Not like Generals have anything better to do:
With a few simple words — “I would have to object” — Republican U.S. Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina derailed a Senate Armed Services hearing today in which generals had traveled from Korea and Hawaii to testify about the Pentagon’s needs for the next year.
Burr, joining his GOP colleagues’ outrage at the new health reform law, used an obscure Senate rule to prevent the Armed Services committee from meeting this afternoon – even though he said he personally wanted the hearing to occur.
Republicans are angry over the signing Tuesday of the health reform law that President Barack Obama and Democrats have been working toward for the past year.
I’m waiting for one of them to hold their breath until they turn blue.
Menzies
Richard Burr needs to speak out more often. He might convince more voters that the GOP has gone to hell.
Betsy
With luck, they can hold it until they pass out, at which point we can quickly get some things done.
low-tech cyclist
I’m waiting for one of them to hold their breath until they turn blue.
Beat you to it: Mitch McConnnell Holds His Breath Until His Face Turns Blue
Robin G
I hope someone’s waiting with a camera when that happens. I’d give good money to see McCain with his cheeks all puffed out, stamping his feet. It would give me warm fuzzies.
dmsilev
Since John McCain has already gone green with envy over Obama winning the election, we could combine him, Boehner, and Senator Smurf-to-be-named-later and make a nice RGB display.
-dms
Face
This should out-shock your above post. This is unreal. Impeachment for failing to file a frivolous lawsuit?
God fucking damn is the South fucked up.
mellowjohn
and the really dip-shitty part of it was that he might not have been objecting for himself. if you listen to the clip, he refers to “an objection from our side.” so either he was objecting for some other other repub too gutless to stand up and be recognized, or he really did object and was too gutless to say so.
Robin G
@dmsilev:
FTW.
jackie
Senator Barrs office states that they couldn’t hold the hearing because they were up until 3 am voting on the health care bill. I pointed out that the Health care bill is already a law and in his statement he said he didn’t object to holding the hearing someone else did and senators hold hearings and vote on other things all the time. I was informed he’s the best senator on military matters. So there.
PaulW
Wonderful campaign slogan for the Senate GOP this midterms. “Hi there! Return me to office so I can continue cockblocking the Democrats with my childish preschool antics!”
I used to think the Republicans were being led by 7th graders: spiteful, disrespectful of authority and rules, obsessed with other people’s looks and how they look in comparison, etc. Now they’re acting like preschoolers. At what point do adults tell them to go do Time Out in a corner?
dmsilev
Democrats really need to start openly calling the GOP a bunch of petulant children. Gibbs’s comparison of John McCain to a 6 year old yesterday was a good start, but we need more political theater. Harry Reid announcing that juice boxes and graham crackers will now be served in the Senate cafeteria. An explicit entry in the daily schedule for Nap Time. Bulk delivery of a bunch of pacifiers to the offices of the House GOP (and to David Vitter, so he won’t feel left out).
-dms
cleek
i’d prefer it if the held their breath until they turned gay.
Ash Can
I wonder what the water-cooler chatter around the Pentagon is going to sound like today.
cursorial
Sadly, this probably won’t get enough press to generate outrage. The Democrats should find some way to highlight it, even if they have to one up the Republicans with ridiculous stunts. “Look, General, there won’t be an official hearing, but we’re free and you’re available, and we’ve got this rented conference room at the Marriott…”
beltane
@dmsilev: I think the color that results from that blend would be chartreuse or puce.
Zifnab
So, that military vote the Republicans have been courting since Eisenhower. How’s that going?
@cursorial:
I’d be surprised if this sort of thing didn’t make it’s way through the ranks. If you’re deployed in Yemen or Japan, I imagine you don’t watch a lot of CNN, but you do hit up military blogs and chat sites. And every good employee keeps an eye on what the CEO is doing (or not doing – in this case).
Between throwing a hissy fit over 3% salary increases for enlisted men, taking their sweet fucking time getting out MWRAPs and other bomb resistant gear during wars that have become synonymous with the term IED, yaking it up about the “Korea model” for Iraq after you’ve got military guys going back five or six times, engaging in twenty years of homophobic gay-had, breaking out the purple heart band-aids during a Presidential campaign, and now this…
I can see why Republicans have been keeping the Blackwater vote. I have no idea why any sane grunt not eyeballs deep in Rush Limbaugh would tolerate this shit.
Svensker
@Robin G:
Isn’t that pretty much McWalnuts’ steady state?
br
@cleek: Come on, man, you gotta link TEH VIDEO.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
You really should read this diary over at the GOS:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/3/24/121048/549
My favorite line is in the comments:
“Wait until she turns three and wants to deport Dora the Explorer.”
cleek
@br:
i got lazy.
me bad.
bob h
Note that
Mr. Campbell BrownDan Senor seems to want no part of runnning for NY Sen. as part of this Republican Party.aimai
I have to think that shutting down a committee meeting with Military Top Brass, in such a public and last minute way, is going to redound badly. I hope the Dems take out ads in the Senator’s home state asking why he is wasting tax payer money and military service time on spite voting–and I’d like to see a new concept “spite voting” and “spite legislating” start to take hold. I’ve really never seen anything like it, and damn it, I’m 49++.
aimai
SpotWeld
Okay… have Democrats ever pulled crap like this?
They were getting pretty snarky under Bush with the approval of War funding, but I don’t recall them every tossing a wrench into the works.
merrinc
@cursorial:
Front page, above the fold in today’s Charlotte Observer.
Macha Maguire
Seems to me that the more Obama (and to a lesser extent, the Dems) act as actual mature adults, the more the GOP regresses into infantile tantrums. If he keeps smiling them out, they’ll end up in a corner in fetal position, sucking their thumbs and failing in their toilet training.
At which point – if not long before – they are unelectable.
Rhoda
How can anyone vote the Republicans into office given the idiocy and childishness on display? It blows my mind that these asses have a ten percent chance to take over the whole senate.
Violet
To the average American, just highlighting that Republicans don’t want to work after 2 p.m. sounds incredibly childish. That there’s even a rule allowing them to do so is shocking. And that they’d choose to enact it, even more so.
We send these guys to Congress. They don’t want to work. Lazy. Dems should highlight Republican laziness as often as possible. That kind of thing really ticks people off.
PurpleGirl
I don’t remember where I saw it and I can’t find it now but yesterday I saw a video of Sen. Claire McCaskill commenting on a committee hearing being canceled by Republican members just minutes before it was supposed to start. Was she ever pissed about it and their attitude. (I wish I could remember which of the blogs I read regularly had it.)
Paul
@Macha Maguire:
Unfortunately, there is a portion of the population (especially around here, I’m in Michelle Bachmann’s district) that *likes* these tactics and antics.
LuciaMia
Didn’t some wingnut idiot write a book with the contention that liberalism is some kind of mental illness. Right premise, wrong political party.
Bill Section 147
This is why GW Cheney was a great President, because then it could just make the threat level red and pretend that not running the country was like dangerous or something. And those opposition Senators could be securely secured in an underground bunker for their own security.
I was glad to hear Senator Webb decided to run his committee anyway. I think it is time for the Democratic Senators to have a sit-in or committee-in. Hell! No! We won’t go!
colleeniem
@PurpleGirl: It was wonkette. Wonkette!
PurpleGirl
@colleeniem: Thanks.
Shygetz
John, you should go all Ewik Ewikson and set up an Amazon store to send pacifiers to Republican Senators.
AJ
@Zifnab:
Zifnab.
“So, that military vote the Republicans have been courting since Eisenhower.”
Not really. Repukes, CONSERVATIVE repukes, went after Ike and the Army, too. “Mr. Conservative”, Robert Taft and his buds took a page from Glenn Beckkk and said there was a secret, illegal, deal between Roosevelt/Truman and Stalin, and agreed to by George Marshall, and wanted to nail them and regain political power in the process. Turning on Ike’s Army and his former boss/pal, George Marshall, was not a smart move.
Freshman Senator LBJ helped the ‘pukes destroy themselves.
Great book on this: “Master of the Senate“, by Robert Caro.
Legalize
@Shygetz:
Win.
kindness
Why aren’t Democrats coming out with images & messages like the ones used against Newt back in ’94?
Now would be a perfect time to roll that shit out.
Surreal American
Two words to describe what’s happening now with Senate Republicans: Infantile Dysfunction
Francis
I’m not much for doing the whole “Imagine what the Republicans/Fox would do if they were the ones in power and the Democrats pulled this stunt.” It’s mostly a useless hypothetical.
But in this instance? Wow. The entire press corps (and rightwing blogsphere) would — lead by Drudge,Beck,FauxNews — go absolutely apesh!t. Democrats commit treason! Demoncrats hate our troops! etc.
Can we liberals muster the same level of outrage? Sadly, no.
(actually, not sadly,no. the good thing about our side is we occasionally try to use reason. but i love the s,n blog.)
kindness
Google is god.
OK who is good with photoshop around here? Use something like this:
http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/blnewtcrybaby2.htm
aimai
@38 I nominate “infantile dysfunction” as a new tag. Really apt. We could rotate it with “Old Man Shakes Fist At Clouds.”
aimai
Evinfuilt
@aimai:
Agreed, those 2 words succinctly sum up the Republicans right now.
bcinaz
I have heard that the Officer Corps generally, though not universally, votes Republican. I wonder if this will be another defining moment for the GOP and if it will lose the “National Security” vote in November.
Tell me again why Democrats are losing seats in the midterms.
Ella in NM
I really think they are at the point where they think if they play like victims who are fighting back against an oppressive machine through any means possible they will get empathy, not rage.
Sadly, I think the entire Rush/Beck right gives it to them–that 20-25% of the US population who now appears to own AM radio and Fox News. They have no principles, only strategies. I mean, really, when was the last time they didn’t throw one of their “deeply held tenents” under a bus so that they could turn around and criticize a Democrat for doing it?
john b
i don’t know what the polling is like. but if the dem nominee is worth their salt this year in NC, i could see burr gone. he is not well-liked. he has not gotten anything done. and NC is turning bluer by the day.
lou
@shygatz.
Winning idea. Pacifiers are perfect.
Waynski
John McCain did exactly that when he was a child. From his bio:
“Quick to anger even as a toddler, McCain used to hold his breath until he passed out when thwarted. ”
http://www.answers.com/topic/john-mccain
Surreal American
@aimai:
@Evinfuilt:
Thank you for the nominations. I am honored.