Saturday Morning Coffee--New Guinea Again

As a recovering Republican, last night's Senate debate was a dry drunk. I suppose Harry Reid wanted Republicans to have a chance to air out their objections as almost all 300 of their amendments went down in flames. But it was one of the most disgusting displays of mendacity I have seen in a long time.

Obama really made a mistake in his hosting a dinner for John McCain and his boyfriend Lindsey Graham and meeting with neocon columnists over food before he had clubbed them into submission. I think Lindsey Graham would be more comfortable with himself and not make us so queasy if he would just come out of the closet. The bit I really enjoyed was when he located the C-Span camera and looked into it saying that he wasn't afraid of the President. Then his southern style threat--there will be a TARP III and foreign policy issues so the President should look out. If I were Obama I would immediately send all the detainees from Gitmo to the Navy Brig at Charleston, South Carolina and then watch Lindsey cry.

Diaper Vitter was emblematic of a certain type of idiocy that southern states seem to cultivate. He has taken up the mantle of the conservatives who believe ACORN stole the election and that he has to rail about some line item that may or may not go to ACORN. We're all too busy to even check. If the Democrats can't run a candidate to defeat him, they are a bunch of losers. The best suggestion I've heard is James Carville, since he's been playing politicians--quite well--in movies and he looks like a snake and is nasty as hell.

The Senators from Alabama and Coburn from Oklahoma invoked the children. In words aimed at people who have lost their jobs and are under financial stress, they argued that --while they may get some immediate relief--their children will be branded with this debt forever. A curious argument to use when less money is in the stimulus package than the bill for the Iraq war. I cringed when Hillary Clinton used to say "Think of the children". Now when Republicans do I think of yesterday's arrest of McCain's campaign manager in Colorado for molesting children.

Republicans Senators kept referring to the package as a trillion dollar deal--of course that includes the projected interest paying it off. The kicker was their selective interpretation of the Congressional Budget Office report, which said that after the initial positive effect the economy may not be strengthened over the long haul. What the report did not imply was that the package would weaken the economy. What it really suggested was it may not be enough--a concern of many economists.

Tom Coburn, who actually is a personal friend of Obama--a fact that raises serious questions about our new President--managed to win on his amendment to strip anything referring to the entertainment, leisure or arts sector of society. Stripping the National Foundation of the Arts out of the bill, I guess the Republicans think they have prevented another Jesus painting covered in elephant do-do.

The Senate always has moment of sheer nausea when members throw kisses to each other. Lindsey Graham's tribute to the heroic Joey Lieberman, who stood courageously against his party so "now he's entitled to say anything he wants." should have provoked hoots of derision. Lindsey forgot to mention Joe's correction when John McCain claimed the Jewish holiday Purim was like halloween.

And of course--waiving his time until the last--was the maverick John McCain, who ended the whole evening by lecturing Obama on bipartisanship and hubris. Raising Obama's quip that "I won", McCain asserted that didn't mean he had the right to draft the bill. Of course, it did. Then McCain in his punk best started morphing Dick Cheney raising shadowy threats ahead on national security and further funding, which Obama will need Republican support. McCain's own stimulus package--which consisted of tax cuts and defense appropriations--was defeated by a straight partisan vote.

McCain spent the evening trying to pretend he's the leader of the Republican Party. Few Republican Senators back him and he is loathed by the House. The situation would be like Michael Dukakis insisting after his defeat that he was the leader of the Democrats. And you really would have to be mentally ill to listen to McCain on anything remotely close to economics. McCain still doesn't believe a young Black man whipped him so now he will be lecturing him on the presidency.

John Kerry actually got some good licks in when he mentioned his plea at the Bush White House almost 18 months ago to find relief for homeowners who were being foreclosed. He drafted a bill that would allocate funds to alleviate this problem and as Kerry reminded the Republicans that both the Bush Administration and the Senate Republicans killed it. Now, he went on, we are spending several times that as 19 million homes go empty.

The residual good Republicans were the ladies from Maine--Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins. Susan will be remembered for her intercession this last election with the RNC to stop the rebo hate calls against Obama into the state of Maine. Olympia Snowe was given the task of writing the tax cut section of the bill and Susan dutifully went off with moderate Democrats to red pencil the bill so it included just the necessary.

The conservative websites are screaming murder about these two RINO women--Republican In Name Only--capitulating to the Democrats. This is the type of thing that wiped out all Republicans who represented New England in the House of Representatives. It's also why the Tom Keans of the world no longer exist in the Republican universe. It's hard for northerners to feign being neo-confederates. How bad has it gotten? This year the Republicans, the Party of Lincoln, ran a ticket with a Vice President who was sympathetic to a secessionist movement and has a husband who is a member of one.