What A Total Jerk!
Jim Bunting is a pitiful excuse for a human being. He draws his full salary, but doesn’t bother to show up for votes. When he does show up, it’s just to cause trouble while claiming to be defending “his” conservative principles:
He [Bunting] said lawmakers kept talking about fiscal discipline and the nation was facing a debt crisis. “If we can’t find $10 billion somewhere for a bill that everybody in this body supports,” he said, “we will never pay for anything.”
It’s amazing that Bunting didn’t seemed worried about the debt when he backed the Iraq War, only when it came to ordinary people who need some help.
The bill he’s blocking isn’t limited to extending unemployment insurance:
Among the provisions set to expire are the flood insurance program, Small Business Administration loans, a change in Medicare payments to doctors, some transportation funding and, most prominently, help for the unemployed.
Most people already getting extra jobless benefits are unlikely to be affected. Those who will feel the impact could include people who’ve exhausted their 26 weeks of state benefits and qualify for more aid under federal guidelines.
Anyone laid off after March 1 no longer would be able to get federal help to pay health insurance premiums; the program now pays 65 percent of the cost for certain workers.
Rural television watchers could be affected because the bill would extend the copyright used by satellite television companies.
He just doesn’t care. He’ll get his taxpayer-financed pension and health insurance, so why should he care about the problems of people who have lost their jobs. If there is a flood in Kentucky and people find out they don’t have insurance because of Jim Bunting, he might want to move.
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There’s another jerk holding up unemployment insurance to (hold your breath) to give more tax cuts to dead multi-billionaires….
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/2/25/840659/-Kyl-Threatens-to-Block-Unemployment-Insurance-Extension
I say that AZ and KY need to make these J-holes unemployed.
.-= last blog ..our hearts go out to chile =-.
Hey, if the billionaires die this year there is no tax, so it’s up to the heirs to get busy.
I think we should reduce the deficit by reducing the retirements of Congresscritters to the same level as Social Security and dropping their health insurance coverage. Maybe then they would do something to solve the problems that face us. They need to understand the problem, up close and personal.
In fairness, there is reasonable speculation that Bunning suffers some sort of dementia. It doesn’t justify his being an asshole, but it may go some distance toward explaining it.
The man hasn’t noticeably changed since he was elected to the House, it’s just that more people are listening and hearing the garbage that comes out of his mouth.
He was born in Kentucky in the 1930s and his attitudes are based on growing up there. He has gotten a free pass on his crap for years because he was good at a children’s game.
I have some “conservative” relatives who live in the area, and they have told stories about good ol’ Jim for years. This is nothing new or recent, only, now more people are hearing it for themselves.
A true story for you, Bryan.
Jim Bunning visited my seventh grade class sometime during the Stone Age. It was a very small class in a very small village in a very small state far, far away from any metropolis or media center.
My classmates and I had never heard of Jim Bunning before. We didn’t know who the hell he was or why he was there; not even after our dull-witted but kindly teacher — a coach drafted to teach science, which was way above his intellectual pay grade — explained that Bunning was a famous pitcher and we should all ask for his autograph. A few did and he scribbled it out for them. Then he talked to us for about three minutes and made no sense whatsoever.
To this day, I remember one of my classmates glancing over at me and giving me a big, exaggerated quizzical look that said, ‘Is this guy nuts or what?’
Immediately afterwards, almost everyone who had gotten his autograph threw it away. And, yes, I think Jim Bunning was certifiably crazy as long ago as 1959.
He was good enough, that he was given a pass as an eccentric but talented person. I enjoy eccentrics as much as the next guy. We have a lot of them in my extended family who believe and do the strangest things. Some of them even vote Republican. The thing is, none of them are given the power to screw up the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. Family members would intervene to ensure that didn’t happen.
Bunning was famous, so no one wanted to intervene. He was treated like a celebrity and his problems were buried by local reporters and the powers-that-be. Some people may have voted for him to get him out of town.
The worst of it is, if there had been an intervention, he might have gotten some help. His family and “friends” have let it go until he has become a problem for the country.
And look what he’s done today (3/1). What a spiteful, hateful, just plain mean man he must be.
.-= last blog ..Not Feeling Well =-.
Baseball made him a wealthy, privileged person and he lives in a less than affluent area to emphasize his privilege. Now he has to give up power, and he is angry about it and having a tantrum. He never grew up.