Day: December 6, 2006

Two GOP Senate Nutcases Vote Against Gates

Jon Ponder

Gates was approved 95-2.

Former CIA Director Robert Gates was approved by the Senate this afternoon to become Pres. Bush’s next secretary of defense. The vote was 95-2, with every Democrat from the 109th Congress, and all but two of the outgoing majority members, voting in favor:

Two GOP senators, Jim Bunning of Kentucky and Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, voted against Gates. Santorum … said in a floor speech that he found fault with Gates’s support for diplomatic engagement with Iran as part of a regional solution to the crisis in Iraq.

The rationale for Bunning’s vote was unclear as of press time, but he has voted against high-profile Bush nominees in recent months, including Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.

Sen. Bunning’s inexplicable vote is actually in character. He is apparently senile. Sen. Santorum lost his reelection bid and won’t be back for the 110th.

Webb-Bush Contretemps: What Would JFK Do?

Jon Ponder

Now that St. McCain has revealed his true colors as a do-anything-say-anything-to-get-elected pol, some are suggesting that Sen.-Elect Jim Webb be the real straight talker, especially after his unpleasant encounter with the president last month:

This strange interlude at the White House, when Bush asked Webb about his son in Iraq, Webb said he wants to bring the troops home, and Bush barked: “I didn’t ask you that” says a lot about Bush and Webb.

Jim Webb has vast and enormous experience in military combat and military policy over the decades. Why on earth didn’t Bush pull him aside and ask his private counsel? Not only does Webb know far more than Bush about real wars and not only does Webb have an infinitely better record than Bush being right about this war, but Webb probably could have given some serious insight about what his son tells him from the ground.

But the Decider has already Decided.

My guess is, what JFK would have done, is invite Webb to the Oval Office, and while they were sitting in the Oval Office would have called the son in real time and asked: what the hell is going on over there? What do you think we should do?

But just like McCain is no Webb, Bush is no JFK.

Spending Explodes as New Florida Repub$ Take Over

Trish

Incoming Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio (R-Miami) is practically throwing taxpayer dollars from the back seat of the Hummer limo.

The new speaker of the Florida House, a self-described fiscal conservative, now employs the highest-paid spokesman in state government, adding to a growing list of staffers drawing six-figure paychecks.

“These fiscal conservative Republicans are spending money like drunken sailors,” said Rep. Susan Bucher, D-West Palm Beach

Rep. Marco Rubio’s press secretary, Jose Fuentes, is getting an annual salary of $119,484.

That’s $23,000 more than Gov. Jeb Bush’s communications director, and just $9,500 less than the governor himself…

The Miami Republican has hired a $10,000-a-month financial consultant, former Bush adviser Donna Arduin, given a $100,000-a-year job to former Republican lawmaker Ken Sorensen and created a parliamentarian position that pays $133,908.

Rubio has given jobs to a number of longtime government workers who might otherwise be unemployed with the departure of Bush. Many are paid more than $100,000 a year…

Expanding the payroll is only the beginning. Rubio thinks it’s time for a little remodeling also.

A $550,000 revamp of the Florida House ordered by House Speaker Marco Rubio includes a members-only dining room, a first for the Capitol building…

The building now has a cafeteria in the basement and a snack bar on the 10th floor, both of which are open to the public. The new dining room…has its own kitchen and a plasma TV on the wall…

The irony of this profligate spending isn’t lost on everyone, however.

“These fiscal conservative Republicans are spending money like drunken sailors,” said Rep. Susan Bucher, D-West Palm Beach.

But it’s all for the good of the citizenry, Rubio asserts.

Rubio did not talk with a reporter Tuesday, issuing a statement instead.

“…we felt we had to provide our members with the most talented and experienced staff possible. Attracting such talent often requires paying salaries competitive with the private sector.”

He’s got us there. Parliamentarians probably make, like, a real lot in the private sector.

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

We can achieve long-lasting peace for this country [Iraq], and it requires tough work. It also requires a strategy that will be effective, and we’ve got men and women of both political parties around this table who spent a lot of time thinking about the way forward in Iraq and the way forward in the Middle East.

— George W. Bush, President of the United States, on the Iraq Study Group Report being released today

Another 1990s Sitcom Star Apologizes for Using ‘N-Word’

Jon Ponder

The most racist region of America may actually be TV Land.

Now Andy Dick has apologized for using the “N-word” on the stage of the West Hollywood Improv Saturday night, December 2, 2006:

According to sources, the hopped-up comedian hopped onstage … at L.A.’s Improv comedy club and dropped the n-bomb on a room full of stunned clubgoers.

Andy was heckling comedian Ian Bagg during his routine, when Dick allegedly got out of his seat, jumped onstage and began joking with Bagg. The subject of Michael Richards came up, but the two comics quickly moved past it. As Dick exited the stage, he suddenly grabbed the mic and shouted at the crowd, “You’re all a bunch of niggers!”

Apparently, Dick, who starred in the 1990s sitcom “News Radio” felt bad after he sobered up:

“I chose to make a joke about a subject that is not funny,” the statement said. “In an attempt to make light of a serious subject, I have offended a lot of people, and I am sorry for my insensitivity. I wish to apologize to Ian, to the club and its patrons and to anyone who was hurt or offended by my remark.”

State of Florida Hates Crippled Kids

Buck Banks


Bah, humbug: In this season of giving, it’s interesting to know that an agency of the Florida state government is spending thousands of dollars in litigation to avoid spending $360 for thermal blankets for a severely disabled kid. And this was the state that went to bat to keep Terri Schiavo in a permanent vegetative state. Well, here’s a kid who responds to the voices of his mother and sisters, but that’s about it. And he needs some thermal blankets to regulate his temperature. Oh yeah, and some surgical masks for his caregivers because of his compromised immune system.

Give the kid a blanket. His life is hard enough.

The state won’t pay for the masks, either. Read the rest of the story here:

Kevin Estinfil is a badly disabled kid. He has severe cerebral palsy, is blind, has a shunt in his brain to drain excess fluid and has daily seizures. And his body can’t control its own temperature.

Kevin, who is 12, can get as cold as 93 or 94 degrees, and he can’t communicate when he feels pain or discomfort.

What would help keep Kevin warm, his doctors say, are special thermal blankets, which cost $10 each. He needs about three a month, for a cost of about $360 a year.

But for more than a year, the state Agency for Persons with Disabilities has refused to pay for them. The blankets, they say, “have not been determined to be medically necessary.”

To make its case, the state has racked up thousands of dollars in legal fees fighting Kevin, who lost an appeal before a state hearing officer and is now appealing to the Third District Court of Appeal in Miami-Dade.

‘I keep thinking, `It’s a blanket. It’s not like he’s asking for a car,’ ” said Lizel Gonzalez, Kevin’s lawyer at Legal Services of Greater Miami. “Give the kid a blanket. His life is hard enough.”
[…]

Mary Cheney Is Pregnant

Jon Ponder

Just what the world needs — more Cheneys:

Mary Cheney, the vice president’s openly gay daughter, is pregnant. She and her partner of 15 years, Heather Poe, are “ecstatic” about the baby, due in late spring, said a source close to the couple.

It’s a baby boom for grandparents Dick and Lynne Cheney: Their older daughter, Elizabeth, went on leave as deputy assistant secretary of state before having her fifth child in July. “The vice president and Mrs. Cheney are looking forward with eager anticipation to the arrival of their sixth grandchild,” spokesman Lea Anne McBride said last night.

Mary is 37 years old, and works for AOL. (Which speaks volumes.) She and Poe live in Virginia, a state where members of her party successfully voted in a constitutional ban on same sex marriages last month.

On This Date – December 6

Jon Ponder
  • 2002 – President George W. Bush pushed Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill and economic adviser Larry Lindsey from their jobs in a Cabinet shake-up. [NYT]
  • 1994 – Republican-controlled Orange County, Calif., filed for bankruptcy protection due to investment losses of about $2 billion. [NYT]
  • 1998 – The Los Angeles Times published an editorial by Robert Scheer on conservative Michael Huffington‘s recent decision to come out of the closet, saying it should come as no surprise that Republicans, even conservative members of the party, are gay. [365Gay]
  • 1973 – Gerald Ford was sworn in as vice president under Pres. Richard Nixon, following the resignation of Spiro Agnew who pled no contest to a charge of income tax evasion. [Music of Your Life]
  • 1889 – Jefferson Davis, the first and only president of the Confederate States of America, died in New Orleans at age 81. [NYT]