If Harry Reid didn’t exist, we’d have to invent him
To the Sharron Angle supporters out there, look at the bright side: Your candidate may not be in the Senate, but the incumbent who beat her is still giving us comedy gold.
Reports Politico:
File this under: Did Harry Reid just say that?
In the middle of his tirade against House Republicans’ “mean-spirited” budget bill on the Senate floor Tuesday, the Senate Majority Leader lamented that the GOP’s proposed budget cuts would eliminate the annual “cowboy poetry festival” in his home state of Nevada. (See also: Reid’s prostitution lecture bombs.)
Reid clearly has a soft spot for the Baxter Blacks of the poetry world and thinks Republicans don’t.
“The mean-spirited bill, H.R. 1…eliminates the National Endowment of the Humanities, National Endowment of the Arts,” said Reid. “These programs create jobs. The National Endowment of the Humanities is the reason we have in northern Nevada every January a cowboy poetry festival. Had that program not been around, the tens of thousands of people who come there every year would not exist.”
Reid was attempting, of course, to criticize the spending proposal crafted by House Republicans that would cut $61 billion from the budget before he began praising the annual festival in his home state. The Senate majority leader also insisted Tuesday that he would do everything he could to schedule an up-or-down vote on H.R. 1 in order to force his GOP colleagues to take a position on the budget bill that Democrats argue includes “draconian” cuts. (links original)
If the taxpayer-subsidized cowpoke poetry (cowpoketry?) festival is the best example the Senate Majority Leader can find to illuminate the devastation that GOP cuts would bring to bear, we may be getting somewhere.
As for Reid’s threat to let Republican senators vote on the budget cuts that Republican House members approved — please, please don’t throw them in that briar patch!
P.S. — Mr. Leader, I’m pretty sure those tens of thousands of people will still “exist” — and spend money somewhere — regardless of whether they have a cowboy poetry festival to attend.
– By Kyle Wingfield
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54 comments Add your comment
Jefferson
March 9th, 2011
9:52 am
Some people like rainy days, Kyle is one of them.
Rockerbabe
March 10th, 2011
12:28 pm
Senator Reid is no different that those jokes from GA; he is just publically supporting his supporters. Sen. Reid is from NV and they like all things cowboy or didn’t you know that? He has his own “water wars” to fight, living in the middle of a desert. What really irks the GOP about Sen. Reid, is that he beat them at their own game. Go Senator Reid!
No More Progressives!
March 10th, 2011
3:53 pm
AmVet
March 8th, 2011
4:33 pm
Kyle, I wholeheartedly recommend Black’s Croutons on a Cowpie. The guy is an American treasure that I first learned of while listening to the evil NPR.
American Treasure. There’s a shock. As for NPR, the Communist Broadcasting Company, they only espouse the views they’re told to.
thebardofmurdock
March 11th, 2011
8:42 pm
Dear Harry,
To the Senate’s sole protector of the noble rhyming set,
The patron of our poems, the bard’s own baronet:
In hand I take my laptop, to pen a piffling plea
For your assistance, Harry, in setting my art free.
I know I have a talent. I know I have a gift.
But how am I to versify amidst the graveyard shift?
My foreman is a hater, who’s never heard a rhyme.
He cares but for production, and works me double-time.
My wife has found a lawyer, my income to divest;
I’ll soon be old and single, alone and dispossessed.
I haven’t slept a wink at night for nigh on thirteen years,
My writing surely suffers; I’m shunned by all my peers.
I know I can’t write cowpoke, or tell Nevada tales,
My verses tend to run to sea, with boats and ships and whales.
But, Harry, I am desperate, I need to get away;
A Cowboy Poe’try Gath’rin would surely light the way.
I heard you swore off earmarks – at least the public kind –
That Washington is broken, and Congress is maligned.
The GOP is fighting to tighten up the purse,
And every week the jobs report is pointing bad to worse.
But cinch not yet those purse strings, and rope not yet that cash.
Let’s herd a little bill on through before the markets crash.
We’ll call it Jobs for Poets, funneled through the NEA
To get me to Nevada, or perhaps, at least, halfway.
I’m counting on you, Harry. Keep up the fight that’s good!
Stand tall like old Horatius. Be brave like Robin Hood.
For hist’ry doesn’t give a hoot if budgets did survive.
It only cares of poetry and whether Art’s alive.
thebardofmurdock.blogspot.com