-fisted control of the Senate floor, Senator Harry Reid has engaged in the greatest consolidation of congressional power since Newt Gingrich ruled the House, unleashing a bitterness that may derail efforts to extend unemployment insurance.

Mr. Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, on Thursday dismissed all proposed Republican amendments to the unemployment extension, even those drafted by Republicans who had handed Democrats a victory on Tuesday by voting to take up the bill.

“We get nowhere with dueling amendments,” Mr. Reid declared.

A Republican effort to try to reopen the amendment process failed on a party-line vote, 42 to 54, setting up a showdown next week that is likely to end in the bill’s demise, Democrats conceded.

To Democrats, it was a typical Reid show of force in the face of unfair Republican amendments. To Republicans, it was only the latest — and one of the boldest — slaps in the face.

“I’m just kind of fed up,” said Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, a moderate Republican who has increasingly become a key vote for Democratic legislation. “He’s a leader. Why is he not leading this Senate? Why is he choosing to ignore the fact that he has a minority party that he needs to work with, that actually has some decent ideas? Why is he bringing down the institution of the Senate?”

Mr. Reid’s brutish style matters beyond the marbled chamber of the Senate. Senate legislation has increasingly turned into a battle over amendments and Mr. Reid’s uncompromising control over the process. The six Republicans who voted to take up the unemployment bill on Tuesday expected at least to be allowed votes on their amendments to shape the legislation.

Instead, Mr. Reid dismissed all Republican proposals as unacceptable and then proposed his own new unemployment deal. Under it, benefits would be extended until mid-November of this year, and paid for largely by extending a 2 percent cut to Medicare health providers in 2024. Republicans were outraged, and an obscure procedural fight is likely to leave up to three million out-of-work Americans without benefits.

“We need to be able to have votes on behalf of our states,” said Senator Kelly Ayotte, Republican of New Hampshire, who was denied a vote on her amendment to pay for the extension by requiring applicants for the child tax credit to have Social Security numbers, a proposal Mr. Reid declared an attack on children. “I don’t know what the issue is, unless you are afraid it will pass.”

Ms. Murkowski said that she was unlikely to support the bill.

The unemployment bill is only the most recent example of legislation that has become stuck in a procedural quagmire, affecting senators in both parties. A long-awaited showdown between two Democratic senators, Kirsten E. Gillibrand of New York and Claire McCaskill of Missouri, over the military’s approach to sexual assault fizzled late last year when they were denied any votes on an annual military policy bill that usually is shaped over weeks on the Senate floor. A bipartisan bill on Iran sanctions has yet to receive floor consideration. And Democrats, eager to replace a tax on medical devices that helps pay for the Affordable Care Act, have been denied a vote.

“I would like to take one of the bipartisan bills and allow for a more open amendment process,” said Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota and a primary sponsor of the medical device tax repeal. “I think that would be a good way to do it and more forward.”

For their part, Republicans have received all of four amendment votes since mid-July.

Rankled by the Republican criticism, Mr. Reid said in an interview that Republicans refused to agree to any reasonable limit on amendments despite his overtures.

“So we get nothing done, which is their goal anyway,” Mr. Reid said.

He accused Republicans of instigating attacks on him to shift attention from the impasse over unemployment benefits.

“This is a very difficult issue for them,” Mr. Reid said about the politics of the aid to the jobless.

The bitterness burst into the open on Wednesday afternoon. With virtually all of his Republican colleagues watching, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, took to the Senate floor to deliver a nearly hourlong lament about the destruction that Mr. Reid has wrought, describing the Senate as a post-apocalyptic wasteland ruled by a dictatorial autocrat despised by allies and foes alike. He compared Mr. Reid’s leadership to the famously strong-armed style of Lyndon B. Johnson when he was Senate majority leader in the 1950s, not a compliment in Mr. McConnell’s account.

The only Democrat to show up was the freshman senator tasked to sit in the leader’s chair. And Mr. Reid, who has led the Senate since 2007, watched the show on television from his office suite a few yards away.

In the struggle to define Mr. Reid’s leadership, each side has crunched statistics and studied history to prove its point. Aides to Mr. Reid say in no way has he mistreated the Republican minority. In his time as leader, he has allowed votes on almost 95 Republican amendments a year, 75 percent of the total. That is fewer than former Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee gave Democrats when he was majority leader — 117, or 76 percent — but more than Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi gave minority Democrats, 90 votes a year, 54 percent of the total.

“I have been very generous with amendments,” Mr. Reid said.

But Republicans argue that few could say the Senate is functioning. Compared with 2011, the Senate saw a 20-percent decline in bills approved last year, and senators cast the second-lowest number of votes of any first session this century. Democrats say Republicans were given 74 amendment votes last year, 68 percent of the total. But half of them came over one grueling 24-hour marathon, when the Senate voted on 37 nonbinding advisory amendments to the Senate budget last spring.

Absent those votes, Republicans were given 37 votes last year, 51 percent of the total. And Senate votes are trending downward. Exempting nonbinding budget amendments, total amendment votes reached 218 in 2007, Mr. Reid’s first year in control, to 175 in 2009, to 123 in 2012, to 67 last year, by Reid staff calculations. Since mid-July, Republicans have gotten four amendment votes.

Reid aides accept that power has drastically concentrated in Mr. Reid’s office, but counter that is because of the unprecedented obstruction by Republicans to derail President Obama. Dueling with Senator Dan Coats, Republican of Indiana, Mr. Reid made the case that “every amendment offered, with rare exception, is a gotcha amendment,” adding, “That isn’t what we do here.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/10/us/po ... ef=us&_r=1

[rubato]

The Republicans have behaved so thoroughly badly and with such profound cynicism in recent years that I cannot imagine a metaphor which could slander them.



yrs,
rubato