CloseUP - Jeanne Shaheen and WMUR's crappy transcript - Granite Grok

CloseUP – Jeanne Shaheen and WMUR’s crappy transcript

New WMUR logoJeanne Shaheen Wicked WitchYup, another Sunday, another CloseUP and this week, Josh McElven had US Senator Jeanne Shaheen (or better described as the Federal Government’s Ambassador to New Hampshire) and perhaps Candidate-To-Be Rich Ashooh for US Congress in CD-1 (he formally announces tomorrow).  She said a couple of things that caught my ear so I figured, per normal, to add my thoughts.

That said, you can see that I started to manually do the transcription (the lower case) but today I saw that WMUR provided one.  Well, they SAY that do but I found that it SUCKS.  You can tell because I left theirs in UPPER CASE and I filled in with lower case.  Ya’d think a multi-million if they were going to do transcripts, WOULD DO TRANSCRIPTS!

But, you have me.  At times.  McElven asked her about the opiate addiction problem / heroin crises here in NH and the Feds now getting involved:

I think we should feel good here in NH because people are working together – the Governor, the Legislature, the Congressional delegation and our communities. We had a forum last night in the city of Dover with all the mayors from Stratford County.

OK, I’m OK with this (well, most of it).  This is a NH problem.  Yes, other States are seeing similar things, but this is NH and should be a NH situation to be fixed.  It’s this next part that I have some real problems with and it shows why Jeanne Shaheen’s real title is the Federal Government’s Ambassador to New Hampshire.  Why?

It is nice to finally see the attention at the Federal level because, you know, this is a pandemic.

Once again, we have politicos describing a man-made disaster (to paraphrase Obama’s Administration) as a physical illness.  Sorry, this is not a pandemic.  You want a pandemic?  Try the Black Plague.  Try the 1918 Flue here in the US. And Ebola of a couple of years ago; those were true pandemics – germ / viral invoked with a virulent transmission rate.  Real illness – real pandemics.  But like all politicos desperately trying to be relevant and showing “concern” from their level of government, she doesn’t just exaggerate, she just blows it up.  And in Democrat Political Correctness speak, no one can ever be responsible for their own actions.  Instead, describe any decision, especially those with negative consequences, as an illness.  Why?  Well, if you get an illness, it CERTAINLY can’t be YOUR fault, can it.  It has to be those germy type thingies – so you are a victim of a germ.  Except, of course, addiction to illegal drugs is not caused by a germ but by a personal decision for that very first time.  And it can’t be blamed on a lack of education, can it?  Just like the effects of smoking, anti-drug education has been around for decades.

But, according to Shaheen, it’s a disease. And never of one’s own making.

It’s affecting, the last year we have statistics for, we lost 47,000 people from the heroin epidemic..

That isn’t here in NH – 47K deaths / year here in NH would amount to 128 overdoses / PER DAY.  That certainly ain’t happenin’ here.  At the national level?  With a US population of 320 million people, that would be 0.014% of the population.  Sorry to put it this way  but when politicians bend the language way out of sorts, so can we.  While that’s a tragedy for the families and friends, that’s a rounding error – and it certainly is not a pandemic. Want a pandemic?  The Black Death killed almost half (50%) of all Londoners in 1348 (In total, the plague reduced the world population from an estimated 450 million down to 350–375 million in the 14th century).  The 1918 Flu Pandemic:  More recent estimates have estimated global mortality from the 1918-1919 pandemic at anywhere between 30 and 50 million. An estimated 675,000 Americans were among the dead.

And here is where The Title comes in for as you can see, we can see the Progressive mantra played macro level.  Remember, you need Government because you are as helpless as a child (Hillary says so here).

…and we haven’t, until recently, had enough focus at the Federal level and provided the kind of resources that communities and States need because they are the ones on the front lines. Our law enforcement, firefighters, emergency medical personnel who respond to heroin overdoses, our hospitals, the treatment facilities, they need resources and that’s one of the things that I’ve been working on in Washington…it’s something that we got to do. This is not an epidemic that affect just young or old, it doesn’t affect just Republicans or Democrats, it doesn’t affect you if you live in Manchester or the seacoast, it affect people everywhere and we have to treat it that way. . And we have to treat it that way.

I believe that local problems should be solved locally.  I also believe that the responsibility for solving local problem should be financed locally.  This is the problem with Progressives and Shaheen bluntly says it – you can’t solve the problem without us, the Federal Government.  I ask the important question – why should that be?  Why the Feds, why should the rest of the country, be responsible for paying for us?  Are we that bad off that we can’t be responsible for local problems?  What is it about Federalism that Progressives just hate and in which they MUST treat States as incapable?

It is their way – and so is the allocation of resources (re: money) that MUST go to DC and then allocated back to the States based on “democracy” (which is to say, the Feds making decisions from afar believing they know best and certainly better than our elected representatives here in NH).

Switching to the next topic – of course, the Supreme Court where the answer Jeanne Shaheen gave to McElven was the thing that first caught my ear.  Listen to what she says about Constitutional requirements:

Sidenote: and also see how bad WMUR’s TrAnScRIpt is (reminder – UPPER CASE is what they supplied and mine is in lower case)

I THINK VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN’S COMMENTS when he was the Chairman of the Judiciary HAVE BEEN TAKEN OUT OF CONTEXT.

Yeah, having watched several videos, I think this utterance would rate 3 Pinocchios at best.  And Schumer as well.

But the point about today’s situation is that THIS IS THE FIRST TIME IN HISTORY that WE would SEE THE MAJORITY controlling THE SENATE BLOCK a NOMINEE coming from the President FOR THE SUPREME COURT.

Really?  I think Bork was blocked by Teddy “The Swimmer” Kennedy – yes, he got a hearing but it certainly not a regular hearing – more like a legal lynching which is why “Borking” became a verb and has stuck around for decades.  BTW, Senator Shaheen, welcome to payback.. Even though you say that Supreme Court nominees should be non-partisan (below), it was YOUR Party that made it hyper-partisan for the first time in the modern age.

But it is her revision of the powers, dictates, and responsibilities of the President and the US Senate that grinded my gears as she tries to insert very important verbiage into a situation where none actually occur.  Thus, in doing so, she actually contradicts herself about the process is to be non-partisan and makes it VERY partisan:

So 14 TIMES in this country’s history AND IN AN ELECTION YEAR WE HAVE HAD AN OPENING IN THE SUPREME COURT. We’ve had the President send over to the Senate a nominee AND THE SENATE HAS ACTED ON THAT. Most recently in 1988, when Ronald Reagan was President, his last year in office, he sent to the Democratically controlled Senate his nominee, Anthony Kennedy [Note she didn’t mention Robert Bork  -Skip] He got a hearing HE GOT VOTED TO 97 to 0, passed out of the Senate. Umm, so, I THINK THIS IS A PARTISAN EFFORT TO MAKE SOMETHING THAT shouldn’t be PARTISAN, partisan. And that is our Supreme Court and the nominees to the Supreme Court. In the entire history of the United States, every nominee has gotten a HEARING ON THE SENATE FLOOR at least for the last 100 years. WE NEED TO ACT ON THIS.

You know, we all took an oath of office that said we would protect and defend the Constitution…THE CONSTITUTION SAYS THE PRESIDENT SHALL NOMINATE, the Senate shall advise and CONSENT. We need to act on Merritt GARLAND. He’s a deserving nominee HE NEEDS TO GET A HEARIN, we need to give him an up or down vote.

Hmm, let me think about that – here’s what the US Constitution actually says about “SHALL” in Article II, Section 2:

He shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States, whose appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by law: but the Congress may by law vest the appointment of such inferior officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the courts of law, or in the heads of departments.

Certainly the Constitution says SHALL with respect to the President.  As far as the US Senate is concerned, there is no SHALL associated with the actual Constitutional pronouncement “with the advice and consent of the Senate“.  The President is commanded to positively act – the Senate can do what it wishes to the “with the advice and consent of the Senate“.  SHALL NOMINATE can only end up with a single operation – a nominee.  Advice and consent? Advice can span a spectrum of answers anywhere from Sure to Nope.  Right now, the US Senate is telling Obama Nope.  The Constitution doesn’t SAY it has to hold hearings, just give advice.  In fact, Obama can’t force the US Senate to do anything either – the Constitution holds that both the US House and Senate can make its own rules (Article 1 Section 5).

So for Jeanne Shaheen, who has been in politics since dirt was young, and says that she swore an oath to protect and defend, shows her ignorance of that which she is swearing fealty to.   Sorry, #FAIL.  Partisanship?  You bet if she is going to bend that same Constitution to her ideological end game.  No, she gets no pass from me and frankly, most Constitutional scholars.  SHALL has a very specific meaning in legal documents, as opposed to MAY – it means YOU WILL.  Obama MUST submit a nominee.

Advice and Consent?  It is clear that the Senate IS doing exactly that – because Nope is a perfectly good answer.  The Constitution does not specify that it HAS to give the nominee anything – not a hearing and not a vote.  They can do nothing which fulfills the phrase advice and consent – nothing = Nope.

So anything she says is mere politicing and posing – and doing exactly what she paints the Republicans as doing.  I can be as partisan as anyone but Principles matter and words matter.  Redefining definitions is not what I do or tolerate.  I can’t do that and stay true to myself.  But it is clear that Shaheen has no problem in doing that.

She is partisan – and it is clear she will continue the Progressive antics to redefine things into which they are not.  Oh, and this last part?

I THINK WE NEED TO REDUCE THE AMOUNT OF MONEY IN POLITICS. THE VIEW FROM THE PUBLIC IS SPECIAL INTERESTS ARE DRIVING THINK THEY ARE RIGHT.

Sure thing.  You know the BEST way of getting money out of politics?  Make the stakes much, much smaller.  Which means making Government much smaller and less money to pass out.  But she’ll NEVER, EVER participate in that because Progressives want Government to be all encompassing. It is clear, as well, from the above, she LIKES the fact that States should always be dependent on the Feds.

Just like we little people should be dependent on Government at any level.

Ambassador from the Federal Government – sho’ nuff!

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