Posted on 01/27/2006 6:02:07 AM PST by PJ-Comix
EVERYTHING you need to know about John Kerry's LAUGHABLE attempt to organize a filibuster attempt against the confirmation of Samuel Alito as Supreme Court justice can be summed up in the first paragraph of this New York Times ARTICLE:
WASHINGTON, Jan 26 — Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts could not attend the Senate debate on the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. on Thursday. He was in Davos, Switzerland, mingling with international business and political leaders at the World Economic Forum.
Yeah, this filibuster is so vitally important that Kerry won't even be leaving the Swiss ski slopes to organize it. John Kerry has your back...on the ski lift. Read Robert Caro's EXCELLENT book, Master of the Senate, to find out how a true pro, Lyndon B. Johnson, operated when he was Majority Leader of the Senate. Whether you might have agreed or disagreed with his politics, Johnson has been recognized as the greatest Senate leader in terms of actually getting things DONE. He NEVER tried any dopey last minute attempts to change a vote outcome. Johnson would work for weeks in ADVANCE up close with Senators. It is impossible to imagine Johnson phoning in his vote pleas to senators while vacationing on South Padre Island. Therefore, I would like to thank John Kerry for offering a bit of last minute comedic relief in the Samuel Alito confirmation. Meanwhile Pied Piper Pitt tried to convince the DUmmies yesterday that he had some sort of Kerry filibuster scoop as you can read in his THREAD titled, "Source tells me Kerry is now openly in favor of a filibuster." Unfortunately for Pitt, his "scoop" turned out to be NOTHING NEW as one could easily have read a few paragraphs down in the same Times article:
Mr. Kerry has been rallying his supporters against the nomination for weeks in mass e-mail messages and on his Web site. And when the Democratic caucus met Wednesday to discuss the nomination, he gave an impassioned plea that the party should try to stage a filibuster even if it failed, people present said, speaking only if granted anonymity because the meeting was private. Some senators at the meeting said an unsuccessful filibuster would leave the party weakened for future battles.
So let us now watch Pied Piper Pitt, along with his fellow DUmmies, bask in the glow of Pitt's STALE scoop about John Kerry organizing a filibuster from the Swiss ski slopes in Bolshevik Red while the commentary of your humble correspondent, watching Kerry's filibuster comedy act from atop a ski lift, is in the [brackets]:
Source tells me Kerry is now openly in favor of a filibuster
[John Kerry has your back...on the Swiss ski lift.]
The message:
["I DON'T FALL DOWN! THE SON OF A BITCH KNOCKED ME OVER!!!"]
"Kerry is now publicly in support of a filibuster and he is currently working with colleagues in the Senate to get the necessary support - 41 votes"
[Kerry's fellow senators will certainly be impressed with Kerry phoning in his filibuster support from Switzerland.]
Looking for added info to support this.
[Try reading the newspapers or the Web, Pitt. They already reported that Kerry tried to organize a filibuster attempt on Wednesday, a full day before your stale "scoop."]
Boy, If He Can Pull This Off, I'd Give Him Another Look
[See that bright little dot skiing way down that Swiss mountain? Go ahead and give him another look.]
I talked to his office about 30 minutes ago about the same thing. Their advice: call senators around the country and ask them to join in!
[Yeah, you go ahead and do the dirty work while Kerry enjoys his Swiss ski vacation.]
O.K., How Long Do We Have To Call??
[Waste your time until Monday when your futile attempt is shot down.]
It's all about getting the 40 other senators. There is no filibuster to be had without that magic number.
[Kerry is phoning in his magic from Switzerland.]
It's not the days of "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" anymore
[Boris Karloff could play the starring role in "Mr. Kerry Goes to Switzerland."]
Go Kerry! and Good Luck to him. . .thanks for update, WilliamPitt
[Thanks for your STALE "scoop," William Pitt the Plunger.]
Kerry sounded pissed off yesterday, and not just in a righteous "Alito is bad for the country" sort of way, either - he sounded pissed at something that had happened. My guess is that there is a faction in the Dem caucus who actively do not want a filibuster and are throwing every monkey wrench they can in the way of Kerry and others who do want a filibuster.
[But not quite pissed off enough to break away from the Swiss ski slopes.]
He did look incredibly pissed off when he spoke yesterday, so I'm not surprised.
[I'm not surprised either. Kerry was pissed off that the filibuster thing was taking valuable quality time away from his Swiss ski vacation.]
Kerry already said he was in favor of a filibuster last weekend. But no one else was saying anything with the new 'F' word in it.
[Oh, Kerry said it LAST weekend? So much for Pied Piper Pitt's STALE "scoop."]
This was reported here a few days ago I believe. Someone posted they called Kerry's office and the staffer told the caller what Kerry was up to. I'm glad to hear he's still working on this and I hope and pray he's successful. I've signed every petition I could, Emailed etc.
[Another not-so-subtle derision of Pied Piper Pitt's STALE "scoop."]
noone has VOTED yet ... we need the names of the lilly-livered ones from the dem side who won't support a filibuster and plague them with calls ... does ANYBODY have any intelligence on that info??? yo, Pitt, how about using your source to get us a scoop NOW!!!!!
[Pied Piper Pitt will get you the scoop on that as soon as the filibuster vote is over.]
Yay, Kerry's waking up! Two years late, but OK!
[Kerry is waking up with a WONDERFUL view of a Swiss mountainside.]
Sorry but flame all you want, this is typical Kerry... Knowing that the filibuster is dead, it's now safe for him to come out and say he's for it.
[And this DUmmie WINS a Swiss Kewpie Doll for having a brief moment of mental clarity!]
Democratic Senator Johnson from SD voting yes, won't support filibuster.
[And you're surprised? How? I do know that Pied Piper Pitt in another DUmmie thread actually proposed that just because a senator promised to vote FOR Alito didn't necessarily mean that he would also oppose a filibuster. The political wisdom of Pitt; on display in the Comedy Museum.]
If he can't get 41 votes ... Can he insist on READING my name into the Congressional Record?
[That sounds like a Pied Piper Pitt Wet Dream.]
I called Pryor and Lincoln. I got a busy signal once with Lincoln.
[And you're still on hold with Pryor.]
I just hung up from talking with a staffer who said the same thing, that Kerry is publicly supporting a filibuster and is now working with other senators to get the necessary votes.
[How? By talking to those senators on a phone line from his Swiss ski lift?]
Is this like sources say Kerry lawyers are going to challenge Ohio 2004? We've been down this road before
[Or, more accurately, we've been down this slippery ski slope before.]
Maybe Kerry should be Majority Leader?
[Um...first the Democrats need a Senate MAJORITY for that to happen. If it did, Kerry could phone in his leadership agenda from Switzerland.]
I hope your source is right, Mr. Pitt.
[We already know his source was LATE.]
Godamm it-he's just working on it now? Always a day late and a dollar short. Kerry is unable to lead. He's unable to get people to follow him.
[Another Swiss Kewpie Doll is IN THE MAIL!]
No, thats me. I need a new video card.
We should block this. It hurts our dignity AND our balance of trade.
I think they might be going somewhere this time.
The quarry might be seated on one of the leather couches that lined the cloakroom walls. They were low and soft—ideal locales for persuasion, in the words of the clerk “good places for him to pin a senator into so that he couldn’t get away.”
Approaching the senator, Johnson would lean over him, perhaps chatting amiably for a moment or two about inconsequential matters, but with his weight resting on one hand that had been placed on the back of the couch, close by the senator’s shoulder. Then, switching to the real subject of the conversation, Johnson would sit down beside him. The hand would remain on the back of the couch, so that when Johnson, continuing to talk, leaned forward to look the senator more directly in the face, his arm would be stretched out beside the other man’s head. In the urgency of his appeal, Johnson would lean further forward, sliding to the edge of his seat, and twist his body so it was more in front of the senator. Then he would cross the leg furthest from the senator over the knee closest to the other man. Already faced with the difficulty of pushing up from those deep, soft cushions, the senator would find the difficulty increased by the fact that not only was there a big arm like a bar on one side of him, but also a big leg like a bar in front of him. If the senator exhibited signs of restlessness, Johnson would grab the ankle of that leg with his free hand, so that there were in effect two bars in front of the senator, not to mention a size 11 shoe in front of his face; “the poor guy,” the clerk notes, “couldn’t get out.”
With the senator’s continued presence thus assured, the first Johnson arm, the one that had been resting on the back of the couch, would stretch along it, so that the senator was almost completely surrounded. And the trap would be tightened. As Johnson talked faster and faster, that heavy arm would come down around the senator’s shoulders, hugging them. His hand would grasp the senator’s shoulder firmly. He would lean further and further into him, the hand that had been on his own ankle now on the senator’s knee or thigh. “I can still see those big meaty hands,” the clerk would recall decades later. “One would be massaging the poor guy’s shoulder, and the other one would be grabbing his leg. I can still see Johnson leaning into him.” His face would be very close to the senator’s now, pushing closer and closer, his head coming up under his companion’s so that the senator’s head was often forced back against the back of the couch. No matter how much he may have wanted to retreat further, he couldn’t, and as he was held helpless, Johnson would talk faster and faster, pleading, cajoling, threatening.
Some of these sessions on the cloakroom couches—or in the deep, soft cloakroom armchairs, better even than the couches for Johnson’s purposes, since by sitting down on one armrest and stretching an arm across to the other, he could imprison its occupant more effectively—lasted quite a long time. He had to win, and to win he needed the senator’s vote. And he wasn’t going to get up until he got it. “I’ve seen him devote an hour to work on one senator,” the clerk says.
LOL!
Ok, maybe I've spent too much time watching DUmmies, but come on... doesn't this sound like Chapter 1 of some gay porn novel?
LOL!
Right out'a The Three Stooges.
Johnson definitely wasn't gay but he was one those rare sorts who broke the bounds of American social proprieties. For example, in some countries it is perfectly acceptable to a man to get close in to another guy and grab him while talking. Russian men even hug and kiss each other (think Kruschev and Yuri Gagarin) in public and it is okay there. But in the USA this isn't part of our social norm EXCEPT in rare cases like Johnson where he broke the unspoken rules of social distance. The very fact that his fellow senators were uncomfortable with Johnson hovering over them worked in Johnson's favor. "Yeah, yeah. I'll vote for your damn bill but PLEASE quite hovering over me!"
. . . . . 
. . . . . . . . . . . . . 
"Senator, I served with Lyndon Johnson.
I knew Lyndon Johnson.
Lyndon Johnson was a friend of mine.
Senator, you're no Lyndon Johnson."
LOL! That picture cracks me up. Look at his goo-goo-googly eyes.
Even standing still, Lyndon Johnson was somehow always in motion, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, restlessly shifting his shoulders, one big hand plunging into a pants pocket to jingle coins or the keys on his big key ring, the other scratching his back—or scratching other parts of his body, too, for some of the motions Lyndon Johnson made front-row center on the great stage of the Senate floor were those intimate motions that embarrassed other men even in the relative privacy of Johnson’s office. The reporters in the Press Gallery would nudge each other and giggle when, jamming a hand into a side pocket of his pants, the Leader quite openly scratched his crotch, bending one leg and leaning far over as he did so, one shoulder much lower than the other, the better to reach hard-to-reach recesses of his body; sometimes, taking out his inhaler, he would tilt his head so far back that he was staring straight up at the ceiling, and shoving the inhaler far up his nose, he would snort so vigorously as he inhaled that the snorts were clearly audible up in the Gallery. Sometimes, standing there, he might jam both hands into his pockets and rise up on his toes as he glanced around the Chamber with that air of command.
There's no pleasing The NY Times.
Yesterday their editorial called for Democratic Senators to grow spines (Senators in Need of a Spine) and mount a filibuster.
Now they call Kerry's filibuster efforts "quixotic" and "awkward." (Kerry Gets Cool Response to Call to Filibuster Alito)
Make the consequences of no filibuster go BEYOND the Senate. The only thing the Democratic Senators will understand about a filibuster
No Filibuster = No Money = No votes.
Anything short of that will result in no filibuster. Call your Democratic Congresscritters and let THEM know that they had better convince the Democratic Senators to filibuster or you are done with the Democratic Party.
Make the consequences of failing to filibuster go BEYOND the Senators
Good advice. I'm calling my Dem Senator now. All he needs is a little push...
They are merely speaking to their flip/flop gene. It's inherent in liberals.
John Kerry would rather hobnob
With the Jet Set, than do his day job
His presence at Davos
Won't draw any "Bravos,"
The guy's a well-manicured snob.
Will Pitt, the Wild Bull of the Pompous, fancies himself as some sort of a "journalist."
Source tells me Kerry is now openly in favor of a filibuster. . . .
Wee Willie's daddy, failed Alabama Democrat Party chief Redding Pitt, was a law school chum of Kerry's back in the '70s and worked heavily in Kerry's failed presidential campaign. Pitt the Lesser spent five minutes as Kookcinich's press secretary before he was outed as (not so) secretly supporting Kerry. Pitt lives in Boston (unless he has fled by now), so he may actually have some "sources" in the Kerry office. But knowing his lazy *ss, I'm guessing he probably read it off some wire service or blog and is passing it along as though he were an important "insider."
Cool graphic!
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