Let's not forget the lesser of two evils who are the enablers & co-conspiritors of the MIC.

Look. There are two losers here. Bunning and the Democrats. The Democrats have no idea of how to get bills passed. Cripes, leaving this bill till Thursday night when benefits run out on Sunday? It should have been tabled weeks/months ago, rather than running it up in the emergency funding bill. Good timing Dumbocrats!

IIRC, Bunning behaved so oddly during his 2004 (?) re-election campaign that it raised serious questions about the state of his mental health; he made exceptionally irrational statements and exhibited abnormal mood variations, including inappropriate hostility and rage consistent with the onset of Alzheimer-type dementia.

I only became aware of this because of national reports-- probably including reports published here-- that Bunning's increasingly odd behavior might result in his dropping out of the race.

So of course he was re-elected instead.

Then for whatever reason, the open question of what the hell is WRONG with Bunning was just... dropped. Were the reports part of some disinformation campaign by his opponent? Who knows?

Maybe it wasn't "dementia" after all-- maybe it's just Bunning being a major-league a$$#o|@.

· Yr Obd't Servant

I think he takes this position because the extension of unemployment benefits was not funded directly in the bill and he demanded the money be taken out of job stimulus funds. So he appears to be standing up for fiscal responsibility.

Of course, the Senate will have to meet over the weekend to deal with the funding problem and that will piss off the Ladies and Gentlemen of that august body. Or, they can go home and deal with it next week and all the unemployed will get their checks late.

To me, this is just another example of dysfunctional government. Not only Senate rules but the existence of the Senate itself is an impediment to democracy. Anyone for a new Constitution? This eighteenth century job is a dog.

when bunning pitched for the philadelphia phillies baseball team, his one testicle was crushed by a line drive. i think it affected his brain. oh, excuse me, i think it was his heart! maybe if he would just see the wizard, he could get all his missing organs restored at once.

Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."

I have yet to read the comments of anyone in the current Congress or the U.S. press (from Left to Right) whose remarks show that they actually know how unemployment benefits work, how they are paid out, when and why gaps in benefits occur, how many gaps in benefits have occurred since January 2008 and of what duration, and that the amount of those benefits as they are paid (when they are paid) only consist of two-thirds of the unemployed person's working salary.

Moreover, for those who lost their jobs in 2008 before the minimum wage was raised and who made less than the new minimum wage, their unemployment benefits do not reflect that wage increase despite the fact that the cost of living, particularly food and energy costs, has risen.

The federal government has refused to create large scale New Deal type job programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps (that employed over 3 million Americans in the depth of the first Great Depression). That being the case, Congress and Obama should cease the enactment of 13 week unemployment extensions (with 2 to 3 and a half month gaps between every 2.5 months of benefits past the first benefit tier) and create benefit tier cycles of longer duration--8 to 12 months--so that millions of Americans don't lose their utilities, apartments, homes, etc., trying desperately to cover the mounting gaps while the government creates no new net jobs. There have been 7.5 months of benefit gaps since January 2008.

There is a new union for 31 million recent and long-term unemployed Americans forming. Info is at: http://www.unionofunemployed.com/

Tom Donahue, the head of the extremist, far-right-wing U.S. Chamber of Commerce, recently said the Chamber wants to see 20 million new U.S. jobs created by 2020. Their economic policy goals have dominated the American economy over the last decade. In the last 9 years there has been ZERO net new job creation and the decade of George W. Bush is being referred to by many economists as a "lost decade" with respect to job creation and the middle-class.
A "lost decade" Obama and the other neo-liberal throw-backs in Congress are deliberately continuing.

What the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and all the Democrats and Republicans who propitiate it are really saying is that they will wait for 10 to 15 million Americans to die over the next 10 years waiting for even 5 million new jobs to be created. They hope to eviscerate Social Security and Medicare by that time as well.

The time for unions of all kinds is now.

Obedient---

Your memory of Bunning's 2004 re-election gaffs comports with mine. Alzheimer's was definitely in the mix, as his speech was a string of non-sequiturs. But a man of his age and station doesn't really have to think anymore (not that he ever did). He can speak from his gut instead of his brain, mouthing platitudes while refusing to budge.

He probably still has some primitive concept of "fiscal responsibility" regarding "balancing the budget," while he probably voted for nearly every military authorization, esp. those that brought Pork to his state. But tell that to the millions of unemployed in this country. How do they "balance" their budget?

"I'm trying to make a point to the people of the United States," said Bunning.

What point? That we all need to accept being pauperized?

-30-

Hmm, the latest Wall Street pig bonuses were $20,000,000,000, an amount that is greater than the scaled-down (to court Repubs) new Federal Jobs program of fifteen billion dollars. Congrats to Pres. Obama and the clueless Cong. Dems: Heck of a pathetic job, clowns.

We need a massive rebuilding of our crumbling infrastructure now; with a Federal Jobs Program along the order of the Works Projects Administration in the 1930s pushed through by FDR and the Dems.

We also need to stop wasting billions of dollars each week on our stupid criminal imperial occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. Until Pres. Obama completely ends these occupations, he will not be acting in a serious manner to revive our American economy.

P. S., did you know that the Japanese government charges a 30% tariff (tax) on automobiles imported from the US, while we charge a zero % tariff (tax) on Japanese automobiles imported into the US? Fair and balanced, huh?

The BLS reported unemployment rate for Kentucky is 10.7% as of Dec. 2009. There's no reported measure I could find doing a quick search for the rate of underemployemnt; but if it's anything like the national trend, a U6 figure for Kentucky is likely close to 20%.

It would appear as if Bunning took too many beanballs to his already damaged dome during his baseball career; and it has now manifested itself in spades.

Hey, he's only hurting himself. If push comes to shove, us unemployed, apparently worthless, jaded Americans will pack our bags and leave for someplace a little more reasonable. But then where will him and his fellow cronies be, with no one to pay back loans that will never be paid back in a logical amount of time, with no one to buy shitty GMO food and subscribe to shitty cable television and phone service, or shop at shitty clothes and technology outlets, etc, et al. We're only the consumer whose blood and sweat feed the paychecks of minions like this guy, so it's a two-way street if he thinks we ought to get thrown under the bus, cuz we can pull him right down under the rubber with us.

On the positive side, hopefully it doesn't come to that. Maybe he'll trip over his own two right feet (see what I did there?) anyway.

- Insurgent

I don't understand why the government is giving stimulus money to wealthy banks and wall street to stimulate the economy and increase jobs while at the same time is laying off teachers and government workers. How can you say you are stimulating the job market when you are clearly sending people to the unemployment lines? Americans beware , going after the teachers, is what dictators in third world countries do when they want to get complete control over the people. Ignorance is power. The government is making the unemployment lines longer then denying people benefits, while giving wall street and big banks billions of our tax dollars. What point? That the GOP's attitude towards all Americans who are having serious unavoidable problems such as medical, unemployment, education, housing, daycare, due to the failing economy, they created with a two trillion dollar budget deficit due to their wars,is "tough shit"?

just called his office to complain.

they said that 'a lot' of people have been calling from outside the state to complain.

Does Bunning believe that the unemployed deserve their fate? Does he believe that we should cut taxes for the rich and 'TOUGH SHIT' for others?

The tough shit that goes around, comes around

I agree with the phrase 'tough shit'. There are so many people I'd love to say it to. I'd love to put a few of them up against a wall (starting perhaps with Jim Bunning) and shot them. Tough shit.

FINALLY! Our "let them eat cake moment." Lets not waste any time sharpening the guillotines.

Each and every day the GOP only makes it more clear to me why terrorists hate the USA.

Is it me or does Bunning (a lackey maggot) look like a clone of the king of the maggots, Cheney?

A starving child appears at Bunning's door begging for food. Bunning refuses to help the child because all the food in the house is committed to the dinner party that is planned for that night. Tough Shit, kid.

Ok, anybody STILL think the "system" cam be fixed? HUH?

I can't hear you.

Maybe now Thom Hartmann will stop telling us to write our congressman...probably not.

Bunning is just one of many in the republican party who have exactly the same attitude and yet because of racial fears and the paranoid selfish religion culture that dominates the south and other reactionary parts of america his kind easily win election after election and then go to washington to eat the democrats for breakfast.

At least he's not hiding the fact that he's a creep, unlike Obama and the Democrats who pretend to be better, but are just as criminal.

In the 1960's we had a good word for folks like him. He would have been referred to as a "PIG" and not a "guy" at all.

Bunning loses reelection. Tough shit!

Millions of Americans are being sacrificed upon the altar of "free-market" capitalism, and their jobs will not return. See "Growth Isn't Possible", from NEF.

http://neweconomics.org/publications/growth-isnt-possible

Tough shit? Yes, as long as millions more still believe in the game, but for all intents and purposes, "Game Over". Collapse is coming, and it won't be pretty.

LA Times 7/09 reports that Bunning(then77) won't run for re-election. Thank God!
May his soaring act of selfishness fall back on he and his in like measure.
Where is the outrage from his fellow party members over the action of one bitter and possibly senile ol SOB. Shame on you Bible thumping hypocritical consevatives.
It's better to give than receive.JC
As you do to the least among us so you've done to me.JC
Hope you have a great retirement that you so richly deserve Sen. Bunning.

Message received, Mr Bunning. I read it as this: The republican party HATES you and everyone else who isn't in the top 2%. We took away your jobs, your wages, your benefits, your children's futures, your rights, your freedoms, and now that we have done that and you have nothing and could use help, TOUGH SHIT. We will even allow our lackeys to call for the eradication of everyone who thinks that human life actually means something once it's born.

Now, why the hell ANYONE who isn't in the top 2% would EVER vote republican is beyond me. Lots of self loathing going on in this country.

If there is video of this, it should be played in EVERY red state out there 24 hours a day. It's time for people to wake up and realize that they are voting to keep themselves just as downtrodden and suppressed as they are and have ever been. What fools!

Why are the other 99 Senators not the bad guys here ?
I don't know what arcane senate rule was in effet for this vote, but surely if the other 99 senators actually cared, they could have done something
If Lyndon Johnson or Newt Gingrich were running the senate, instead of Reid, the bill would have been passed - or at least the senators would have had to work all weekend, instead of going off to do whatever it is they do.

I really think the anger at the one whack job bunning is misplace; the anger should be at Reid and the leadership for allowing this to happen

They don't really care about working americans, as proven by their inaction,