Comments on: Dianne Feinstein dies at 90

By: Richard Aubrey

Richard Aubrey — Sun, 01 Oct 2023 22:18:19 +0000

Bill Serra:

As a friend used to say, “It’s got to mean something because it can’t mean nothing,” referring to twenty years of employing a Chinese spy. It would be a great spy who didn’t occasionally trip over his job contradictions and either show some incompetence (didn’t show up as required that one day) or some more suspicious activity. Either be replaced for a more dependable type or have some intel investigate. You don’t have to be a CCP spy to be disloyal to your employer. Maybe the Mob. Or the Other Mob or something.
No routine background investigation?
The guy skated clean for twenty years. Not. Buying. It.

Another thing said friend used to say is, “If it’s this bad, it’s got to be worse.”

By: Bill Serra

Bill Serra — Sun, 01 Oct 2023 17:22:30 +0000

So besides her slimy hitjob on Kavanaugh, gushing admiration for Jim Jones & her employment of a Commmunist Chinese spy for 20 years, DiFi was a great gal.
Is this a great country or what?

By: Aggie

Aggie — Sat, 30 Sep 2023 22:28:24 +0000

I hope she does better at her interview than she did over her last few months in the Senate. She has a lot to answer for.

By: Fullmoon

Fullmoon — Sat, 30 Sep 2023 16:24:06 +0000

Dianne Feinstein joined the rest of the San Francisco board of supervisors in honoring (Jim) Jones “in recognition of his guidance and inspiration” in furthering “humanitarian programs.”

Yep, Kool-Aid Jim Jones. She , and every other California Democrat
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/how-san-franciscos-democrats-made-jim-jones-and-then-made-his-memory-vanish

By: Jerry

Jerry — Sat, 30 Sep 2023 15:55:21 +0000

Madame Senator, say “Aye.”

By: Bauxite

Bauxite — Sat, 30 Sep 2023 14:25:14 +0000

Kate – I’ve wondered about Feinstein’s status and the Kavanaugh debacle myself. I can’t imagine that the hit was launched as intended. It almost dribbled out after the main hearings were over, and Feinstein was certainly responsible for that.

But I don’t know what they were planning for it. It could have been the case that they were holding Blasey Ford to launch the attack even later in the process. I suppose it is also possible that there were some on the D team who didn’t intend to lauch the Blasey Ford attack at all (perhaps because they knew she was lying and were worried about the consequences). It can’t have been a secret to the D leadership that Blasey Ford was working with D donors to put together a story and D’s did lose Senate seats in 2018, almost certainly because of their bad behavior over Kavanaugh. Maybe the leadership was trying to keep a lid on it and Feinstein blew their cover?

So yeah, interesting question.

By: Art Deco

Art Deco — Sat, 30 Sep 2023 13:13:44 +0000

She was 40 years ago and experienced executive who wasn’t obtrusively influenced by the fads which sweep through the Democratic Party like the plague. For example, she had the stones to veto a city council ordinance extending ‘domestic partnership’ benefits to city employees. She was also the rare mainstream Democrat who was willing to say publicly that she had been wrong in taking exception to George Bush the Elder’s course of action in Iraq in 1990-91. She decayed as she grew older, so that 2018 she was propagating Christine Blasey Ford’s hooey.
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The whole saga is indicative of the pathology at the apex and center of our political class. Given her age, work history, personal financial situation, and familial financial situation, she should have retired at the end of 2012 if not earlier. For five years and change she’s jetting across the country every week and spending most of her time in Washington while her husband is back in California terminally ill with cancer. (See Louise Slaughter for another example of this; Slaughter was at least ambulatory and lucid when she died).
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The careers of Feinstein, Robert Byrd, Strom Thurmond, Joseph Biden et al are a satisfactory argument for rotation-in-office rules, annd mandatory retirement for federal officials – (1) no one stands for election to federal office past the calendar year he reaches the age of 72, (2) anyone who has held an elective federal office for 14 of the last 16 years or who will hit that wall should he be elected to a coming term is debarred from standing for federal office, (3) all federal employees who are not elected officials leave office on a standard date the calendar year they reach the age of 76, (4) anyone who has held a particular discretionary appointment in the federal executive for 12 of the last 14 years must leave it. These would require a mix of constitutional amendments and statutory changes.
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A more circumspect set of changes could be effected by amending the parliamentary rules of Congress: (1) if one has held a seat on a given committee for 10 of the last 11 years or will hit that wall during the coming Congress, one must depart that committee; (2) if one has held the position of floor leader of a given caucus (w/o regard to whether or not one was in the majority) for 10 of the last 11 years or will hit that wall during the coming Congress, one must stand down; (3) no one may take office as committee chairman, ranking minority member, floor leader, whip, Speaker of the House, or President pro tem of the Senate if one is over the age of 80 or will reach one’s 80th birthday during the coming Congress; (4) the Speaker of the House and President pro tem of the Senate shall be elected from outside the membership of Congress from among the ranks of serving or retired judges over the age of 60 and shall not have a place in the Presidential succession.
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You could also give members of Congress a qualified right to retain the committee positions they had in the previous Congress, subject to rotation-in-office rules and a couple of other considerations, but require that any open seats on the majority or minority side be filled via lottery. The floor leaders should sit on the rules committee and determine the schedule of floor votes. They shouldn’t have the authority to strip anyone of their committee assignments. Only a vote of the whole caucus should be able to impose that sort of sanction.
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Another thing you could do would be to require that all elections to floor leader and whip have a ‘none-of-the-above’ option, with any candidate losing to ‘none-of-the-above’ debarred from all subsequent ballots. You could also have ranked-choice voting for any such election held with more than two options (i.e. at least two candidates + none-of-the-above). It would be a great deal easier to unload characters like Glitch McConnell and upChuck Schumer if in the first instance they had to compete in a confidential ballot against ‘none-of-the-above’.

By: Someone Else

Someone Else — Sat, 30 Sep 2023 10:39:09 +0000

One of my lefty Facebook friends from San Francisco posted a list of Feinstein’s “first” as a woman politician. She left off the list, “First woman senator to be ferried around by a Chinese spy.”

By: Chases Eagles

Chases Eagles — Sat, 30 Sep 2023 04:31:27 +0000

Newsom keeps showing that he is not very good at this. I think he might be failing his deep state audition.

By: Abraxas

Abraxas — Sat, 30 Sep 2023 00:44:44 +0000

I’m not so down on the Politico snippet. Strom Thurmond and Robert Byrd did seem like they would go on forever. I had something like that feeling about Feinstein. Not so much with McCain, who was publicly ill for such a long time, and didn’t seem artificially preserved — smoked or freeze dried or pickeled or salted — like other aging politicians do. He seemed, for better and (mostly) for worse, active and in command of such faculties as he had until the end.
________

Clearly, it’s wrong for Newsom to restrict his search to a small demographic, but is there something to be said in support of the putdown that Barbara Lee perceives? If someone is chosen because of race and gender, is it better if it’s done with the clear recognition that the appointment is honorary and temporary? Lee is 77, so maybe she would be a “caretaker” appointed simply to check a box herself.