Saturday, April 22, 2023

Feinstein needs to go

Senator Dianne Feinstein is not doing her job.  She doesn't know when she will be able to do her job.  But the nation's supposed to wait on her.  We can't afford it. Friday, Betty wrote:


Now I've noted how DiFi's inability to show up for work has resulted in Joe Biden's federal nominees being stuck in Committee when they should have been sent to the floor for a vote.  Turns out Selfish Dianne is holding up more than just that:


The lack of an effective majority also prevents Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) from subpoenaing witnesses to discuss the Supreme Court’s ethics rules and reports that conservative Justice Clarence Thomas accepted travel and other favors from Texas billionaire Harlan Crow without disclosing them on publicly available forms.


She's not doing her job and her failure to show up to work means others can't do their job.  She needs to resign. Rebecca points out:

this is why dianne feinstein has to resign.  the senate judiciary committee cannot send of joe's nominees to the federal bench to the floor right now because dianne can't show up for a committee vote.  she needs to go.

donald trump used his 4 years to pack the courts.  there's a very good chance that democrats could lose the white house in 2024.  we need joe's nominees confirmed now.  right now.

we don't have time for di-fi's delicate sensibilities.  she needs to announce her retirement effective immediately.  that's for the good of the country and especially for the good of women's medical rights.


In "It’s Time for Dianne Feinstein to Resign" (VANITY FAIR), Molly Jong-Fast notes:

 

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi expressed confidence Tuesday that Feinstein would return, though “it’s just a matter of when.” Pelosi has suggested sexism is at play in the calls to resign. “I don’t know what political agendas are at work that are going after Senator Feinstein in that way,” she said last week. “I’ve never seen them go after a man who was sick in the Senate in that way.” Sure, men like the late Strom Thurmond didn’t retire before turning 100, and current Republican senator Chuck Grassley, who won reelection in November at age 89, will be 95 when his term ends. But here’s the thing: “They” should have gone after men too, if the men weren’t able to do their jobs. (Grassley seems fine; Thurmond surely could have retired at, say, 92.) This is not about ageism or about feminism; this is about holding public servants to the same standards we hold everyone else to.

When someone is unable or unwilling to do their job, they resign—or can be expected to be fired. This is the way of life in America. It’s grim, but it’s what we do here. Imagine a world where we “hold” jobs for people who are likely never going to get back to them anyway. Your bus has no driver, your coffee place has no cashier, you go to your doctor appointment and the doctor is not there. It’s one of the harsh realities of life that we tend not to keep people in jobs when they can no longer do them. 



Nancy Pelosi is an idiot.  Always has been.  She looked like a strong Speaker briefly -- when she had Rahm Emanuel around at press conferences to clean up for her.  Left to her own devices, she didn't know how to get across any message.  Most famous -- infamous -- example, her addressing THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE and unable to answer why she hadn't kept her promise to end the Iraq War, she blamed it on Harry Reid and his leadership in the Senate -- forgetting what the reporters asking about her failures knew -- she promised to end the Iraq War ahead of the 2006 mid-terms if the Democrats took control of just one House of Congress. She's an idiot and air head.


As Jason Linkens (THE NEW REPUBLIC) points out, this has been done to a man in the Senate:


This week an astute Twitter user reminded me of an interesting fact from our recent political history. In early January 2018, Democrat Doug Jones, the winner of a special election in Alabama some weeks prior, joined the U.S. Senate. This took the then Republican majority to a tight 51–49 margin—a majority that was all the more fragile by dint of the fact that one of their own, Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran, was in extremely poor health. An October 2017 article from Politico described the lawmaker as “frail and disoriented” and recounted one incident in which the senator got lost on the way to the Senate chamber and another in which he voted the wrong way. It also reported that the senator was determined to stay in office. “Don’t believe everything you hear,” Cochran quipped when asked about retirement rumors. Nevertheless, by April Fools’ Day of 2018, he’d been shown the door.


Yet again, Money Bags Pelosi didn't know what she was talking about.  That's always a hazard when someone buys their seat at the table instead of earning it.


And it's not the country's fault that Dianne's destroying her legacy by being selfish.  That's on Dianne.  She's harming the country, she's bringing Congress' judicial issues to a standstill.  It's time to go.  She supposed to serve the public.  She is not a queen.  She hold no birthright to that Senate seat.  She can no longer manage herself so she needs to retire and people need to stop pretending that's she's been functioning in any form in the last years.  She hasn't.  The mind is gone.  She's a disgrace and it's only going to become more obvious the longer she waits to step down.   And her legacy is not all that to begin with  She voted for the Iraq War.  That's not the only problem with her record. 


As US House Rep Ro Khanna has pointed out, "Sen. Feinstein has basically missed 75 percent of her votes this year. This at a time when women’s rights and voting rights are under assault. She’s simply unable to do her duty on a very important committee, the judiciary committee, at a time when we need her."


The following sites updated: