A couple weeks ago, it looked like the Senate was going to skip town early, after just a couple weeks back from summer recess, so struggling GOP Senators could get home to campaign. Of course, that wasn’t our Senator Thune prepped a different excuse:
It was such a widely adopted fantasy, many Senators like Republican John Thune of SD had a ready explanation for why it wouldn’t be worth sticking around for the rest of September after they got the spending bill done.
“I mean I think doing anything else requires a high level of cooperation, which probably between now and November 8 probably isn’t going to exist around here” [Ailsa Chang, “Deal to Keep the Government Running Past Sept. 30 Eludes Congress,” NPR: Morning Edition, 2016.09.23].
Republicans preach personal responsibility, but here Senator Thune speaks of “cooperation” as something that depends entirely on other agents, utterly outside of his control, even though the third-ranking Republican in the Senate could forge a lot of cooperation if he wanted to.
But Senator Thune doesn’t get to come home yet. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is keeping everyone around to override President Barack Obama’s expected veto of a toothless show-pony 9/11 lawsuits bill that could still provoke diplomatic and economic retaliation against the U.S. Thune and his colleagues can hardly bring themselves to compromise on a continuing spending resolution, never mind a real budget.
Eventually Senator Thune will get home to debate his Democratic challenger Jay Williams in October (13th on SDPB, 14th on KELO-TV, 24th noon at Sioux Falls Rotary, 24th evening on KSFY). Senator Thune will ask us to return him to Washington so he and his Republican colleagues can keep working hard. For Williams, it will be easy to point to this month and the rest of Thune’s overlong D.C. tenure to show Thune has done little but keep Congress from working hard.
Well, you need to see it from the Senator’s respective, however. Whether it be the DC arena or the South Dakota arena, it really doesn’t matter. Because both places have plenty of basketball courts to shoot some hoops in….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIbp5C-5WXM
Sure gets paid well and has great benefits for a do-nothing gubmint leech. Gets his mug shot often, too.
People ask me what is the solution to government gridlock and I tell them that career politicians are the solution. We have to send the same people back as long as it takes to solve the problem even if it takes decades.
It is possible our vocational technical institutes which are funded with taxpayer dollars are setting up programs right now on how to become a career politician, like all the ones that live in District 19. MTI may already have such a program.
Thats not rocket science
Yet again, republican want to take hostages. Let’um shut down the government. Keep it closed, see how the voters like that. Last time Thune and his brethren did that, we had a blizzard with no one manning the stations for immediate help. Last time we had our parks closed, tourism took a big hit here. Thune wants to shut’r down to keep the kids in Flint drinking lead. Thune fails should be his bumper sticker, but he has 12 million in his pocket from his out of state fellows that believe in him to deliver their wishes.
As I said more to being a senator than photo ops and lip service.
Somebody ought to throw poor John Thune a party. He’s feeling a bit lonely and insecure. This is the 20th anniversary of him running for congress – his 7th statewide election – and nobody is making a fuss over him.
Thune’s joint effort w/ Noem and “I Hate the EPA” Rounds to anoint Daugaard and his son in law Tony with the “Arrogant but Wanting to Leave an Environmental Daugaard new Legacy State Park” special legislation taking 1900 Black Hills Forest Service acres in Spearfish Canyon and Bismark Lake, giving 2000 acres of State owned grasslands “who-knows-where?”
Tony has declared anyone with good sense can see the deal is good for SD. Except for the Forest Service trained land managers. “We told you all about this”, Tony says. “Did not,” Forest Supervisor/Regional Forester says.
And Denny “the Mainteance Man” Duagaard is mystified yet again by the federal government’s land exchange rules, appraisals, boards, and bureaucratic boards (like USBGN last month)!!
The last big Spearfish Canyon land exchange was done in less than a year by a couple of professionals. no big deal with proper valuation of the acreages. the idea in a land exchange is to present an acreage package the Federal Government desires, to assist in its management objectives. perhaps one of those ranches the State just bought from good local crony republicans near Wind Cave National Park, would be of interest to the Forest Service.
I think this group of five: denny, tony, kristie, mike and john are watching too much TV, thinking with the Idaho III% ‘ers guns and constitution, perhaps, andare trying to change the law; they think the State, taking away Federal land in the Federal forest, is more important than the rest of the 320,000,000 people’s ownship interest in Spearfish Canyon and Bismark Lake managed by their Federal government.
I can’t believe these five uninformed, uneducated, mislead individuals run this state.
‘led’ :)