94-3 vote for Senator Kerry to become the next Secretary of State!

[Divine Discontent]

After 28 years in the Senate, one failed presidential bid, and four years as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, John Kerry, D-Mass., was formally confirmed this afternoon to succeed Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, sailing through the Senate confirmation process in a matter of days and receiving near-unanimous approval from his colleagues for the job.

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Kerry on his way to becoming Secretary of State: "What a privilege"

Kerry, whose nomination was announced last month, was approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee -- on which he served for the past 28 years -- with a swift, unanimous voice vote this morning. This afternoon, the full Senate voted to approve his nomination by a vote of 94-3, with one senator voting present: Kerry. The three "nay" votes were Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas; Ted Cruz, R-Texas; James Inhofe, R-Okla.

Kerry could be sworn into office as early as Friday, which is also Clinton's last day on the job.


http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57566516/senate-confirms-kerry-as-secretary-of-state/




When I think of pathetic asshat moves, I think of what those 3 POS senators just did by voting no. Sen Kerry is one of the good guys. He's not perfect, but he's a man who cares about the people of the USA a hellalot more than those 3 do!

[Enthusiast]

1. 94-3?

That proves it, Kerry is the ultimate insider.

[No Elephants]

2. Yes, but it was also the vote of Republican Senators for re-election of Brown as U.S.

Senator from Massachusetts.

IMO, that was the real reason they would not confirm Rice, not something she said on Meet the Press. Well that, and they want to make and keep Benghazi as toxic as they can, in case Hillary runs in 2016.

Kerry does not have to work and he is no spring chicken. So, if he was not crazy about Defense, he did not have to take it. But everyone knows both he and Biden wanted State for years. So, it was a slam dunk he would take it, if he could.

Maybe they were not as sure that Kerry would leap at Defense. After all, that might rouse the sleeping Swiftboaters again and dredge up all the uber liberal things he said to Congress as a young man, not to mention his throwing away his medals, or his ribbons, or whatever the hell it was that he threw away. All that was oh so 1970s.

He's "evolved" since then, as has the Democratic Party. However, although he voted for the war in Iraq, as did all good New Democrats, he later voted not to fund it. That is THE worst possible combination for the folks in the trenches--send them into harm's way, then strand them without funding. In all, a mixed bag for a Secretary of Defense, no? Who needs all that dredged up?

Don't know how his appointment will play in Arab nations though. On the one hand. IMO, for some bizarre reason, Arabs seem to like patrician WASPs who are as much like their English colonists as it gets. They think they are more "civilized" than we wild cowboy Americans. And Kerry certainly does have the affect of a patrician WASP.

On the other hand, Kerry is half Jewish, his paternal granddad having been born Kohn, in Vienna, not Kerry, in Ireland. His grandparents supposedly changed their last name and converted to Catholicism around the turn of the last century. Maybe they saw handwriting on some Austro-Hungarian wall?

Kerry was, shall we say, not exactly up front about that before 2004, despite having attended many a St. Patrick's Day breakfast and been on the receiving end of many a crack about being Irish. (Many of Massachusetts's politicians were Irish not so long ago and the breakfast is enough of a political event locally that it is televised.)

In any event, Arabs may at least suspect that he has a pro-Israel bias.

So, we'll see how it plays out.

[Enthusiast]

3. In my eyes, the Democratic Party

powers that be, do not want a 60 seat majority in the Senate. I'm not even sure they want a simple majority. And they certainly favor divided government. The Democratic Party Powers That Be are not who we might think they are.

We must look beyond the "obvious".

[No Elephants]

4. I agree.

The primary and special election after Kennedy died was a jaw dropper.