Dirty Harry's Penthouse Forum

Y'know, when Senator Pencilneck creeped out the political world by dubbing Delaware Democrat Senator-in-waiting Chris Coons his newest "pet" several times in the same interview, at least THAT was only a double entendre.  You COULD interpret "pet" as "poodle" or "lapdog" or "lackey" - amazingly enough, the "good" interpretations in this context.

But the Senate Majority Chisler reaching over and causing Kirsten Gillibrand a wardrobe malfunction leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination.

Does this remind anybody else of General Halftrack and Miss Blips?:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had an unusual form of praise for New York’s junior senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, this morning at the fundraiser Mayor Bloomberg hosted for him at his townhouse – referring to her as “the hottest member” as she sat just a few feet away, according to three sources.

The comment prompted Gillibrand to turn red, according to the sources, and created a bit of stir among the small crowd there.

“It was pretty shocking when he said it,” said one source familiar with the remark and the reaction.

Are they certain he didn't say that HE has "the hottest member" whenever he sits next to "Kirstie"?  Is he going to get her a surprise election victory gift of a stripper's pole that will be installed next to her seat in the Senate chamber?  Is he going to have to wonder about the serving of "special sauce" that shows up next to her plate at the next Senate Donk caucus luncheon?  And here I thought the guy was a far better "before" example of erectile dysfunction than Bob Dole EVER was.

"Oh," exclaimed Jim Manley, Reid's beleagured spokesman, "but he did go on to praise her skill, tenacity, and financial knowledge, too!"  Wanna hear how THAT came out?:

He also then discussed her knowledge of securities law as extremely deep, and suggested she was better on certain policy elements than other people, according to the sources.

I read that as, "a Polish sausage couldn't hit bottom in that poontang".

Are these not freudian signs that Harry Reid is, um, packing it in?  Never mind what would be happening to him right now if he were a Republican; the majority leader of the United States Senate doing his method-acting impression of "a creepy Goldmember type of guy skulking around dropping inappropriately sexual remarks about how 'Toight' men's and women's bodies are while dressed in nothing but a smoking jacket and Crisco" when he's, er, locked in a "toight" re-election battle is not a sign that he's firing on all campaign, ah, thrusters.

If overt signs of disinterest, dejectedness, or dementia don't move you, you can always fall back on Dirty Harry's all around legislative ineptitude:

The Senate on Tuesday afternoon voted against moving forward on the defense authorization bill that included a repeal of "Don't Ask Don't Tell." The vote ended up 56-43, but sixty votes were needed to proceed.

The bill also included the DREAM Act, which would grant a path to legal status for illegal immigrants who serve in the military.

All Republicans voted against the bill, and so did Arkansas Democratic Senators Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor.

Eeyore wonders why The Man With A Van Down By The River bundled the two purportedly popular measures with the defense spending bill instead of running them as separate bills:

Reid’s strategy in bundling the defense bill together with the DREAM Act and repealing DADT was, I assume, aimed at forcing a Republican no vote which he can now use to motivate liberals and Latinos in Nevada to turn out for him in November. Which would make sense, I guess, if not for one thing: Wouldn’t he have been better off trying to pass the DREAM Act and repeal of DADT as standalone measures? In theory he has Collins as vote number sixty for the latter, and he would have stood a chance of attracting a few Republican defectors on the former if only because the GOP is nervous about its image with Hispanics. As it is, by packaging them all together, Reid actually ended up creating political cover for moderates like Collins to vote no by citing procedural objections.

Sound arguments, all.  My guess is more conventional - that he wanted to maximize the chance of Republicans caving on both poison pills by attaching them to a bill they'd be loathe to obstruct for fear of (further) angering their own base, on whom the building tsunami still primarlily depends.  A conclusion around to which AP tangentially argues himself a bit later in his post:

Actually, here’s the real reason that Reid bundled all these bills together — I think: He was worried that if he split them all up and held individual votes on each, they’d be filibustered anyway because of Democratic opposition, not Republican. That would be a double defeat for Reid, not only losing on the vote itself but signaling to his party that he’s a weak majority leader who can’t deliver even on basic liberal items like DADT and the DREAM Act.

Okay, so he extrapolates one step further.  But this is still the same Harry Reid that used waterboarding to get every last (pre-Scott Brown) vote of his caucus for ObamaCare.  Are we to understand that that was the apex of his power, and now he's just a spent force, fadingly on his way out the door?  Limp?  Flaccid?  Impotent?  So much so that he was incapable of battering through DREAM and TABOO (Turn Around & Bend On Over) no matter which strategy he employed?

When his presidency was gelded in the 1994 midterms, chasing interns was the only thing left for Bill Clinton to do.  I can see Dirty Harry spending the rest of his life in Searchlight loading up on ginseng so that he doesn't forget what it was like to have a hardon - or a political career.