Day: April 27, 2012
Romney’s Mormonism Remains an Issue
My commitment to my Church and faith is all encompassing.
— Mitt Romney, in a 2002 interview with the Mormon newspaper Church News, via BuzzFeed which notes Romney often dismisses questions about his religion arguing that he’s “not running for pastor-in-chief.”
The Linguistic Perils of ‘Teabagging’
John Dingell is the longest currently-serving member of Congress (and the third longest-serving ever). The acerbic 85-year-old Michigan Democrat had long been contemptuous of Tea Partiers. He found them unruly and difficult to get along with. Dingell tended to refer to them as ‘teabaggers,’ a phrase that has an alternate sexual meaning. This normally wouldn’t have been a problem in the hall of Congress, but when Dingell was booked to appear on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, his staff felt the need to finally warn and educate him. When his chief of staff shared the other meaning of ‘teabagger’ with Dingell, the Congressman went through three different stages of reaction. At first, he said ‘hah,’ then said ‘that’s disgusting,’ and finally the octogenarian congressman reached the plain of acceptance and said, ‘It’s funny and I’m going to keep using it.’
— From “Do Not Ask What Good We Do” by Robert Draper, courtesy of the Daily Beast.
Boehner Blasts Prez as Celeb, Gets Blasted as Incompetent
This is the biggest job in the world and I’ve never seen a president make it smaller.
— House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), quoted by NBC News.
To which DNC’s Brad Woodhouse responded on Twitter with this: “Let’s be clear: John Boehner is the most useless, feckless, weak and failed Speaker of the House perhaps in American history.”
Soooo Loooong, Newt!
Newt’s finally getting off of the campaign bus,
Now that Mitt’s left him far behind in the dust.
But come on, man,
Get off the can —
This long goodbye is killing us!
Science Proves It’s Not Your Imagination. The Rich Really are A**holes
The relative assholeyness of rich folks has been proven in not one, not two, but SEVEN recent experiments. Why there is such interest in proving this topic as the world struggles with economic lassitude and the rise of the 1% might be worth a scientific experiment of its own, but the fact is, we do want to know and social scientists have confirmed our suspicions.
The National Academy of Sciences grouped the studies under the collective heading, “Higher social class predicts increased unethical behavior.” Among the key findings:
- “Upper-class drivers were the most likely to cut off other vehicles at the intersection, even when controlling for time of day, driver’s perceived sex and age, and amount of traffic.” Drivers of “high status” cars cut off other vehicles nearly 30% of the time; “low-status” cars cut off other vehicles 7.7% of the time.
- Drivers of “low status” vehicles failed to yield to a pedestrian in a crosswalk up to 30% of the time, while 46% of “high status” vehicle drivers failed to yield, an increase of more than 50%.
Wrong Again, Issa – the Bush and Reagan Administrations Were ‘Most Corrupt,’ And TARP Was Bush’s Bill, Not Obama’s
History will likely record that one of House Speaker John Boehner’s worst mistakes was his decision to allow California Rep. Darrell Issa to head the government oversight committee. It was Chairman Issa, after all, who called an all-male panel to discuss contraceptives earlier this year. The optics of this stupid move instantly became an undeniable symbol that Republicans were engaging in a war on women.
Issa, a one-time accused car thief and arsonist, is best-known in California as the guy who funded the initial effort to recall Democratic Gov. Gray Davis, in 2003, so that Issa himself could become governor, only to break down into sobs, with local news cameras rolling, when action star Arnold Schwarzenegger stepped in and bigfooted him out of the way.
More recently, in the weeks after Boehner appointed Issa to the chairmanship, Issa created a stir by predicting that the Obama administration would become the most corrupt government in history. This week, in an interview with Bloomberg news, Issa doubled down on his prediction:
