Vet Vote Victim?

Choose your spin on the great will-John Kerry-get-to-vote-on-something slow news cycle debate. Kerry jetted back to DC in order to vote on a veterans' benefits bill, only to have the vote delayed past his seven-hour Senate drive-by.

Kerry supporters howl that the vote change is a dirty GOP trick. Republicans say, hey, stuff happens in the course of making law and spending money, and if Kerry was ever around he'd know that.

Comments

[Michael]

Well, Josh is right about that, but am I the only one who is disturbed that "Kerry supporters" are given voice by the tax-supported NPR but "Republicans" just get self-funded NewsMax?

[Thorley Winston]

So why didn?t Kerry just stay for the vote then if Veteran?s groups were really so important to him?

He is a sitting United States Senator, is it too unreasonable to expect him to show up and stay for a few votes?

[KentInDC]

Or he could do what Dole did and resign from the Senate to devote full-time to his campaign.

[joe]

Dole didn't have a hostile governor from the opposition party waiting to appoint someone who couldn't get 10% in a statewide election.

You do all realize that Senate decorum is such that a member's absence isn't allowed to change the outcome of a vote, right?

The "Kerry wasn't there for vets" charge and the "I need to be there for the vets" line are both purely for show, and have no bearing on the fortunes of the bill.

[Call me snake]

Interesting corroborative evidence to Mickey Kaus's (and others) "Kerry touch of death" meme that this post is 4 hours old and only has 4 responses.

Why is it impossible for people to become excited about Senator Nutcracker Doll?? (think about it, when you see him speak you can almost envision the lever in the back of his head)

[thoreau]

Nutcracker doll? Well, if Kerry can defend us from armies of giant rats then I'm all in favor of electing him! 🙂

[joe]

snake,

After the last 12, four years of presidential boredom sounds just fine by me.

[Gadfly]

The fact that Frist is messing with Kerry instead of getting his own majority in line to pass a budget speaks volumes of his "leadership". And W, who has never cast a public vote in his life, doesn't have to juggle his schedule. Air Force 1 trips to a grade school followed by a fund raiser are standard fare.

[josh]

Heres a clue for both sides: No one cares about politicians accusing each other of playing politics.

[Douglas Fletcher]

Josh, you're forgetting the freqs, man! Go out and try to buy a commercial FM broadcasting license and see if you can get as good a deal on the open market as the NPR stations get for their broadcasting licenses. Probablly not.

[Douglas Fletcher]

Kerry's a big whining baby.

[Josh]

well michael, NPR recieves less than 2% of its budget from the government the rest is all raised from corporate sponsorship or those annoying beg-a-thons. That 2% comes from competitive grants from the NEA and NIH it applies for, unlike say, the awarding of Iraqi reconstruction contracts which are not competitive and are literally thousands of times as large.

You do remember a story that was out a while back, where the government was paying for a "public awareness campaign", which was basically a bunch of TV adds touting the presidents prescription drug bill though, right?

[Thorley Winston]

You do remember a story that was out a while back, where the government was paying for a "public awareness campaign", which was basically a bunch of TV adds touting the presidents prescription drug bill though, right?

Yes, those would be the ones ordered by the Clinton administration in 1999.
http://www.tacitus.org/story/2004/5/20/202729/336

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Thanks