The "gentleman" from Kentucky, Republican Senator Jim Bunning is currently holding up a bill that would extend the unemployment benefits of thousands of people. The excuse he gives for this despicable behavior is that he believes the government should be able to pay for this extension of benefits before it is approved. Of course, he had no such scruples about George Bush’s two unpaid wars and tax cuts for the rich. Indeed, he voted against Obama’s special commission to solve the nation's budget problems. It seems to me that this level of foolishness transcends hypocrisy to border on insanity. On the other hand, Mr. Bunning has been asked by his party not to run for re-election so perhaps this is hubris. The working class has always been an easy target for men like Bunning. We haven’t the money to be respected beyond the lip service our elected officials pay to us and the world in which we live.
I keep hearing from various people in the media that Bunning is a baseball Hall of Famer as if it should mean something. Well, I don't give a damn if he is a star AARP Chippendale dancer, he is a bloody skin flint. Like so many on the right if he had his way we would all be standing in breadlines.
My parents talked often about the breadlines of the Great Depression. In Chicago where they lived during the 30’s most of the breadlines and soup kitchens were built not by the government or the Salvation Army, but by a man named Al Capone. With his submachine gun and pinstriped suit Capone - mobster, killer and gangland overlord - was strictly small potatoes compared to the thugs in the Senate today. It takes industrial size balls to praise Jesus out of one side of your mouth and put money above people out of the other.
Mr. Bunning isn’t the only one who considers helping the middle class a financial inconvenience after funding wars and cutting taxes for the rich. Yesterday on the floor of the Senate Jon Kyl of Arizona, also a Republican, made the following assessment. If you extend unemployment benefits people won’t bother to look for work because they will be making money without working. Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, tried to tell Kyl that there are no jobs. The Senator from Arizona was unimpressed and ignored the argument. The same is true of Cobra in Kyl’s estimation. Nothing makes people more eager to find work then a need for health care.
I do not understand why working people vote for sadists like Kyl and Bunning - or Bush come to that. It looks to me like the voters who elected these men are now dealing with the universal principle of Karma, and Karma is a bitch.
It is a stretch to name Bunning as a "gentleman". He is a right wingnut, who has long suffered from a dementia ignored by his Republican colleagues, or so I have read elsewhere. He has no interest in balancing the budget, as he previously went along with every budget busting whim of GWB without a complaint. He has been put up to this by his cowardly fellow obstructers in an effort to buy time and keep Obama from making any inroads into the jobless problem. We her in Yuma have received funds for an upgrade to the FBI bulding and to build a Federal Courthouse. There has been a new hanger built at the Marine Corps Air Station which will be leased by NASA and there is a huge solar farm being constructed thirty miles east; since all of these things were in the planning stage for some time I can only assume that the funds are from the Recovery program. The deniers and the obstructers I hope will finally be called out by courageous Senators on both sides.
ReplyDeleteHow in hell do people like Bunning get elected. Are we really so empty that a winning baseball career with put you in the Senate? You are correct, he's been nuts for years.
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