The Capitol Visitors Center, which opened this morning, may have tripled its original budget and fallen years behind schedule, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid found a silver lining for members of Congress: tourists won't offend them with their B.O. anymore.
"My staff tells me not to say this, but I'm going to say it anyway," said Reid in his remarks. "In the summer because of the heat and high humidity, you could literally smell the tourists coming into the Capitol. It may be descriptive but it's true." "We finally got the Peasants away from us Elites. Imean, who do they think they are? We've got Taxpayers to squeeze here and it's damned har to do with all the noise and smell."
But it's no longer going to be true, noted Reid, thanks to the air conditioned, indoor space. And that's not all. "We have many bathrooms here, as you can see," Reid continued. Larry Craig should be happy.
"Souvenirs are available."
$621 million well spent.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
12/02/2008 11:55 ||
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#1
As if we needed any more proof that the Senate Majority Leader holds his country's citizens in complete contempt...
#2
Those are not tourists - they are your inspectors and regulators. And compared to the last two years of operations especially I would imagine that a couple hundred visitors in from the heat should smell like a breath of fresh air compared to the stench of the public servants which inhabit the Capitol.
Al Frankens (D) campaign may ask the Democratic-led Senate to intervene on his behalf to allow some disqualified absentee ballots to be counted in his quest to unseat Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.).
Franken attorney Marc Elias made the case to reporters Monday that as many as 1,000 absentee ballots were improperly disqualified and that the Senate or the courts may need to step in to resolve the issue.
No recount can be considered accurate or complete until all the ballots cast by lawful voters are counted, Elias said of the recount that became necessary when only about 200 votes separated the two candidates on Nov. 4.
Minnesota's Board of Canvassers ruled last Wednesday that it would not revisit the improperly disqualified ballots. The bipartisan board ruled unanimously that it did not have the authority to order that the ballots be reviewed and counted.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/02/2008 09:18 ||
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Same as any other liberal, if you can't win at the polls, go to the courts, or in this case the Senate.
#3
So far I haven't read anywhere that these ballots were improperly disqualified.
he wants the People's Voice to be Heard but if he doesn't like what he hears he throws a tantrum and goes to the courts.Sore Loser, or maybe just Loser in general, indeed.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
12/02/2008 10:23 Comments ||
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Franken was a whinny bitch before the election, he is a whinny bitch now, and he will be a whinny bitch after. He is, after all, a liberal.
#6
From what I read, the vote recounters are doing exactly that ... they are recounting the votes that were actually processed on Nov. 4th. They really don't want to get into the business of reviewing whether discarded ballots should now be counted or not. :-/
#9
The insiders from both campaigns say Franken's real goal is to keep Coleman from being seated when the new Senate is sworn in, and then draw things out as long as possible.
That is why he is making so many rediculous challenges.
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
12/02/2008 13:12 Comments ||
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News reports say that the recount has increased Coleman's lead to 340 or so as of early a.m. today.
After eight years as senator from New York, Hillary Clinton is trading places, moving from Congress to the incoming administration. On Monday, President-elect Barack Obama announced that he asked his former rival to be his secretary of state.
That means the scramble begins to replace Clinton on Capitol Hill. Among those mentioned to take her seat as New York's junior senator is her husband, former President Bill Clinton.
At a news conference in Chicago, Illinois, on Monday, after Obama announced her selection, Clinton said she wanted to "thank my fellow New Yorkers who have, for eight years, given me the joy of a job I love with the opportunity to work on issues I care deeply, in a state that I cherish."
Clinton added that "leaving the Senate is very difficult for me."
The task of choosing a successor falls to David Paterson, New York's Democratic governor. Whomever he picks would serve for two years, before a special election in November 2010 to decide who fills the last two years of Clinton's term.
Paterson has a strong bench to choose from. There are a number of contenders, including at least eight members of New York's delegation in the House of Representatives, New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown, Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion, Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi, Caroline Kennedy, and her cousin, Robert Kennedy Jr.
"This is not an election. This is not a campaign. It's a constituency of one. David Paterson. It's all about what the governor wants to do," said political analyst Stuart Rothenberg, editor and publisher of The Rothenberg Political Report. "Paterson has said he would prefer someone from upstate New York, or a woman or an Hispanic candidate," Rothenberg said.
As for some of the more unconventional picks, Rothenberg said Paterson could "try to make a splash with a big name like Robert Kennedy Jr." or a "quirky interesting pick" of someone like Caroline Kennedy, who is not a politician.
But some are suggesting the former president should take his wife's seat. In an op-ed column last week in The Washington Post, journalists Karl Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac urged Paterson to "send Bill Clinton to the Senate."
If that happened, Clinton would become the third former president to go from the White House to Capitol Hill. President John Quincy Adams lost his re-election bid in 1828. Two years later he returned to Washington after winning election as a congressman from his home state of Massachusetts. He served in the House of Representatives until his death in 1848.
President Andrew Johnson also served as a Senator from Tennessee in 1875, 7 years after the Senate acquitted him of impeachment charges. He died a few months after taking office.
Bill Clinton would bring gravitas to the job, and he obviously knows his way around Washington. But some Democratic strategists who used to work for Bill Clinton don't think the former president would want to go from leader of the free world to being the junior senator from New York. Clinton's office deferred to Paterson's office when asked for a comment.
In a statement released Monday in which he praised the choice of Hillary Clinton for the nation's top diplomatic post, Paterson said, "In order to appoint the best possible candidate to replace Sen. Clinton, I am consulting with a wide variety of individuals from all across New York State.
"I expect to announce Sen. Clinton's replacement when the position becomes officially vacant," he said.
#10
Yep, I think that this may have always been Rahm's the donk plan. Give her a year or two at State, to provide, experience, high vizibility, travel... she's a prime candidate for either position or a Obama-Clinton ticket in 2012. I fully expect her first trip abroad to be to Communist China, followed by monthly trips back for either herself or Slick.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
After eight years as senator from New York, Hillary Clinton is trading places, moving from Congress to the incoming administration. On Monday, President-elect Barack Obama announced that he asked his former rival to be his secretary of state.
