Showing posts with label Senate confirmation hearing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Senate confirmation hearing. Show all posts

Monday, February 3, 2025

Is Senator Bernie Sanders auditioning for the lead role in the Bad Grandpa sequel?

Winter in southwest Mississippi is a lovely time. Even in February, the woods are dotted with green trees: magnolias, cedar, and pine.  Now that duck season is over, and the shotgun blasts have died away, Lake Mary, where I live, is especially placid. 

Unfortunately, I was anxious about President Trump's cabinet nominations, and I watched TV instead of contemplating the tranquil beauty of rural Mississippi. Would Trump's cabinet picks get through the Senate confirmation process and be confirmed, or would they be shot down like ducks in flight, destroyed by mean-spirited  Democratic senators delivering nasty questions like shotgun blasts?

Identifying the most boorish senator in last week's senate hearings would be difficult. Still, my vote goes to Bernie Sanders, Vermont's geriatric Jeremiah, who shouted at Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Trump's nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services. 

Sanders seemed to be interviewing for the lead role in the sequel to Bad GrandpaWhen Kennedy accused Sanders of taking money from the pharmaceutical industry, Bernie went nuts. Why? Because Sanders indeed took money from Big Pharma--$1.4 million in 2019-2020

Sanders was not the only Democratic senator who behaved clownishly. It seemed that all the Democratic senators were acting out comedic roles. 

As I recently wrote, Senator Warren reminded me of Emily Litella, the scatterbrained citizen protester played by Gilda Radner on Saturday Night Live. Did Warren realize how ridiculous she looked as she screeched and shook her fists at the cabinet nominees?

Warren stridently accused Kennedy of profiting from vaccine lawsuits, yet like other Democratic senators, she took money from the pharmaceutical industry ($822,000 in 2019-2020).

Perhaps the least intelligent senator on Capitol Hill, Senator Mazie Hirono, reminded me of Roseanne Rosannadanna, one of Gilda Radner's SNL characters, who often began her commentaries by saying, "It's always something." During Kelly Loeffler's confirmation hearing, Hirono gratuitously asked Loeffler if she had ever been accused of making unwanted sexual advances. Such trashy behavior!
Senator Richard Blumenthal, who looks uncannily like Mad Magazine's Alfred E. Neuman, behaved like a bully at Kash Patel's confirmation hearing. Blumenthal concluded a partisan sermon by demanding Kash Patel answer a "yes or no" question. Patel answered the question honestly and forthrightly, but Blumenthal maliciously chose to misinterpret Patel's response.

In my mind, last week's senate confirmation hearings came across as one long episode of Saturday Night Live; the Blue State Democrats appeared to be reciting their lines for laughs.

As I watched these disgraceful proceedings, I asked myself this question. If the Democrats behave so churlishly when out of power, how would they behave if Kamala Harris had been elected president?


Is Bernie Sanders auditioning for the title role of Bad Grandpa?
 




Thursday, January 30, 2025

Is Senator Elizabeth Warren auditioning to replace Gilda Radner's Emily Litella on SNL?

To paraphrase Will Rogers, when Elizabeth Warren left Oklahoma for Massachusetts, she raised the IQ of both states.

Senator Warren's unhinged rants at Robert F. Kennedy's Senate confirmation hearing should embarrass all Americans, especially Bay State voters who elected Warren to the U.S. Senate. 

In tones that were almost hysterical, Warren insinuated that Mr. Kennedy would use his cabinet appointment to enrich himself and that his public service over the years was motivated by veniality.  To his credit, Kennedy never lost his aplomb and accused Warren of trying to make him out as a shill.

Warren's shrill and gratuitously combative interrogatories at both Kennedy's confirmation hearing and Pete Hegseth's hearing were appalling and unbecoming of a U.S. Senator and former presidential candidate. 

Indeed, Warren's demeanor reminded me of Gilda Radner's Saturday Night Live character, Emily Litella, the addled and perpetually outraged busybody who raved on about topics she knew nothing about. 

"What's all this talk about youth in Asia?" Emily would ask during one of NSL's weekly paradodies of a national news program. "What's all this I hear about violins on television?"

These hilarious skits would end with the deadpan news anchor (usually played by Chevy Chase) explaining that the issue she was complaining about was violence on television, not violins; and euthanasia, not youth in Asia.

Radner's response, after being corrected, was always a congenial "Never mind."

Everyone agrees that healthcare in America is too expensive and that Americans on the whole are not as healthy as the citizens of other western countries. Moreover, actuarial statistics show that some U.S. demograhic groups are experiencing shorter life expectancies. 

RFK Jr., President Trump's pick to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services, has innovative ideas about how to solve these problems. Why were  Senate Democrats, with Senator Warren in the lead, so rude and dismissive? 

I would like to think Warren will eventually come to her senses about Mr. Kennedy and apologize for bullying him.  Unfortnately, unlike Emily Litella, I don't think Senator Warren will ever say "Never mind." 

Instead she will continue shaking her fists and pointing her fingers at Americans who strive to be good public servants until the people of Massachusetts have the good sense to vote her out of office.




Thursday, January 16, 2025

Pete Hegseth's Senate Confirmation Hearing: Did Senator Elizabeth Warren Get Above Her Raising?

Senator Elizabeth Warren and I have three things in common. We were both born in Oklahoma and have law degrees, and neither of us is a Native American. 

I grew up in Anadarko, near where several Native tribes were settled in the late 19th century: the Comanche, Kiowa, Fort Sill Apache, Wichita, Caddo, and Delaware.  

Riverside Indian School operated a couple of miles from the city limits. In the 1890s, St. Katharine Drexel established St. Patrick's Catholic Mission to educate Native children, and the mission grounds were less than a mile from my childhood home.

Native culture was all around me. The Southern Plains Indian Museum, a federal facility, was located just outside the town, along with the National Hall of Fame for Famous American Indians. Our movie theatre was named The Redskin before that word became politically incorrect and had a magnificent neon marque.

It never occurred to me to try to get ahead by claiming Native American status, although I'm sure I was probably a lot closer to Native American life than Senator Warren. It would be dishonest to call myself a Kiowa or a Comanche, and it would be ridiculous to make such a claim. After all, my great-grandfather immigrated from England in the 1880s and was already married to a British woman when he arrived in America.

Senator Warren's false claim that she was a Cherokee is water under the bridge. She apologized to the Cherokees for taking a DNA test to prove her Indian ancestry, which was a commendable gesture.

I would not raise the matter if Warren hadn't acted so beastly towards Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth. She and her fellow Democratic harpies repeatedly trolled through Hegseth's personal life, suggesting ad nauseam that anyone who had done what they accused Hegseth of doing was unfit to be the nation's Secretary of Defense.

I wish someone would ask Warren if a person who misrepresented her ethnicity to advance her career is fit to be a senator. 

Warren is a citizen of Massachusetts now and probably doesn't reconnect much with her Oklahoma friends and relatives. However, if she were to return to her roots, Oklahomans might remind her not to get above her raising. In other words, don't jettison the core values of your youth and childhood just to get ahead in the world.

Warren's despicable display of self-righteous hypocrisy at Hegseth's confirmation hearing may be acceptable to her Massachusetts constituency, but most Oklahomans find that kind of behavior offensive. They might ask her what good came from her Harvard connections if she forgot the rules of civility and courtesy.