Thursday, December 22, 2005
Senator Whiny Little Crybaby
Poor Ted Stevens, or as they call him in Alaska, "Teddy Warbucks". He didn't get away with violating Senate rules to open up the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling, and now he's in a major sulk. You'd think somebody who's been around long enough to be President Pro Tem would have learned by now how to suck it up and act like a grown-up. But no, he's telling anybody who will stand still long enough that 'This is the saddest day of my life'.
For about nine hours, other senators wandered on and off the Senate floor while chatting with colleagues and trying to find a way to thaw the freeze that settled in after Stevens lost a vote on Alaska oil drilling. [...] He had lost the vote, but the question remained for all those hours--what would he do, concede or fight? His junior colleague from Alaska, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, estimated that she and Stevens spent about three hours mulling the question after the noon vote failed to cut off a Democratic filibuster. In the meantime, Stevens stayed off the floor. "He had to breathe," Murkowski said.And, as if we needed further proof that he's a Republican, he's blaming other people for the whole shameful episode:
Then, Stevens said, a group of House Democrats came to him and asked him to put ANWR language on the defense appropriations bill. He said he felt justified in doing so, given that each house had approved the idea and given the urgency of the nation's economic and security needs for domestic oil.He's also claiming that he inserted the ANWR provision into the defense spending bill, in violation of Senate Rule 28, for the sake of the victims of Hurricane Katrina:
Stevens said his effort to channel the future ANWR money to the Gulf Coast was a sincere effort to help people there. It grew from empathy for the Gulf residents, a feeling strengthened during a visit to New Orleans by his recollection of the 1964 Alaska earthquake, he said. "I saw one town disappear. I saw a third of my city, Anchorage, disappear," Stevens said. "You have to have that experience to understand how I felt when I went to New Orleans." [...] The vote, he said, was for the people of the Gulf Coast.But the saddest day of his life was yesterday, when he didn't get away with mangling Senate rules — not the day he saw the devastation from Katrina, or the day the earthquake destroyed a third of Anchorage. He's not sad for the people of the Gulf Coast; he's in a snit because he's been trying to put oil derricks in the wildlife refuge since the day it was created in 1980, and he can't get his own way even by cheating. Let us recall the previous saddest day of Senator Stevens' life: the day then-Majority Leader Tom Daschle held the Senate in session past its scheduled adjournment date in order to deliver a Patients' Bill of Rights, and Senator Stevens complained that it was delaying a planned fishing trip. Whiny little crybaby. (This post is dedicated to Alaskan blogger LetterMan.)
Comments:
<< Home
Yeah. Somehow, this sadness outranks for him the tragic death of his wife in an airplane accident. You'd think that losing a spouse that way would be the saddest day of one's life. But for Stevens, it's losing the chance to sell off a pristine wilderness to his rich buddies.
Now there are rumors that he's so disappointed he's going to take his toys and go home -- quit the Senate in mid-term.
Post a Comment
<< Home
More blogs about politics.
