"I don't know whether to call you comrade or Professor"
Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana took it upon himself to take us back to the McCarthyism days to grill the Biden Admin's bank regulator nominee Saule T. Omarova.
The ugly questioning done by Sen. John Kennedy, who is a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Louisiana shows just how ingrained misogyny, racism, and the olden days of the red scare in the US continue to permeate our most foundational governmental institutions. In many instances during the hearing that Saule T. Omarova sat through, Sen. Kennedy not only red-baited her
but alluded to her upbringing in the Soviet Union as a reason why he thought that she would be a risk to be a bank regulator. Grasping at any straws he could find, Senator Kennedy really made it clear he does not know what year it is. As a selection of the Biden Administration, one can of course expect dirtiness from the party that has continued to lose the popular vote, but that doesn’t excuse the fact that they continue to go back to the McCarthyism times when white supremacy and Q-Anon pose a significant domestic security risk.
“I don’t mean any disrespect,” Sen. John N. Kennedy (R-La.) told Omarova at her Senate Banking Committee confirmation hearing on Nov. 18 in his folksiest head-shaking manner. “I don’t know whether to call you ‘professor’ or ‘comrade.’
People are fond of using the word ‘embarrassing whenever something outrageous happens, but what we should be, is angry. Saule T. Omarova hails from the former Soviet Union, which hasn’t existed for the past 30 years but continues to live rent-free in the minds of capitalists who are directly responsible for the deaths of over 700,000 Americans from a preventable virus. But that aside, there are moments from this hearing that show you how clearly the American education system fails its students [no offense to American teachers who work really hard to educate our young ones]. As the debate over Critical Race Theory (CRT) is poised to be a major wedge that Republicans want to use in the midterm elections, we’re seeing the direct result of how our system continues to fail our students.
In this hearing, you can hear a sitting U.S. Senator ask a nominee for bank regulation if she ‘sent a letter of resignation to prove that she physically excused herself from ‘the young communists’ and asks her the question in a way that makes him look like a college student that doesn’t know the exact answer to a question but fumbles.
Just like young people join youth groups for the Republican or Democratic parties, you age out of being a young democrat somewhere along the road and just become a democrat. While it isn’t mandatory to be a part of the Young Democrats or Young Republicans, the principal stands, once you hit a certain age you are not in that group. But according to Senator Kennedy, you need to resign from the Leninist Communist Young Union of the Russian Federation.
Dr. Saule Omorava points out that people did not have an option to opt-out of the group. Apparently, wanting to get a piece of the ignorance, Senator Rubio jumped in and also engaged in the red-baiting and left the hearing devoid of facts, nuance, and questions that had a grounding in common sense.
Interestingly Omarova is a veteran of the George W. Bush administration being given an opportunity to serve in the Biden Admin.In September, it was reported that he would be nominating Omarova, a law professor at Cornell who had done previous stints in Bush’s Treasury Department and at the white-shoe law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell (not known as an incubator of left-wing idealism). She counts among her vocal supporters former Bush White House ethics counsel Richard Painter and has even garnered a measured defense from Larry Summers. But Omarova also writes regularly with her Cornell colleague Robert Hockett, an adviser to Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and is admired by Elizabeth Warren, who said through a spokesperson, “It’s hard to think of anyone more qualified or well suited to take on this role.”
Intelligenser, “Who is afraid of Saule T. Omarova?”
It will be intriguing to follow Saule’s nomination as it moves through the Senate and see just how low Republican lawmakers will go. This racist and misogynistic interview of Saule T. Omarova is shameful and reprehensible.