Marco’s Bad Cargo
I can remember when Marco Rubio was a high flyer,
But recently his autobiography has come under fire.
The GOP’s panicked
‘Cause they need a Hispanic,
But they’re afraid even Cubans won’t vote for this liar.
Month: October 2011
Taibbi: Perry Is a Dangerous Nutcase
In an era when there’s exponentially more money in politics than we’ve ever seen before, Perry is the candidate who is exponentially more willing than we’ve ever seen before to whore himself out for that money. Even scarier, the religious community around which he has chosen to pull his human chameleon act features some of the most extreme end-is-nigh nutcases in America, the last people you want influencing the man with the nuclear football. Perry is a human price tag — “Being There” meets “Left Behind.” And sometimes there’s nothing more dangerous than nothing at all.
— Matt Taibbi, writing in Rolling Stone, noting that Rick Perry’s track record as Texas governor reveals his only real passion: selling off government to the highest bidder.
McCain Says GOP Approval Looks Bleak
We’re down to paid staffers and blood relatives.
— Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), commenting on a recent poll showing the congressional approval rate at just 9%.
Majority Say Republicans Favor the Rich
69%
Of those polled in a CBS News/New York Times poll said Republicans in Congress favor the rich, while just 9 percent said the GOP favors the middle class and only 2 percent said the poor.
Trump Still Beating that Birther Drum
As you know — check out the Internet — many people say it is not real.
— Donald Trump, in a CNN interview, suggesting he’s still not sure President Obama’s birth certificate is authentic, tacitly asserting that he believes everything that’s on the Internet.
Economy Grew More Than Expected in Q3
2.5%
Inflation-adjusted annual rate at which the U.S. economy grew in the last quarter, the strongest performance in a year, the Wall Street Journal reports. The report could allay at least for now concerns the the economy is slipping back into recession.
Huntsman Has Only Raised $1,000 in New hampshire
$1,000
Amount Jon Huntsman has raised from New Hampshire residents, despite holding more than 80 events in the first primary state, Yahoo News reports.
The Line: October 27, 2011
Jonathan Chait dissects Republican pols’ facility at papering over facts they find to be inconvenient. They all do it but Chait fricassees the GOP’s Big Thimker, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, whose big speech at the Heritage Foundation yesterday on income equality (or whatever) turned out to be nothing more than a retread of the same manure Ryan has been spreading for years.- In a piece titled “John Galt Clutches His Pearls,” Digby marvels at Ryan’s speech, too: “One of my favorite right wing quirks is their ability to shape-shift from Rambo to Aunt Pittypat in the blink of an eye.”
- Elizabeth Warren did not take credit for #OccupyWallStreet, despite the right-wing propaganda ministry’s claims. Dave Weigel uses the right’s “dogpiling” on Warren as a case study in how they twist Democrats’ words to bolster their narrative that liberals are elitists, vain and out of touch. (Similarly, Al Gore never said he invented the Internet.)
If your candidate’s fumbling, befuddled debate performances are killing his campaign, what do you do? If you’re Rick Perry’s campaign team, you quietly announce that the candidate won’t be participating in any more debates. Kevin Drum reacts: “So there you have it. Perry’s not hiding from anything. He’s just choosing to stay off national TV because it makes his dimness a little too painfully obvious to voters who are trying to choose a leader of the free world. Better to focus instead on what he’s best at: attack ads and laughably flimsy policy proposals.”- New polls out in the congressional districts find 12 seats that are ripe for Democratic pickups, including five in California: Dan Lungren (CA-7), Jeff Denham (CA-10), Elton Gallegly (CA-26), Mary Bono Mack (CA-36), Brian Bilbray (CA-52). Relatedly, the district of GOP House Rules Committee Chair David Dreier (CLOSET-1) was disappeared by California’s new nonpartisan redistricting committee. Democrats need to win 25 seats to win control of the House next year.
- Via Pork News (seriously): The GOP’s drive to install racist Arizona-style “papers please” anti-immigrant laws in the Old Confederate states could result in losses in the tens of millions in agricultural production next year. Turns out, farmers can’t find “legal” Southerners who’ll take jobs doing back-breaking farm work in the fields.
- For the tenth anniversary of the USA PATRIOT Act, I have a piece up at Gore Vidal Now tracking some of Vidal’s writing about the act, which he described as being “as despotic as anything Hitler came up with — even using much of the same language.”
Documents Suggest Sen. Marco ‘Anchor Baby’ Rubio Has Lied about Parents’ Immigrant Status
On May 18, 1956, Mario and Oriales Rubio walked into the American Consulate in Havana and applied for immigrant visas. The form asked how long they intended to stay in the United States.
“Permanently,” Mr. Rubio answered.
Nine days later, the couple boarded a National Airlines flight to Miami, where a relative awaited.
So began a journey that seems as ordinary as any immigrant story, but decades later served as the foundation of an extraordinary and moving narrative told repeatedly by their third child as he became one of the most powerful politicians in Florida and then a national figure.
U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio has come under fire for incorrectly linking his parents to the Cubans who fled Fidel Castro beginning in 1959. He insists they are exiles nonetheless and angrily denounced the suggestion he misled for political gain…
[The] visa documents cast clearer divisions between his parents, who came for economic reasons, and the Cubans who scrambled to leave their homeland but thought they could soon return. And the documents come to light amid new discrepancies since Rubio’s time line came under scrutiny last week.
