Bloodthirsty Liberal

Earlier today, we read about John Kerry, wannabe Founding Father.

But he’s obsessed with more recent national leaders, as well:

Friends of John Kerry, is it time for an intervention?

First there’s the whole “JFK” thing, and the fact that he talked about being the second JFK president back in high school.

Then there’s the obsession with the Hyannis lifestyle, the haughty “Kennedy-wannabe” air.

Now we find out that he’s obsessed with the Kennedy’s furniture. With the arrival of Senator Scott Brown, he’s claiming possession of Ted Kennedy’s desk. This after sitting for years at RFK’s old desk. He wants Teddy’s desk in part because it used to be JFK’s.

Does he keep Rose’s desiccated body in a rocking chair in the attic? Is Caroline in a dungeon somewhere, “putting the lotion on its skin”? Does he “see dead people” (all with abnormally toothy smiles)?

I heard with my own ears Scott Brown say as recently as two days ago that he could wait until February 11th to be sworn in as senator, but it appears he’s changed his mind:

Republican Scott Brown called on the governor of Massachusetts to certify the results of his upset Senate win by Thursday morning, allowing him to be sworn in earlier than his target date next week because, he says, there are votes he doesn’t want to miss.

Congressional sources tell FOX News that Brown could be sworn in as early as tomorrow.

The demand reversed Brown’s earlier declaration that he did not want to be sworn in until Feb. 11, a grace period he said he needed to hire a staff and prepare for his new responsibilities. It also followed criticism from conservative radio hosts and newspaper columnists about what one dubbed a “three-week victory lap.”

With respect to Scott, that’s what it has become (turns out, the line belongs to Howie Carr). He’s received gentlemen’s agreements that the Senate won’t pull a fast one in the interim, but Harry Reid’s no gentleman. He had the election won before 10 PM on January 19th—why the hell are we still waiting?

While Paul Kirk votes to raise the debt ceiling? If Brown were in the seat, Kirk’s yes would be Brown’s no, and they wouldn’t have 60 votes. Excuse me, but I still think $1.9 trillion is real money.

In other words, it’s about freakin’ time.

In the words of Howie Carr (again):

Hey Sen. Paul Kirk - screw!

You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here, here being the U.S. Senate.

It’s been 15 days now since a Republican won the special election in Massachusetts, and Kirk is still squatting in Ted Kennedy’s office.

Hey Paul Kirk - how can we miss you if you won’t go away?

What’s it going to take to pry this guy out of office, the Jaws of Life?

…

Let me be blunt - the sooner Scott is sworn in, the worse the moonbats will feel, and that will make my day.

It’s so heartwarming to pick up the moonbats’ favorite broadsheet and see yourself - and 1.1 million other Brown voters - described as “thugs” and “goons.”

In other words, the initial buzz over sticking it right up the noses of the Democratic machine is wearing off, and we need another hit.

If Kirk had any scruples, he’d have at least recused himself from all further voting. But he was hand-picked by the Kennedys to fill what was then still their seat, so you can guess what that meant.

Scott Brown will be sitting in the People’s Seat tomorrow. Rejoice!

How I admire the Democrats. Any party that would put itself before state, before country, before the will of the people must be one hell of a political party:

It looks like the fix is in on national health-care reform - and it all may unfold on Beacon Hill.

At a business forum in Boston today, interim Sen. Paul Kirk predicted that Congress would pass a health-care reform bill this month.

“We want to get this resolved before President Obama’s State of the Union address in early to mid-February,” Kirk told reporters at a Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce breakfast.

…

[I]f Brown wins, the entire national health-care reform debate may hinge on when he takes over as senator. Brown has vowed to be the crucial 41st vote in the Senate that would block the bill.

The U.S. Senate ultimately will schedule the swearing-in of Kirk’s successor, but not until the state certifies the election.

Today, a spokesman for Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin, who is overseeing the election but did not respond to a call seeking comment, said certification of the Jan. 19 election by the Governor’s Council would take a while.

“Because it’s a federal election,” spokesman Brian McNiff said. “We’d have to wait 10 days for absentee and military ballots to come in.”

Another source told the Herald that Galvin’s office has said the election won’t be certified until Feb. 20 - well after the president’s address.

…

In contrast, Rep. Niki Tsongas (D-Lowell) was sworn in at the U.S. House of Representatives on Oct. 18, 2007, just two days after winning a special election to replace Martin Meehan. In that case, Tsongas made it to Capitol Hill in time to override a presidential veto of the expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.

…

“This is a stunning admission by Paul Kirk and the Beacon Hill political machine,” said Brown in a statement. “Paul Kirk appears to be suggesting that he, Deval Patrick, and (Senate Majority Leader) Harry Reid intend to stall the election certification until the health care bill is rammed through Congress, even if that means defying the will of the people of Massachusetts. As we’ve already seen from the backroom deals and kickbacks cut by the Democrats in Washington, they intend to do anything and everything to pass their controversial health care plan. But threatening to ignore the results of a free election and steal this Senate vote from the people of Massachusetts takes their schemes to a whole new level. Martha Coakley should immediately disavow this threat from one of her campaign’s leading supporters.”

Coakley later released this statement.

We have some fairly prestigious universities you may have heard of in these parts. And not a few high-tech companies with a lot of computing power. In short, we know how to count votes.

Oh, you bet we do. We can count ‘em so well, we can count ‘em backwards and sideways—make ‘em say anything you want ‘em to. And if the vote should happen not to go our way, we know Washington has our back.

Where exactly shall I place my foamy-mouthed fury? On Obama, Reid, et al, sure. But how did we let it get to this stage? How did we give the Democrats the idea that they could ignore, dismiss, and defecate on us with an airy wave of the hand?

What a fitting testament to the memory of Ted Kennedy (dirt be upon him).

I blame myself not least. I’m more likely to reach for a Sam Adams than behave like one. But I’ll vote for a Whig or a Bull Moose or a Know-Nothing before I vote for a Democrat again. Ever.

I hate to toot my own horn (yeah, right)—but I’d need the entire wind section of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (traditionally the finest) to play the symphony of my successes (and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir to sing the airs of my errors).

One week ago, I wrote of the special election for the open Massachusetts senate seat:

If things get too close, they’ll fire up the Kennedy machine, and we’ll have more oversized incisors in our faces than a horse dentist.

This morning (cue dawn music—that stretch so favored in Looney Tunes cartoons from the Wm. Tell Overture, just before Lone Ranger theme):

After weeks of remaining on the sidelines in the US Senate race, key members of the Kennedy family will throw their weight behind Attorney General Martha Coakley today, hoping to propel her into the seat long held by one of their own.

Coakley, who has not enjoyed a particularly close relationship with the family, is set to receive the blessing in Medford this morning of Victoria Reggie Kennedy, the widow of Edward M. Kennedy, as well as Joseph P. Kennedy II, a former congressman and the late senator’s nephew, who opted out of the race; and Senator Paul G. Kirk, a longtime Kennedy friend temporarily occupying the seat. Joseph Kennedy III, the former congressman’s son, will also endorse her.

With less than two weeks before the Jan. 19 vote, the planned endorsements mark the first time that the Kennedys have been active in the campaign in a significant way. It is also Coakley’s most concerted effort to link herself with the Kennedy legacy.

Link herself to the Kennedy legacy?! The girl would drive her car off a bridge with an open bottle of Chivas and an empty bottle of Ambien in the front seat (and a dead girl in the trunk) if she thought it would win her votes. Although I thought that line about the Kennedys “throwing their weight” behind Coakley a mean and lowdown jibe.

Anyway, no surprise that they wheeled out the watery gene pool of the family after polls showed Superman (aka Scott Brown) so close, Coakley could hear his cape rustling in the breeze.

Twelve days: that’s how long until we find out who “owns” this seat: the people of the Commonwealth, or clan Kennedy.

PS:
Whereas Scott Brown promises of ObamaCare:

As the 41st senator, I would stop the plan as it is constituted right now and force them to go back to the drawing board.

Oh dear, what’s an environmental activist to do?

The administration of Governor Deval Patrick, in a sharp disagreement with Patrick’s handpicked Senate appointee, said yesterday that it would be a mistake for President Obama to grant US Senator Paul G. Kirk Jr.’s request to delay federal approval of the Cape Wind project.

In a letter to Obama earlier this month, Kirk, who has largely shied away from divisive issues during his two months in office, urged the Obama administration to hold off on a decision until a federal panel can devise comprehensive guidelines for development in the nation’s waters. But officials from the Patrick administration said the governor strongly disagrees with Kirk’s request and urges quick approval. “After eight years of thorough review and as the world convenes shortly in Copenhagen to tackle climate change, the governor believes the time is now to move forward with this landmark clean energy project - the only offshore wind project that has the potential to be built in President Obama’s first term,’’ Patrick’s secretary of energy and environmental affairs, Ian A. Bowles, said in a statement yesterday.

Nice touch, Guv. That’s going to hit President Obama right in the breadbasket (or a little lower). How could he resist such an appeal?

Here’s how:

In taking up the fight against Cape Wind, Kirk is continuing a battle long waged by Kennedy, his close friend, who strongly opposed the construction of 130 wind turbines in Nantucket Sound.

“He’s taking a stand that Senator Kennedy would have taken,’’ said Ross K. Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers, who added that Kirk is sending a message that “even though the person who was the most prominent opponent of it is gone, the opposition to it still remains.’’

Each tower, each turbine, would be a urination on the grave of the late Senator Ted. Kirk is just holding up his end of the (Faustian) bargain to do as Ted would have done.

Liberal on liberal crime is always so sad.

I have to say, now that Ted is gone, that building a wind farm in one of the most scenics spots in America is a dubious proposition. I’m not saying it’s wrong—midwesterners probably object to windmills befouling the prairiescape, yet they live with them—but the Kennedy side of the argument is not without merit (wouldn’t catch me saying that when he was alive).

I just don’t trust these imbeciles to get anything right:

IT ALWAYS seemed bizarre to think that cutting down trees and burning them for fuel could be a good way to reduce carbon emissions. And yet both the Kyoto climate change treaty and a key bill in the US House look favorably on generation not just from biofuels such as ethanol but also from so-called biomass, including wood. Fortunately, scientists are beginning to consider biomass with a more skeptical eye. Late last month, Massachusetts launched a study on whether biomass power-generation plants are sustainable - the crucial question in the debate on four plants proposed for the western part of the state.

These plants could burn wood left over from landscaping, milling operations, and forest-thinning projects. But these unobjectionable sources might not be enough to feed the plants; their operation, critics worry, would require major cuts in private and public woods, reducing the forests’ ability to absorb carbon dioxide. The state’s study, which will be reviewed by an independent advisory panel, should ensure that the state does not give a boost to biomass plants that harm both the atmosphere and the state’s forests.

Calling trees “biomass” was a nice try, but they’re still trees. And the insatiable demand for power would surely lead to more chopping and more sawing. There’s room for some, I’m sure, but when we’re on the verge of paying Brazil not to cut their trees, it seems illogical to be cutting our own.

Who thinks up these ideas?

How does a Massachusetts Republican possibly get elected to Ted Kennedy’s seat in the US Senate? He doesn’t, probably.

But if he does, he does so by running as a Kennedy Democrat—John Kennedy:

And if the voters didn’t get the point:

Scott Brown is right, of course, but this is the same electorate that sent Ted Kennedy (and John Kerry) back to Washington every six years, and Barney Fwank and the other socialist midgets back to the House every two (with apologies to midgets). And voted down a ballot measure repealing the state income tax. We like to take it up the you-know-where, in other words, and don’t see why everyone else shouldn’t also.

I’m still trying to learn more about Scott Brown’s positions on the foreign and domestic issues of the day—he’s a state senator for another district—but he could be Idid Amin’s twin brother and the temptation to vote for him over JAD (Just Another Democrat) would be hard to resist.

In the race to replace Ted Kennedy (no one can replace him, of course, but anyone can improve on him), there is no depth to which the radically leftist candidates among the Democratic candidates will not sink, and sink happily, proudly, disgustingly.

Just ask any fetus; he or she will tell you:

A day after criticizing Attorney General Martha Coakley for saying she would have voted against a health care reform bill because it contained an anti-abortion amendment, Rep. Michael Capuano said through an aide that he’ll oppose a final version of the bill unless the amendment is eliminated.

…

Capuano faulted Coakley on Monday, saying a vote against the health care bill would have denied expanding health care to 36 million more Americans.

On Tuesday, Capuano spokeswoman Alison Mills said he’ll fight to improve the bill but would vote against it if it included the abortion amendment.

Fellow Democratic candidates Alan Khazei and Stephen Pagliuca also oppose the amendment.

Wouldn’t political calculus suggest that there might be a political gain in setting oneself apart from the rabble in the Democratic Party and oppose public funding for abor—…?

What am I saying? Among Massachusetts Democrats? They’d throw babies into bonfires with pitchforks if they could—and call it alternative energy.

PS: I just heard a radio debate in which Michael Capuano said he’s back in support of the health care bill for which he voted, then said he opposed. Although he will then work tirelessly to allow public dollars for abortions after all. I think Madame Speaker reached out and gave him a little squeeze where it counts.

Hey, Mike, you’re running for Kennedy’s seat, not Kerry’s. Must we have two senators who were for something before they were against it? (Then for it again?)

At least, I think that’s what Patrick Kennedy said:

He cited, as an example, 10,000 signs distributed at a recent Washington protest that read, “Bury ObamaCare with Kennedy.”

Patrick Kennedy is the last member of his storied family to hold federal office. His father, U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, died one month ago after battling a brain tumor. His uncles, former President John F. Kennedy and former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, were assassinated.

“My family’s seen it up close too much with assassinations and violence in political life. It’s a terrible thing when people think that in order to get their point across they have to go to the edge of violent rhetoric and attack people personally,” Kennedy told the nurses, union officials and AARP members finishing their breakfasts at the invitation-only event in the Providence Marriott hotel. “It’s fine for people to debate the issue and attack the issue, but when they go and stoop to the level of the vitriolic rhetoric that we’ve seen this debate turn up, it’s very, I think, dangerous to the fabric of our country.”

Oh dear, so many ways to go. Should I take the route that today’s “vitriolic rhetoric” is nowhere near as violent as the anti-Bush rhetoric? No, not today. How about the insulting and insane insinuation that people with objections and concerns about this radical plan are no different from Sirhan Sirhan? Or should I just ask what is violent or vitriolic about using a burial metaphor to describe the, uh, termination of a legislative proposal? Maybe a little too soon for good taste, but, Jesus, Pat, grow a set of balls.

I think instead I’ll observe that Ted Kennedy’s name and visage are plastered all over the movement to nationalize the health industry. “Do it for Ted,” is the mantra we hear, over and over. We aren’t the ones who dragged the late senator’s lifeless body from his eternal rest, and propped him up next to the bill, like some vulgar send-up of Weekend at Bernie’s. You let him in peace, and so will we.

Here in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, we make money the old-fashioned way: we hold you upside down and shake you until your eyeballs rattle.

A large military spending bill moving through Congress contains a little-noticed outlay for Boston that has nothing to do with national defense: $20 million for an educational institute honoring late Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts.

The EARMARK, tucked into the defense bill at the request of Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, requires US taxpayers to help the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate realize its goal of building a repository for Kennedy’s papers and an accompanying civic learning center on the University of Massachusetts at Boston campus in Dorchester, next to the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum.

The item is drawing fire from fiscal watchdog groups, who assert that military funds should not be raided to pay for an institution that has nothing to do with improving military readiness.

“Whatever beneficial value civic education may have, it’s hard to see why the Defense Department should pay for it,’’ said Laura Peterson, a senior policy analyst at the nonpartisan Taxpayers for Common Sense in Washington. “It would seem the location of this hefty earmark has more to do with the powerful position of its sponsor than [the Defense Department’s] responsibility to educate elementary school children.’’

Kerry strongly defended the insertion of the $20 million earmark yesterday. He requested that it be included in the $360 billion defense budget, he said, to recognize Kennedy’s long tenure on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

May I remind the newly senior senator from the Commonwealth that the former senior senator is stone cold dead, and you don’t have to kiss his pimply, broad keister anymore?

Besides, I thought President Obama didn’t allow earmarks anymore.

And in a delicious epilogue worthy of Chicago politics:

Beyond raising questions about the practice of slipping earmarks into bills in Congress, the provision also presents a potential ethical question for Paul Kirk, the longtime Kennedy aide Governor Deval Patrick appointed to fill the late senator’s seat yesterday.

Kirk, who stepped down yesterday as chairman of the JFK Library Foundation, has also served as a member of the Edward M. Kennedy Institute board and has played a key role in helping plan and raise funds for the new center. If he casts a vote in favor of the defense bill, he also will be voting in favor of an institute to which he has had close personal and professional connections.

What, like that’s a problem? C’mon!

But what do I care? We’re only one of fifty (or so) states, so we have to pay only 1/50th of the cost. The rest of youse is picking up the balance. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!! Sucks to be USA!

I guess the rumored appointment of Mike Dukakis as interim senator here in the fiefdom of Massachusetts raised a few eyebrows (get it?):

Governor Deval Patrick huddled with a small group of trusted advisers last night to finalize his choice for an interim US senator, with indications pointing to former Democratic National Committee chairman Paul G. Kirk Jr., who has the strong backing of the immediate family of the late Edward M. Kennedy, as the overwhelming favorite.

A person with knowledge of the process said last night that former governor Michael S. Dukakis, considered a leading candidate for the appointment, was unlikely to be chosen. At the same time, senior Democrats in Washington told The New York Times that they were certain Kirk would be the choice.

…

Kennedy’s widow, Victoria Reggie Kennedy, has weighed in, telling the governor that she prefers Kirk, according to a Kennedy family associate. Her views add further pressure to fill the interim appointment with the longtime Kennedy friend and former staff member, a man so close to the family he was chosen as master of ceremonies at Kennedy’s memorial service the night before the funeral last month.

The Globe reported yesterday that Kennedy’s two sons, US Representative Patrick J. Kennedy of Rhode Island and Edward M. Kennedy Jr., have also told Patrick that Kirk is their first choice.

Oh well, if the Kennedys want it, then what’s left to discuss? It’s their seat, isn’t it? Even if the two sons don’t even live in the Commonwealth?

There is the wee sticking point that the governor’s appointment might not be legal:

Supporters of the bill failed to muster enough votes to include an emergency provision that would make the law effective immediately. The governor has the authority to implement the law immediately upon his signature, as long as he sends a procedural letter to Secretary of State William F. Galvin. Four House Republicans sent a letter last night asking the Supreme Judicial Court to issue an advisery opinion on whether Patrick has the power to put the law in place immediately, though Galvin said that has been relatively routine.

I’ve been hearing a lot of discussion about this provision on the radio, and there are a couple of issues. One: how can it be an emergency when Ted Kennedy knew he was going to die? Of course, this wouldn’t be the first time he walked away from a life-and-death matter, but if he was content to bring about this state of affairs by not resigning his seat in his last days, who are we to defy his wishes? Seriously, how can this even remotely be termed an emergency? The second point is that the legislature had the choice to invoke the emergency provision, and opted not to. As a co-equal branch of government, how can their determination be ignored? It gets a little technical legally, and the local Republicans (both of them) may decide it’s not worth the effort (the judiciary is also a co-equal branch of government, but it’s still populated by Massachusetts Democrats).

We are a banana republic without the bananas (physical bananas, that is); more like an arugula republic.