Month: February 2011
Verbatim
My name is what happens when a Greek and a German get married. It’s a clash of cultures but I am learning to live with it. My kids are Jack and Grace, my wife is Sally, my dad is Richard and my sister is Marie. I don’t know how it happened but I am learning to live with it.
— RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, talking about his unusual name on Fox News Channel’s Fox and Friends.
Verbatim
Within our party, we’ve got to be very careful about allowing these people who are the birthers and the 9/11-deniers to get too high a profile and say too much without setting the record straight.
—Karl Rove, telling Fox News that Republicans have to stop the birthers in their party. When asked what percentage of Republican voters were birthers — a recent poll found 51 percent — Rove added: “I don’t know, but whatever it is, it ought to be less, because we need the leaders of our party to say ‘Look, stop falling into the trap of the White House and focus on the real issues.’ “
So Be It: House Votes To Kill Hundreds of Govt-Created Jobs in Ohio GOP Enclaves, Including Speaker Boehner’s 8th District
In the vote, 110 Republicans joined with 123 Democrats to pass an amendment to kill development of a second engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Jet.
While some are interpreting the vote as a slap at Speaker John Boehner, who represents the 8th congressional district, which includes Butler County, others are pointing to it as another example of the incompetence of the speaker and his House leadership team.
Earlier this month, Boehner and the House GOP Whip Kevin McCarthy of California sent several bills to the floor apparently without knowing in advance whether the votes were there to pass them. A vote to extend sections of the PATRIOT ACT failed when about two dozen Republican members voted with Democrats to kill it. A measure to take back $180 million dollars in United Nations dues also failed because of GOP crossovers. The Boehner team then pulled a third bill that would have extended financial assistance to workers who lost their jobs to competition from imports.
Speakers of the House rarely, if ever, schedule a vote on an issue until they know they have the votes to win. Some have discounted these missteps as “rookie mistakes” — apparently forgetting that Boehner has been in the House for 21 years, and in the GOP leadership since 2007.
The vote to kill the Evendale project came just a day after Boehner took to the cameras to insist that if spending cuts resulted in eliminating hundreds of thousands of federal jobs, then “so be it.”
Remember that one of the Republicans’ favorite “big lies” is that the federal government cannot create jobs. Like Boehner’s “so be it” assertion on Tuesday, the snafu over the jet engine vote also exposes this big lie for what it is: The salaries of the workers in the Edendale plant are all paid in principle, if not in full, out of federal government contracts with GE.
It’s certainly possible that Boehner could save the Evendale plant through backroom deals as the budget bills move forward, but if the program is eliminated, it will likely result in hundreds of the speaker’s constituents and their families abruptly finding themselves on the path to financial ruin — a circumstance that could set off a cascade of business failures in Butler County.
If so, it’s likely the speaker’s nonchalance about the plight of laid off federal workers could come back to haunt him in the 2012 campaign.
So be it.
Majority of Americans Say Obama Has International Leaders’ Respect
52%
The majority of Americans who continue to say foreign leaders respect President Obama, down from 2010 (56%) and 2009 (67%). However, Obama’s current measure is more positive than was the case during most of the terms of George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
The Homeboy Conservative
Gov. Rick Scott told black lawmakers, “It’s true —
I grew up poor in the projects, like you.
And though I dance like a spazz,
I really dig jazz,
And fried chicken and watermelon, too!”
“Blacks are some of my best friends,
Like the home girl I picked for Lieutens,
I get down with the dozens
And one dated my cousin,
Oh, and I listen to Usher on the weekends!”
Aren’t All Black People Poor and Uneducated? Florida’s New Governor Thinks So
Florida’s new tea party governor, Rick Scott, didn’t make any friends when he met recently with 20 of Florida’s black state legislators.
The luncheon was billed as a get-to-know-you welcome to Tallahassee from Scott, who has barely been in town a month. But the political novice wasted no time in offending his guests.
In discussing his own humble origins, Scott implied that all black lawmakers grew up poor.
“I grew up probably in the same situation as you guys,” Scott said to the group of 20 Democrats. “I started school in public housing. My dad had a sixth-grade education.”
Rep. Betty Reed, D-Tampa, said she was offended by the remark…Afterward, she said, “He assumed that everyone [in the room] was poor and that can only be because you’re black.”
Rep. Joe Gibbons, D-Hallandale Beach, said Scott’s choice of words was unfortunate even if he was trying to “empathize” with the black caucus.
“Some of us might be from the projects, but we come from all spectrums of life,” Gibbons said.
Rick Scott on refusing to call the health care reform act by its proper name instead of “Obamacare”: ‘You know, when I’m on Fox, they never call it that.’
Scott of all people should know there are rich African Americans. He chose as his lieutenant governor former state Rep. Jennifer Carroll despite her ongoing problems in reporting her net worth. When she was not trying to win minority small business contracts, she said was worth about $23 million. When she was applying for the set-asides, she said it was only $2 million and explained she got her zeros and decimal places wrong. Either way, it’s doubtful the Florida legislature’s first black Republican woman can empathize with those in public housing.
Nor any longer can Scott, who didn’t spend $75 million of his own money to buy the governorship without the expectation of a hefty return on his investment.
Off the Rails
It’s becoming a familiar refrain —
Floridians questioning Rick Scott’s brains.
What could possibly will him
To reject the feds’ $2.4 billion,
And just say no to a high-speed train?
