Month: October 2011
Andrew Sullivan Sums Up GOP Debate
Huntsman I can understand and appreciate. Perry is an empty bad suit. Romney lies with such facility it unnerves me. Bachmann is a fanatic, as, although I am extremely fond of him, is Ron Paul. Santorum just seems like a lost child from the 1950s, trying to have the campaign he dreamed about when he was ten. Cain is an egomaniac businessman with a talk show host patter and a mild wit. Gingrich is a giant, gaseous asshole.
— Andrew Sullivan, writing in the Daily Beast.
Republican Race has become ‘Wizard of Oz’
The Republican race has turned into the “Wizard of Oz.” Rick Perry wants a brain. Mitt Romney wants a heart. And any number of candidates are Dorothy, realizing there is no place like home and they should have stayed there. Herman Cain is seeking courage. He needs the courage to face the fact he is never going to be the Republican nominee, no matter how well he does in the polls. He needs the courage to settle for something far better than the presidency: His own show on Fox.
— Roger Simon, writing on Politico.
Congress’ Approval Rating Matches All-Time Low
13%
Congress current approval rating. It matches its all-time low, repeating what Gallup found in August. Approval is at or near 13% among independents as well as with both major party groups.
Scott Favors Science, Technology Over ‘Liberal’ Arts
Part of the series, Assault on Florida.
I confess — I was an English major in college. Fortunately, I somehow parlayed that into a successful career as a journalist and PR guy or else Florida Gov. Rick Scott probably would have consigned me to one of his privatized re-education facilities to teach me a useful trade like welding or astrophysics.
OK, it hasn’t quite gotten to that point, but if Scott has his way, science, technology, engineering and math curriculums will receive more state education dollars and liberal arts courses will receive fewer. I think it’s the “liberal” part of “liberal arts” that sticks in the gov’s craw. Said Scott:
If I’m going to take money from a citizen to put into education then I’m going to take that money to create jobs. So I want that money to go to degrees where people can get jobs in this state.
A quick glance through the Miami Herald’s classified ads does reveal some positions available for computer techs, but nothing specific for scientists, engineers or theoretical mathematicians. Granted, an English degree qualifies one to discuss the French deconstructionist movement while flipping burgers at Micky D’s, but liberal arts also includes journalism and communications majors.
Florida’s Newest Democrat: Mrs. Charlie Crist
While the obvious question might be, “What took you so long?” the fact remains that even Carole Rome Crist, wife of former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, is now a Democrat.
Crist himself, of course, left the Republican party when it went all tea party crazy and lined up behind eventual winner Marco Rubio in the 2010 Florida Senate race. But Charlie simply dropped out of the GOP to become an independent while Mrs. Crist is taking the more active step of registering as a Democrat.
Which straw, we wonder, broke the camel’s back and turned Carole from red to blue?
- Was it the pro-dwarf-tossing bill which State Rep. Ritch Workman (R-Melbourne) introduced as a means of reducing unemployment among Florida’s “little people?”
- Was it Gov. Rick’s Scott continuing email problem, in which it has been revealed that he “accidentally” deleted public record emails once, twice, and now three times?
- Is it the ongoing drama surrounding Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll, whose office has been a Peyton Place of employee dismissals, fires set in trash cans, power struggles with her governor’s office, and general malfeasance?
- Or was it Carroll’s recent speech to the Faith and Freedom Coalition in which she declared that Christians are engaged in a war with scientists and the media and, “There is no gray area. Either you believe or you don’t believe.”
Mormon Calls Non-Mormon a Moron
The fact that, you know, some moron can stand up and make a comment like that, you know, first of all, it’s outrageous. Second of all, the fact that we are spending so much time discussing it makes it even worse.
— Jon Huntsman, in a CNN interview, on the Dallas pastor who described Mormonism as a “cult” and a “false religion” over the weekend.
Prez Campaign Is ‘Already Ugly’
It’s already ugly.
— Anita Perry, wife of Texas Gov. Rick Perry, in an interview in Parade, on the “unfair hits” in the presidential campaign.
The True Tea Party History: First Outrage Was Over a Govt Plan to Help Underwater Homeowners
The tea party’s first rant: But what is Santelli really so enraged about?”
We had a conversation about this in the comments recently. The tea party is so closely associated now with its opposition to the Obama administration’s conservative, private industry-based health-insurance reform law that the rage mobs’ true genesis has become obscured.
We’re thinking of having a Chicago Tea Party in July. All you capitalists that want to show up to Lake Michigan, I’m gonna start organizing.
– CNBC’s Rick Santelli on Feb. 19, 2009
– CNBC’s Rick Santelli on Feb. 19, 2009
In fact, the government proposal — it was never acted upon — that so agitated middle-aged, middle-class white Republicans that they finally got up off their couches and flooded the nation’s parks and streets was a plan floated by the Obama administration that would have used taxpayer dollars to help mortgage-holders who were underwater.
It was not explicit then, but on a dog-whistle level, there was undercurrent beneath the outrage that suggested that what really had these nascent tea partyists so agitated was a paranoid suspicion that the nation’s first black president, who’d just been inaugurated three weeks earlier, was creating the mortgage-relief program as a back-door reparations program for African-Americans.
Writing in the Washington Post yesterday, Ezra Klein recalls the rant by CNBC’s Rick Santelli’s against the proposed mortgage program, a tirade that lit the tea party bonfires nationwide:
