Louisville Courier-Journal: Bunning's true colors

[marmar]

Editorial | Bunning's true colors
March 2, 2010


Jim Bunning partisans will say that the Kentucky junior senator's most recent headline-grabbing display of obstinate oafishness was really a principled stand. His lone vote — not once, but twice — to block the extension of unemployment and health benefits to unemployed Americans, a vote that also stalled road projects and furloughed those workers, was purportedly all about forcing the country to pay as it goes, even when it comes to extending safety nets to those feeling the worst pains of the worst recession in modern American history. (Question: Did he demand the same standard for bankrolling the wars?)

If Mr. Bunning's remaining backers see him as a latter-day Will Kane in a “High Noon” standoff, the rest of us should not be so inclined.

The penury of even his political soul is breathtaking and is nothing to be admired or emulated. Indeed, a series of missteps, misstatements and other embarrassments so alienated Mr. Bunning from his Senate peers, his fellow Republican Party members and all but the most bovine party-line voters in his home state that he could not run for re-election for a seat that should have been his until he was ready to meet his maker. Instead, he's raging — and cussing — at the dying of the spotlight. If only he could exit stage right now.

But Kentuckians — and the rest of the country he has now held hostage — must wait for the countdown clock to tick until Election Day in November for Mr. Bunning's return to private life, and even then there is no guarantee that the Bluegrass State will be better represented.

Democratic senatorial candidates Jack Conway and Daniel Mongiardo correctly condemned Mr. Bunning's heartless and senseless obstruction, but Republicans Trey Grayson and Rand Paul sounded like little Bunnings in the campaign oven as they praised his vote.

Kentucky, you've been warned.


http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20100302/OPINION01/3020303/1055/OPINION/Editorial+%7C+Bunning+s+true+colors

[BrklynLiberal]

1. LOLOL "sounded like little Bunnings in the campaign oven "

[rhett o rick]

2. Be sure and drop the asshole a message and tell him what you think

http://bunning.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Contact.ContactForm

[gratuitous]

3. Sick of being a laughingstock, Kentucky?

You could always elect a Democratic Senator instead of returning a junior Bunning clone to Washington.

[pnorman]

4. Being totally tone deaf when it comes to baseball,

I only knew of Jim Bunning as a Senator.So reading of him as a noted baseball player, I thought that the two were different people with the same name. So I checked Wiki to get to the bottom of it, and here's from what came up:

Jim Bunning Foundation

On December 18, 2008, the Lexington Herald Leader reported that Sen. Bunning's non-profit foundation, the Jim Bunning Foundation, has given less than 25 percent of its proceeds to charity. The charity has taken in $504,000 since 1996, according to Senate and tax records; during that period, Senator Bunning was paid $180,000 in salary by the foundation while working a reported one hour per week. Bunning Foundation board members include his wife Mary, and Cincinnati tire dealer Bob Sumerel. In 2008, records indicate that Bunning attended 10 baseball shows around the country and signed autographs, generating $61,631 in income for the charity.<37> "The whole thing is very troubling," said Melanie Slone, Executive Director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Why am I NOT surprised?

[era veteran]

5. Bunning has the makeup of the Boca Raton Kentuckian