Wow, California Senator Dianne Feinstein Was Just A HUGE DICK To Retiring Bestie Barbara Boxer!

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Barbara Boxer, the liberal lion from California, is retiring from the US Senate after 24 years. She gave a speech! It is here!

All kinds of people came out to love all over her -- including known asshats James Inhofe (with whom she traded the chairmanship of the Environmental committee on and off) and Mitch McConnell (with whom she didn't speak for more than 20 years, because like we said before he is an asshat). Comity! Collegiality! And other such bullshit! Nancy Pelosi brought a posse of House peeps to other side of the tracks torumblegive her a big group tongue bath as well. Nice Time!

But one person was missing, and that was Dianne Feinstein, the colleague from California with whom she was elected in 1992, the "Year of the Woman." (The "Year of the Woman" saw four women elected to the Senate, and it tripled the number of women there. LOL.)

Since Boxer is retiring, let's pause this story for a moment and remember fondly two times she personally yelled at me, your editrix, in person! The first was when she came to speak to Santa Barbara City College shortly after she was elected, and I asked a softball question, just really lobbed it up there over the plate, about health care, which new President Bill Clinton was gearing up to SOLVE FOREVER. "Blah blah blah I don't have health insurance," I said, leaving her the opportunity to explain that we would all soon have Hillarycare and life would be AMAZING. Instead, it turned into a weird interrogation about why I hadn't done the paperwork to remain on my mom's insurance as a college student, and how it was my fault and I was irresponsible and how was I ever going to manage in life if I couldn't get my shit together? (She didn't say "shit," to my recollection.) I was 19 years old.

The second was when I was a young reporter in my little reporter suit, and I fell into step alongside her as she was walking into a Dem assembly in Anaheim. "Senator Boxer," I said respectfully, "what would you say to liberals who feel betrayed by President Clinton signing the Welfare bill?" She stopped and glared up at my giant five-foot-two and screeched -- actually screeched! -- "The problem is not the president. There is no liberal America or conservative America, there's just America! The PROBLEM is people like YOU asking questions like THAT!"

So those were both fun! (And whatever, she VOTES RIGHT.)

Now let's get back to WHAT EVEN THE FUCK, DIANNE FEINSTEIN!

(OH! Quick Dianne Feinstein story. I was covering a Dem luncheon in Santa Ana one million and seven years ago, and Dianne Feinstein was the honored guest, and she gave a long boring speech and got heated up and grandly oratorical exactly once, and it was when she yelled that teachers unions were the problem in California education, and WHAT EVEN THE FUCK, DIANNE FEINSTEIN!)

So Dianne Feinstein skipped Barbara Boxer's goodbye speech. Was there a reason, SF Gate? 

On Monday, the two had a rare public rift after Feinstein blindsided Boxer by teaming with House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Bakersfield, to insert a rider into a major water infrastructure bill that Boxer co-authored. Boxer denounced the rider as an assault on the Endangered Species Act because its objective is to loosen pumping restrictions on California rivers as a way to send more water to farmers in the San Joaquin Valley.Feinstein’s incursion into Boxer’s legislative turf forced Boxer into opposition to her own bill.

I ... what?

Boxer has vowed to keep the Senate in session until Christmas if necessary over Feinstein’s water rider byfilibustering her own Water Resources Development Act reauthorization bill along with every piece of legislation in the current lame-duck session.Boxer said Wednesday that the vote to sustain her filibuster on the larger water bill will be “very close.” But Inhofe predicted the bill would pass because it contains projects in every state, including a fix for the municipal lead poisoning in Flint, Mich.

Looks like Dianne Feinstein is taking her marching orders from the crackpots who install handpainted billboards up and down the 5 and the 101 explaining that the drought is just a hoax by Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama in order to shut down farmers for "reason."

I couldn't find a picture of the signs, which are very stupid and also insane, but a google search did bring up this Breitbart story about NASA saying a "megadrought" is becoming increasingly likely (bizarrely, I mean REALLY bizarrely, the Breitbart story plays NASA's warning straight), which would explain why it's time to shut down NASA's climate studies, STAT. 

So sure, Dianne Feinstein, drain all the rivers for everybody's 16-gallons-of-water almond milk, and stab your bestie colleague in the back on her way out the door for good measure!

I mean, girl? Damn.

[ SFGate ]