Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has been in the news a lot recently. He 's been accusing Republicans of being unpatriotic and 'disrespectful to our commander-in chief' for opposing a Ukraine sanctions bill loaded with corrupt earmarks that have nothing to do with the legislation, in contrast to the clean bill passed bu the House. And his latest mantra has been the Koch Brothers, whose he's accused of everything from bribery and corruption to poisoning your children's puppies.
Senator Reid is the same man who called President Bush 'a loser' during wartime, who opposed the surge which enabled us to exit Iraq and along with his fellow Democrats, Senators Clinton, Obama and Biden did everything they could to sabotage our military efforts and play games with funding while our troops were under fire in in AfPak and Iraq, something they later admitted to Obama Secretary of Defense Robert Gate's anger and astonishment was 'just about politics and 2008'.
Matthew Continetti at the Washington Free Beacon has a must read column on this corrupt, obscene tumor on the body politic that simply must be read. Here's a healthy slice:
Another man might have assumed, correctly, that launching a campaign of insult and insinuation against two billionaires would result in renewed attention to his own finances. Not Harry Reid. The Senate Democratic leader since 2005, and the Senate majority leader since 2007, is not one to reflect before speaking. His mouth runs far ahead of his brain.
In recent years Reid has declared an American war “lost” while our troops still fought overseas; praised President Obama for his “light” skin and “no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one”; asserted falsely and without evidence that Mitt Romney had not paid any taxes for a decade; and said “Why would we want to do that?” when asked if he would fund cancer research during the government shutdown.
Now, with his majority in danger, his president unpopular, his floor agenda obstructed by members of his own caucus, Reid thrashes about uncontrollably. He calls Obamacare horror stories “untrue.” He says Obamacare numbers are not as high as projected because Americans “are not educated on how to use the Internet.” His Senate Majority PAC launches a $3 million ad campaign tying Republican candidates to two men most Americans have never heard of, two men who, funnily enough, are more popular than Reid.
From the floor of the Senate Reid says these two men, Charles and David Koch, are “un-American,” are trying “to buy America.” Without the terrible specter of the Koch brothers Harry Reid would be disarmed. He has no issue for his Democratic Senators to run on; the minimum wage and climate change are not enough. Nor has he another means of inspiring donors to open their checkbooks. He only has fear, fear of the Kochs, fear of extractive industry, fear of the portion of the elite that favors economic freedom. The Koch brothers, Reid says, “rig the system to benefit themselves.” He should know.
The fact that Harry Reid’s political and influence operation includes his five children has been established for some time. A few weeks ago, when I first heard Reid accuse private citizens of being un-American, I dredged up a Los Angeles Times article from 2003 with the headline, “In Nevada, the Name to Know Is Reid.” Chuck Neubauer and Richard T. Cooper’s meticulously researched and reported article begins with the story of the “Clark County Conservation of Land and Natural Resources Act of 2002,” a land bill of the sort that puts people to sleep. “What Reid did not explain” when he introduced the bill in the Senate, Neubauer and Cooper wrote, “was that the bill promised a cavalcade of benefits to real estate developers, corporations, and local institutions that were paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in lobbying fees to his sons’ and son-in-law’s firms.” I wonder why he left that part out.
Firms tied to the Reid family, the Los Angeles Times reported, earned more than $2 million from 1998 to 2002 “from special interests that were represented by the kids and helped by the senator in Washington.” How much more have they earned in the 11 years since this article was published? Land, energy, water, gaming, and mining—the Reids manage a diversified portfolio. They are not financial investors but political ones.
There's much more at the link about how this lying, corrupt tool has disgraced his office to enrich himself, while hiding behind his congressional immunity to slander far more honest men from the floor of the senate.
For the record: with all the talk of the "do nothing congress" of the last two or three years, what makes this congress the least productive in modern times is the Senate. In fact, it has passed into law fewer bills than any Senate body in history. The House ranks 6th for least productivity, and has sent 116 bills to the Senate (some say 160 bills), all "tabled" by Reid, who has simply refused to work in a bipartisan way, with the GOP, if that bipartisanship includes any serious compromise with the GOP.
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