Dumb Stuff Republicans Say On The Senate Floor

[Bob Geiger]

OK, folks, it's Friday, it's been a long week in the United States Senate and I've decided to bring some amusement into your lives by showing you some dumb things that Republicans said this week on the Senate floor. Nothing big… Nothing momentous…. Just enough to make you say "huh?"

DeMint Makes Theodore Roosevelt Spin In Grave

Or, one Chickenhawk uses Roosevelt's words to praise another Chickenhawk… Here's ultraconservative Jim DeMint (R-SC) getting all verklempt while giving a stirring floor speech about the "war on terror" and how George W. Bush stands alone in his heroic world vision -- and invoking Teddy Roosevelt to praise the man who brought us the Iraq quagmire:

"One of our greatest Presidents, Theodore Roosevelt, once said, 'It is not the critic who counts.' 'The credit,' he said, 'belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming.'

"The credit, Roosevelt said, belongs to the man 'who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.'

"At this very moment, our Commander in Chief and those he commands are daring greatly."

Kind of hard to picture guys like Bush or DeMint ever being "marred by dust and sweat and blood," isn’t it? DeMint did his time while of military age striving "valiantly" at the University of Tennessee and Clemson University while Bush, well, who knows where the hell he was?

But even considering that he's referring to Bush now, I have a feeling King George gets more "marred by dust and sweat and blood" clearing brush or tumbling from his mountain bike in Crawford, than he does wrestling with his hideous decisions on war policy.

Bond Implies Congressional Democrats Sending Good News To Osama

Here's that wacky Kit Bond (R-MO), taking to the Senate floor on Tuesday to slip a two-for-one deal into the Congressional Record. First he invokes "cut-and-run" as if he didn’t get the memo about that phrase being inoperable given how many people on his side of the aisle are starting to agree with Democrats in correcting the Iraq disaster:

"I have also heard in the Senate a number of comments from Members who do not support a cut-and-run policy. I have addressed previously the disaster of an immediate withdrawal from Iraq."

Bond was saying that anyone not supporting the Bush-McCain policy of escalating the war in Iraq is cutting and running… So that now accounts for about two-thirds of the Congress and 70 percent of the American people.

Which, according to Bond, means most of us are also guilty of sending messages that will make the enemy downright giddy. Saying that Iraq would "fall into chaos" if we begin withdrawing troops, the Bond Man had this to say:

"The primary beneficiary of that chaos would be al-Qaida. Osama bin Laden and Al-Jazeera have said how important it was for them to establish Iraq as their main base of operations. To send a message by adopting a resolution that says we oppose the President's plan, implementation of his plan, is not going to change sending more American troops there.

"But it will tell al-Qaida: Good news, boys, the Congress is opposing the President. Our chances look better to take over the country."

Memo to Republican National Committee: Please send Senator Bond newer slime.

Please go to BobGeiger.com to read more of this article...

[rodeodance]

1. thanks. glad I missed the wackyness.

[China_cat]

2. Too bad DeMint (and others) missed this one

or ignore it more likely



"The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else."

"Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star", 149
May 7, 1918