Leave a Comment below!
OK - what do you think ...
60% - David
30% - Brian
10% - someone else
Who is our Mystery Guestblogger ?
The "recieved heavy damange " weights it in favour of David ...
Hmmmm . . . interestingly, the wife of the Governor/mother of the Jr Senator of Alaska owns land on one of those islands, and that land's value stands to go up if a bridge is built there. Coincidence?
I have been saying all along, the ones who are going to benefit from this bridge to nowhere are not the residents--who just want a revamped ferry station or some such thing--but the contractors and others along that vein. I also mentioned a couple weeks back that Alaska managed to divert some of the medicaid (maybe it's medicare, one of those) money that is going to Katrina states, so that Alaska's medicaid allocation formula has been changed and a nice chunck of that Katrina money is now going to them. I forget if this passed or was a proposed amendment, but regardless it adds to bad stuff coming from Alaska these days..
And to think, Ted Stevens is third in line to the presidency (after Cheney and Hastert).
How sad is it that I'd rather NOT impeach the President because if you removed him from office the next 3 would be even worse?
Waaaal, Gosh-gol-durn it, if that Chimp ain't hornswoggled them Dem cityslickers, again, Maude !
(ROTFLMFAWEST)
PS Thanks for adding your by-line, David !
If the Old Coot Resigned as Requested ~ nono STEVENS, not Mee, just shaddup :) ~ who would replace him as Pres Pro Tem in the Line under the Presidential Succession Act of 1947? / Probably Hatch, or somesuch. Lott. (Consolation prize. :) Jeff Sessions. / Better let Stevens stay. ;|
If Stevens wanted to punish Cantwell in a more democratic way, he could help his party target her: She is up for re-election in 2006. Playing politics is just easier.
yeah cause he is going to have some real clout with the people of this state after refusing to divert funds from do nothing projects to hurricane victims.
I say get rid of the crappy old f-k. He wants to resign - LET HIM RESIGN. This isn't about Ted Stevens. It is about the American people.
Asshole.
I'm a Repub slightly to the right of the Kaiser (thank you, Aaron Sorkin), but you know what? Stevens, go. Resign. Do it. I dare you. Let the rest of us give the money to LA. I'd happily give your seat to a Dem.
For anybody interested hit the Porkbusters section of Instapundit and/or Truth Laid Bear. Both detail numbnut Stevens and the sheer Stalinistic attitude about appropriations and pork in congress. It is an utter disgrace.
Stevens sucks, but let's not forget he was just the more dramatic of the 85 or so Senators, both Dem and Rep, who did not vote for the Amendment. They were all too afraid to jeopardize their own pork. Argh! They ALL suck.
Club for Growth says:
CNBC’s Squawk Box is reporting that the “Bridget to Nowhere” has been officially defunded. However, this can only be seen as a small victory. The millions of dollars allocated for this pork project will go to the Alaska state government for them to spend as they see fit…instead of the money going to the Katrina relief effort…or, heaven forbid, back to federal taxpayers.
Check out the post: http://www.clubforgrowth.org/blo...ives/
026997.php
82-15, that means 3 didn't vote. I'm curious who voted for/against and who wasn't around for the vote.
..heaven forbid, back to federal taxpayers.
But, how could it go back to the taxpayers if it is not taxpayer money but "highway user" money, remember? Stevens told us this was so :)
David, here is the vote:
http://senate.gov/legislative/LI...on=1&
vote=00262
Here's the THOMAS page on the roll call vote:
http://www.senate.gov/legislativ...on=1&
vote=00262
The three who did not vote? Corzine, McCain, Schumer. An interesting trio (though I have no idea why they did not vote).
The 15 who voted in favor:
Allard (R-CO)
Allen (R-VA)
Bayh (D-IN)
Burr (R-NC)
Coburn (R-OK)
Conrad (D-ND)
DeMint (R-SC)
DeWine (R-OH)
Feingold (D-WI)
Graham (R-SC)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Sessions (R-AL)
Sununu (R-NH)
Vitter (R-LA)
Whoops, sorry Bea...
Well, I wonder if they did not vote or did not make it to the vote. Sometimes peoplelay off a vote because they cannot afford to cast it either way..
Yeah, that's what I was thinking -- Corzine with his gubernatorial election, McCain with his presidential ambition, Schumer with his unbridled ambition ... they might all have seen it as lose-lose.
Note though that GOP presidential possibility Allen and Dem presidential possibility Bayh were on the correct side of the vote...
Also, the actual text of the amendment is here:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/qu...ujRCEI:e178233:
And I have to say, while I still firmly think Coburn has the moral high ground (not to mention legal, ethical and constitutional) over Stevens, I can kinda sorta understand, after reading it, why Stevens blew a gasket. It specifically and exclusively targets the Alaskan bridges while not touching any other appropriation. I had somewhere gotten the idea that Coburn's amendment would have cancelled a wider range of projects, and Stevens was just the biggest crybaby about it. Now I see that he was singled out.
Again, the bridges to nowhere are very much deserving of all the scorn and derision they are getting, and Stevens right along with them -- but at least it makes a little more sense now.
Brian, I think that several amendments, targeting several projects/states were introduced, but this one, with the already famous by then bridge to nowhere, got more attention. I believe Couburn was asked, maybe by Stevens, if we knew about this or that pork project in his state, some parking structure of a museum or something, and Couburn said, hey, you can cut that too.
I can see why Stevens felt singled out if no other project was heavily targeted, and the reason Dems and Reps did not vote for the amendment was to not BE targeted and jeopardize THEIR pork. But, considering that the Chair of the House Trans committee is a Congressman from Alaska and he has bragged about how much pork he got into the bill for his state, and man is there pork in that bill! then tageting the state getting a dsiproportionate amount of pork because they have the Chair seems fair game, as good a place to start as any.
"If the Old Coot Resigned as Requested...who would replace him as Pres Pro Tem in the Line under the Presidential Succession Act...?"
"Pete Domenici.
Brendan"
Yeah but not Necessarily:
"The office of President pro tempore was established by the Constitution of the United States, which came into effect in 1789. The President pro tempore is elected by the Senate; by custom, he (or someday, she) is the most senior senator in the majority party."
And, US Senate site:
"...The president pro tem is third in the line of presidential succession, behind the vice president and the Speaker of the House. By tradition this position goes to the senior member of the majority party."
Now, that Quibbled :) ~ yeah, Pete Domenici. :) Given that they didn't Break Custom & Tradition in the case of Ol' Strom, they never will. :>
Commenting by HaloScan.com
