Why Oklahoma Sucks (A report of each "senator" being a dumbass)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/ynews_ts1039

As the intense health care debate currently being waged on Capitol Hill winds down, the traditional collegiality of the Senate appears to be evaporating. Replacing it is a feeling of intense partisanship, which the Washington Post's Ezra Klein calls "heartlessly ferocious."

A particularly heated exchange took place last night. As senators prepared for a major vote on health reform, Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma called on Americans to pray that a Democratic colleague would be unable to make it to the floor so that the bill could not reach the needed 60-vote threshold. Coburn, a member of Washington's controversial C Street Christian Bible study group, stepped up to the microphone on the Senate floor and requested a prayer. "What the American people ought to pray is that somebody can't make the vote tonight," he said. "That's what they ought to pray."

Predictably, many took offense to Coburn's remark, which many think was aimed squarely at ailing 92-year-old Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia. When it came his turn to speak, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., lashed out at Coburn for "invoking God's name in prayer for political purposes...to wish misfortune on one of our colleagues." Saying that he was troubled by what Coburn had said, Durbin also called on him to return to the floor to "explain exactly what he meant," an invitation Coburn did not accept. Watch the remarks in the video below:



Coburn's controversial prayer request is the latest in a string of recent incidents that led Gawker to suggest that the Senate was turning into a "reality show."

Last week Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., caused a minor uproar when he refused to grant Connecticut's Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman's request for additional time during a floor speech. Saying he'd never seen such a denial in his 20-plus years in the Senate, Sen. John McCain scolded, "I don't know what's happening here in this body, but I think it's wrong."

On Sunday, Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., delivered what the Washington Post slammed as an "overwrought jeremiad" of a floor speech, in which the freshman senator compared "the Republicans to Nazis on Kristallnacht, lynch mobs of the South, and bloodthirsty crowds of the French Revolution." All of this led Politico to opine over the weekend that the senators were "cooped up" and "cranky" due to the "cabin fever" that had apparently set in after the long hours working on the bill in the snow-covered nation's capital.

In the end, however, the cranky senators voted and Coburn's prayers went unanswered. Sen. Byrd was wheeled into the chamber by an aide shortly before 1 a.m. Monday morning, where he cast his "aye" vote before exuberantly pumping his left fist in the air. The Democratic health care reform bill passed the first of three important cloture votes on a straight partisan vote.


http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1209/30769.html

COPENHAGEN — Sen. Jim Inhofe flew across the Atlantic and — on little sleep — braved the snow, the cold and the dark to deliver his skeptical message at the international climate conference.


What he found when he got here: a few aides and a single reporter.


“I think he’s going to be a little disappointed,” one of his aides remarked.


Inhofe was at least impatient.


The ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hoped to spread two messages in Copenhagen: Global warming is a hoax, and there’s no way the Senate is going to pass a cap-and-trade bill.


But it was early morning when he arrived at the Bella Center, and the halls were still half-deserted. He walked quickly, brushing off an aide who suggested that he slow down and take a breath.


“I don’t want to breathe — I want to get something done,” he said.


The senator didn’t have any meetings scheduled in Copenhagen, and he did not see chief U.S. negotiator Todd Stern or the members of the House delegation, who were not scheduled to fly in until later in the afternoon.


But Inhofe’s aides eventually rustled up a group of reporters, and the Oklahoman — wearing black snakeskin cowboy boots — held forth from the top of a flight of stairs in the conference media center.


“We in the United States owe it to the 191 countries to be well-informed and know what the intentions of the United States are. The United States is not going to pass a cap and trade,” he said. “It’s just not going to happen.”


A reporter asked: “If there’s a hoax, then who’s putting on this hoax, and what’s the motive?”


“It started in the United Nations,” Inhofe said, “and the ones in the United States who really grab ahold of this is the Hollywood elite.”


One reporter asked Inhofe if he was referring to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Another reporter — this one from Der Spiegel — told the senator: “You’re ridiculous.”


Inhofe ignored the jab, fielded a few more questions, then raced to the airport for the nine-hour flight back to Washington.


After Inhofe left, some reporters were still a bit confused about what had happened and who he was.


“His name is Inhofe,” a German journalist told a Japanese reporter, “but I don’t know if it’s one or two f’s.”