Senate Rejects Extending Jobless Benefits- Measure Fails By Kerry's Missed Vote

WASHINGTON - The Senate by a single vote rejected an election-year effort Tuesday to extend federal unemployment benefits.

Democrats tried to attach the benefit to a corporate tax bill. On a 59-40 vote in the GOP-controlled Senate, they fell just shy of the 60 votes needed to overcome objections that extending the benefits violated last year's budget agreement.

Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites), the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, was the only senator who missed the vote. Kerry was campaigning Tuesday in Kentucky.

The amendment would have offered emergency federal unemployment benefits for six months, temporarily giving 13 weeks of extra assistance to people who exhaust their state benefits — typically 26 weeks.

The unemployment rate dropped to 5.6 percent last month as employers added nearly 300,000 new jobs. The Labor Department (news - web sites) has reported that payrolls have risen for eight months in a row, with almost 900,000 new jobs created so far this year, most within the last two months.

Republicans seized on April's employment report as evidence that more federal unemployment benefits are not needed.

"The employment picture in this country is looking up, by any measure," said Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev. "I believe it's time to end the program."

Democrats said the extended benefits are needed because the economic recovery still hasn't replaced 1.5 million jobs lost since President Bush (news - web sites) took office.

"Keep our social compact and extend these needed unemployment benefits," said Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont.

The amendment's sponsor, Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., said it would have cost $5.8 billion to offer the temporary benefits, which would have been drawn from $13.3 billion in the unemployment insurance trust fund. Republicans said it would cost $9 billion.

Kerry spokesman David Wade said, "John Kerry has fought again and again to extend unemployment benefits for workers left behind in the Bush economy. The reason we haven't succeeded is because George Bush opposes extending unemployment insurance and so do his allies in the Republican House of Representatives and 39 Republican senators."

Steve Schmidt, a Bush-Cheney campaign spokesman, said: "Last month, John Kerry was pushing for the extension of unemployment benefits. Today he had the chance to actually vote on that question but was too busy playing politics when he would have made the difference in the Senate."

"I’m an internationalist. I’d like to see our troops dispersed through [sic] the world
only at the directive of the United Nations."
Hanoi John Kerry, The Harvard Crimson, 1970

HANOI KERRY
has a Campaign Platform
Just like the old days!

"It is a fact that in the entire Vietnam War we did not lose one major battle.
We lost the war at home and at home John Kerry was the field general"
- Bob Elder, Swift Boat Veteran For Truth

"I do not believe John Kerry is fit to be commander in chief of the U.S. armed forces,"
said retired Rear Adm. Roy Hoffmann, chairman of the organization.
"This is not a political issue. It is a matter of honesty."

The book that Kerry
wishes would just go away.

HanoiJohnKerry.com is a blog with a primary purpose. That purpose is to counter the preposterous claims of Sen. John Forbes Kerry (D-MA) that he has any legitimate claim to any sort of "brotherhood" among combat veterans of the War in Vietnam.

While it is generally supposed that his service as a Naval officer on a "Swift Boat" in that theater was adequate and honorable, there is much to question regarding his readiness to allow the accolade "war hero" to be applied to him.

Likewise, it is not at all uncommon for more senior Naval officers to raise an eyebrow at the swiftness and relative comfort by which Lt. JG Kerry attained those medals, and who is available to vouch for the efficacy of his being awarded them (since, as boat commander, it would be his own task to make recommendation for awards for all personnel, including himself, on the Swift Boat).

But most egregious was his conduct, words and associations upon his early-out (from SEA) return to the USA and discharge from the US Navy. His leadership role with the radical pro-Communist (inaccurate to deem this group "anti-war") group called "Vietnam Veterans Against the [Vietnam] War" (hereafter VVAW).

It was while climbing the social and political ladder of the pro-Soviet Left as a principle of VVAW that John Kerry found his political soul-mate in Hanoi Jane Fonda. Granted, these politically formative years for Kerry were prior to the more outlandish acts of Fonda that earned her that name, but it is easily documentable that Fonda did not under go any radical transformation in belief or character from the time she and Kerry were working the same side of the street to the time she traveled to Hanoi, NVN and entered US history as the most overt traitor to ever NOT be charged, tried and executed.

John Kerry went to his own overt extremes to demonstrate that, politically, socially and in lowness of character, there wasn't a nickel's worth of difference between he and Fonda. Thus, in the spirit of fairness and accuracy, we are reasonably certain that he will be agreeably flattered by calling him Hanoi John Kerry.

Here, testifying before the Fulbright Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is where John Kerry, spokesman for Vietnam Veterans Against the War, cemented his position and moniker as "Hanoi John" Kerry. This was the occasion where US troops still in the field in Vietnam learned from one of their FORMER brothers-in-arms that they were heinous murderers and war criminals. HJK would now like to call on them for support in his bid to be the new Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. Perhaps the most preposterous hypocrisy of all.

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