FRESNO, Calif. — Some people give back to their community. Then there’s Fresno County School Superintendent Larry Powell, who’s really giving back. As in $800,000 — what would have been his compensation for the next three years.My emphases.
Until his term expires in 2015, Powell will run 325 schools and 35 school districts with 195,000 students, all for less than a starting California teacher earns.
“How much do we need to keep accumulating?” asks Powell, 63. “There’s no reason for me to keep stockpiling money.”
Powell’s generosity is more than just a gesture in a region with some of the nation’s highest rates of unemployment. As he prepares for retirement, he wants to ensure that his pet projects survive California budget cuts. And the man who started his career as a high school civics teacher, who has made anti-bullying his mission, hopes his act of generosity will help restore faith in the government he once taught students to respect.
“A part of me has chafed at what they did in Bell,” Powell said, recalling the corrupt Southern California city officials who secretly boosted their salaries by hundreds of thousands of dollars. “It’s hard to believe that someone in the public trust would do that to the public. My wife and I asked ourselves, ‘What can we do that might restore confidence in government?’”
Powell’s answer? Ask his board to allow him to return $288,241 in salary and benefits for the next three and a half years of his term. He technically retired, then agreed to be hired back to work for $31,000 a year — $10,000 less than a first-year teacher — and with no benefits.
“I thought it was so very generous on his part,” said school board member Sally Tannenbaum. “We get to keep him, but at a much lower rate.”
His move was so low-key, his manner so unassuming, that it took four days after the school board meeting for word of his act to get out to the community. There were no press releases or self-congratulatory pats on the back.
[vid via The Right Scoop]
"I think I'm the only senator who does not see a president when I look in the mirror. I’m looking for someone better. That’s what I’ve been trying to do this year is advocate for the right kind of candidate."
No, of course Governor Perry is not dumb. What kind of nonsense question is that?Is Rick Perry dumb?
Another Texas governor who drops his “g’s” and scorns elites is running for president and the whispers are the same: lightweight, incurious, instinctual.
Strip away the euphemisms and Rick Perry is confronting an unavoidable question: Is he dumb — or just “misunderestimated?”
Doubts about Perry’s intellect have hounded him since he was first elected as a state legislator nearly three decades ago. In Austin, he’s been derided as a right-place, right-time pol who looks the part but isn’t so deep — “Gov. Goodhair.” Now, with the chatter picking back up among his enemies and taking flight in elite Republican circles, the rap threatens to follow him to the national stage.
“He’s like Bush only without the brains,” cracked one former Republican governor who knows Perry, repeating a joke that has made the rounds.
The Texan’s loyalists reject the suggestion, asserting that it owes to political bias and sour grapes, but Perry himself seems to welcome the low bar. He cracked on the campaign trail earlier this month that the difference between him and Bush was that he went to Texas A&M and the former president attended Yale.
Romney, in a speech he's delivered to the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) conference in San Antonio [ahem, in Texas], will stress his private sector experience as the major factor qualifying him for the presidency.My emphasis.
Romney also decried "career politicians," a subtle shot at Perry, who's held public office continuously since 1985.
"I am a conservative businessman. I have spent most of my life outside of politics, dealing with real problems in the real economy," Romney said. "Career politicians got us into this mess and they simply don't know how to get us out!"
Romney's private sector résumé is emerging as one of the key ways Romney, the dethroned front-runner in the Republican presidential primary, is distinguishing himself from Perry, who's ascended to front-runner status. Two recent national polls showed the Texas governor as the leading choice of Republicans for a presidential candidate.
Bryan Fischer, on his radio program yesterday: Both of the cases that went to the United States Supreme Court that dealt with the issue of whether states should criminalize sodomy, and of course they still ought to be able to do it, every state in the union criminalized sodomy until 1962 and then forty nine states until 1972, then they began to fall like dominoes. But by the time of the founding until the late 20th Century, homosexual activity was a felony offense in the United States of America, there is no reason why it cannot be a criminal offense once again, absolutely none.My emphasis. I'm speechless.
Happy birthday Michael. Shamon.
After Walter Reed, Moving OnAwesome.
Before his injury, Tyson Quink said, he didn't imagine he would have a long career in the Army. He wanted to have his own command, and then get out. He said he wanted to have a simple life.
"Maybe be a teacher and coach some high school football, and live with my dog and my wife, and have some kids," he said.
But even with his injury, he said, "There's a lot of options."
As the Walter Reed Army Medical Center closes, the Quinks will be moving to a separate facility in Maryland. They're among the very last of the thousands of American troops who've been treated at this hospital center for a century.
They are working to reconstruct their lives, and to follow in the footsteps of a U.S. Marine who's been at the center longer — and who stopped by to share a laugh.
The Marine also lost both legs below the knee. He wears athletic shoes on his new metal feet.
He stood, unaided. And as he talked to the Quinks, he flexed his knees and bounced in the air, three times.
Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum said the gay community has "gone out on a jihad" against him for his stance against gay marriage.Really Rick? You're referring to yourself in the third person now?
"So the gay community said, 'He's comparing gay sex to incest and polygamy, how dare he do this,' and they have gone out on a, I would argue, jihad against Rick Santorum since then," the former senator said at a campaign stop in Spartanburg, S.C., on Friday.
Santorum (R-Pa.) has been an outspoken critic of both Lawrence v. Texas, a 2003 Supreme Court decision that struck down state sodomy laws, and state laws that allow gay marriage.
"'This is a napkin. A napkin is what a napkin is. It isn't a paper towel. It isn't a car.' You can call a napkin a car, but it doesn't make it a car. You can call a paper towel a chair, but it doesn't make it a chair. Marriage is what marriage is," Santorum said.
My emphases."We must be pro-life or you cannot be pro-liberty the way I understand it,” Paul said at Ames. Speaking about his experience as a medical student in the Sixties, he talked about seeing one premature baby deliberately being allowed to die and another baby, also premature, being rescued by a diligent medical staff. “My conclusion that very day is you cannot have relative value for life and deal with that.” he observed. “We cannot play God and make those decisions. All life is precious.”
It was not the first time this campaign Paul had taken time out from his more commonly expressed concerns to emphasize his pro-life views. In June, he spoke, via Skype, to the Right to Life convention in Jacksonville, Fla. He has signed the Susan B. Anthony List’s pro-life pledge for presidential candidates. And he announced that the second budget priority for a Paul presidency would be “veto[ing] any spending bill that contains funding for Planned Parenthood, facilities that perform abortion, and all government family-planning schemes.” That came behind vetoing “spending bills that contribute to an unbalanced budget” but ahead of “direct[ing] my administration to cease any further implementation of Obamacare.”
And while Mike Huckabee drew the social-conservative hype in the 2008 election cycle, it was Paul who was the only presidential candidate to speak at that year’s National March for Life in Washington, D.C. Paul also received the endorsement of high-profile pro-life activist Norma McCorvey (“Jane Roe”) in that campaign.
But Paul still has a problem with pro-lifers. He wants to return abortion-legalization decisions to the states, not work to make abortion illegal on the federal level. “Strangely, given that my moral views are akin to theirs, various national pro-life groups have been hostile to my position on this issue. But I also believe in the Constitution, and therefore, I consider it a state-level responsibility to restrain violence against any human being,” Paul wrote in his book Liberty Defined, published this spring.
In practical terms, what Paul proposes is removing abortion-related legislation from the jurisdiction of the federal courts rather than fighting to overturn Roe v. Wade. He views his proposal as “simpler,” since the jurisdiction could be removed via legislation rather than pushing for a Supreme Court decision, and he believes that if the jurisdiction of the federal courts was removed, abortion laws could be decided on a state-by-state basis. “Ending nationally legalized abortions by federal court order is neither a practical answer to the problem nor a constitutionally sound argument,” he wrote.
Paul is suspicious of the motivations of pro-lifers who object to his view that abortion is a matter for the states. “My guess is that the scurrilous attacks by these groups are intended more to discredit my entire defense of liberty and the Constitution than they are to deal with the issue of abortion,” he argued in Liberty Defined. “These same groups have very little interest in being pro-life when it comes to fighting illegal, undeclared wars in the Middle East or preventive (aggressive) wars for religious reasons. An interesting paradox!”
Shocking, I know.
The end of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is quickly approaching. On September 20th the repeal and certification process officially is complete and the sexuality that a person is born will no longer be grounds for discharge. As we approach this historic day that marks the end of seventeen years of institutionalized discrimination former and active duty service members are telling their stories of how they made it through and what it was like to endure.
GQ magazine has collected some of these stories and presents them here.
Like the story of Eric Alva, the first American injured in Operation Iraqi Freedom.
When Alva signed up, before "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," he had to lie on his paperwork. "I knew I was lying," he says. "But I loved what I did, I loved my job, and I didn't want to tell anyone. I said, 'It's going to be my secret.' I knew I was not going to be happy in a way, but I knew this was what I wanted." In 2003 he was deployed to the Middle East, and on March 21 he crossed the border from Kuwait. His unit was part of a huge convoy that stopped outside Basra. Alva got out of his Humvee and went to fetch something from the back of the vehicle. "That's when I triggered the IED. I was awake, my hearing was sort of gone. My hand was covered in blood and part of my index finger was gone. The chaplain was holding my head and I was telling him I didn't want to die. I was taken off a helicopter in Kuwait—it was estimated that I was only in Iraq about three hours—and carried into surgery. I woke up later and when I looked down I saw that the right side of my sheet was flat. I cried myself asleep, only to wake up hours later and see that it's true: My leg is gone."
DADT not only affected the lives of those who risked their lives on the battlefield. It also took a toll on those they loved.
"The relationship lasted for about four years, but I always felt like I was disrespecting him, to have to pretend he didn't exist when I went to work. When I got deployed, he was there with my family when I left. It kind of sucked—to shake his hand and a little pat on the back and 'I'll see you when I see you' kind of thing. And when you're getting ready to come back, the spouses were getting classes—here's how you welcome your Marine back into the family—and my boyfriend didn't get any of that. I had a really hard time adjusting to being home. We tried to make it work for a year but he was getting more and more paranoid about people finding out about us. It killed me that he felt that way because of me. I don't think we ever really had a chance, ultimately."
For some DADT became the weapon used by haters.
The harassment grew worse. Of a number of escalating events—Rocha was also force-fed dog food and locked into a shit-filled dog kennel—the most abusive and explicitly homophobic was when he was ordered by his commander to act in a dog-training scenario, repeated over and over so that every dog in the unit could be run through it. "The scenarios were supposed to be relevant to what the dogs or the handlers would experience. Like a domestic dispute, or an armed individual who has been spotted on the base, or someone strapped with explosives. This day he chose that the scenario would be that I would be getting caught giving another service member a blow job and, once the dogs came in, I was supposed to jump up from having been in between this guy's legs. He would coach as to how exactly he wanted it played out, which was the sickest part of it." Rocha says he had to act this out between half a dozen and a dozen times, about fifteen to twenty minutes each time. As they repeated it, his commander ordered Rocha to make the scenario more extreme. "He wanted me to be very queer and flamboyant. He wanted me to pretend like there was stuff on my face. Loving it so much that each scenario was gayer and more disgusting—the introduction of fake semen, that I would have to wipe my face, or that I would have to make slurping noises. The level of humiliation I experienced that day, that's when I knew I wasn't safe in the military."
I highly recommend heading over there and reading more http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big-issues/201109/dont-ask-dont-tell-gay-soldiers-military#ixzz1WAXDJMrl
When Apple acquired Jobs back in 1996, their market cap was sitting at $3 billion; currently, Apple’s market cap is sitting pretty at $347 billion, only $2 billion less than the most valuable public company in the world, Exxon, having surpassed Exxon to become the most valuable public company in the world for a short while a couple of weeks ago. One can only wonder if the imminent release of the iPhone 5 will push Apple past Exxon and give them a permanent hold on the most valuable public company position.1. I have no doubt that the release of the iPhone 5 will have a net-positive effect for Apple.
[Santorum] criticized Perry and former President George W. Bush for what he called lax immigration laws. Texas has the second-highest number of illegal immigrants in the country, according to Pew. Someone asked if he would “smoke” Perry out for his immigration stances, Santorum said he’d hear a lot about it.It's Rick vs. Rick!
“We know unfortunately the history of governors in Texas on the issue of immigration,” the former Pennsylvania senator said, adding, “I understand being governor of Texas is a tough thing. But you’ve got to stand up and defend -- being a senator from Pennsylvania is a tough thing. But you’ve got to stand up and defend your record.”
Interesting.While Rick Perry and Mitt Romney have similar levels of support among GOP voters overall, Perry receives particularly strong support among those who agree with the Tea Party.
More than eight-in-ten Tea Party Republicans who have heard of Rick Perry say there is at least some chance they would vote for him (86%), including 49% who say there is a good chance. Mitt Romney also receives strong potential support (78% of Tea Party Republicans say there is some chance they would vote for him) but far fewer Tea Party Republicans say there is a good chance they would vote for Romney (29%). Since May, the percentage of Tea Party Republicans who say there is a good chance they would vote for Romney has slipped nine points.
Michele Bachmann is one of several GOP candidates who fare better among Tea Party Republicans than among Republicans who disagree with or have no opinion of the Tea Party. About eight-in-ten Tea Party Republicans (79%) say there is at least some chance they would vote for her, 40% say there is a good chance. By comparison, 49% of non-Tea Party Republicans say there is at least some chance they would vote for her, just 15% say there is a good chance.
About seven-in-ten Tea Party Republicans (69%) say there is at least some chance they would vote for Sarah Palin, including 31% who say there is a good chance.
Herman Cain remains less well-known among Tea Party Republicans than most other candidates (64% have heard of him), but those who can rate him offer strong potential support. About three-quarters say there is at least some chance they would vote for him (77%), including 47% who say good chance.
It's great for Rick Perry, but, actually, not too bad for Mitt Romney. Mitt does trail three tea party candidates, but he shows a reasonably high ceiling with tea partiers, which means he doesn't yet have to pander to them to ensure they'd back him in a general election.BUT, will Mitt have to pander to them to win the PRIMARY election? After all, that's what he's running right now...
Ladies and gentlemen I don’t want to get weird on this so please take it for what it’s worth. But it seems to me the Washington Monument is a symbol of America’s power, it has been the symbol of our great nation, we look at that monument and say this is one nation under God. Now there’s a crack in it, there’s a crack in it and it’s closed up. Is that a sign from the Lord? Is that something that has significance or is it just result of an earthquake? You judge, but I just want to bring that to your attention. It seems to me symbolic. When Jesus was crucified and when he died the curtain in the Temple was rent from top to bottom and there was a tear and it was extremely symbolic, is this symbolic? You judge.Rrrrrright.
While suggesting that any disaster relief be offset with spending cuts elsewhere.There is an appropriate federal role in incidents like this.
Obviously, the problem is that people in Virginia don’t have earthquake insurance.
All of us know that the federal government is busy spending money it doesn’t have.
Thank God.Former Vice President Dick Cheney says in a new memoir that he urged President George W. Bush to bomb a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor site in June 2007. But, he wrote, Mr. Bush opted for a diplomatic approach after other advisers — still stinging over “the bad intelligence we had received about Iraq’s stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction” — expressed misgivings.
“I again made the case for U.S. military action against the reactor,” Mr. Cheney wrote about a meeting on the issue. “But I was a lone voice. After I finished, the president asked, ‘Does anyone here agree with the vice president?’ Not a single hand went up around the room.”
Note: You can't crush rebel scum on decaf.Heh.
As Doug pointed out yesterday on the Twitters:Joe Wurzelbacher, better known as Joe the Plumber, is considering a run against U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur in 2012, according to Republican Party sources.
Jon Stainbrook, chairman of the Lucas County Republican Party, said there is "high-level interest in the national Republican Party" in a potential Wurzelbacher candidacy.
"We are encouraging Joe to run," Mr. Stainbrook said. "He hasn't made any official decision yet."
Chris Maloney, spokesman for the Ohio Republican Party, said a candidate like Mr. Wurzelbacher would have strong fund-raising capabilities thanks to national recognition he received during the 2008 presidential campaign, but added such star power would have to be weighed against the advantages of experience that someone like a state legislator could bring to the race.
Mr. Wurzelbacher wouldn't confirm or deny a congressional run. "I think it's a very interesting idea," he said Tuesday. "That's as much as I can say."
One GOP source put the chances of Mr. Wurzelbacher running against Miss Kaptur at "90 percent."
Anyone who thinks Joe (The Plumber) Wurzelbacher has any chance of beating Marcy Kaptur has been sniffing too much Drano, I thinkMr. The Plumber has nary a shot, especially in that particular district in Ohio. BUT, it will make for some great moments on the stump and taking questions from the press. I would hate to be deprived of some great political comedy.
Yes. I just quoted myself.To equate vacation time (within reason) with work ethic would be a mistake, particularly as it relates to one of/the most stressful jobs on the planet. And, as Frum points out, the President never really gets a vacation.
... and Apple's official press release:To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community:
I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.
I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.
As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.
I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.
I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.
Steve
Apple’s Board of Directors today announced that Steve Jobs has resigned as Chief Executive Officer, and the Board has named Tim Cook, previously Apple’s Chief Operating Officer, as the company’s new CEO. Jobs has been elected Chairman of the Board and Cook will join the Board, effective immediately.One thing is very clear, I still want an iPhone....
“Steve’s extraordinary vision and leadership saved Apple and guided it to its position as the world’s most innovative and valuable technology company,” said Art Levinson, Chairman of Genentech, on behalf of Apple's Board. “Steve has made countless contributions to Apple’s success, and he has attracted and inspired Apple’s immensely creative employees and world class executive team. In his new role as Chairman of the Board, Steve will continue to serve Apple with his unique insights, creativity and inspiration.”
“The Board has complete confidence that Tim is the right person to be our next CEO,” added Levinson. “Tim’s 13 years of service to Apple have been marked by outstanding performance, and he has demonstrated remarkable talent and sound judgment in everything he does.”
Jobs submitted his resignation to the Board today and strongly recommended that the Board implement its succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO.
The ransacking of Moammar Gadhafi's compound is turning up some bizarre loot. Following on from the Libyan leader's eccentric fashion accessories and his daughter's golden mermaid couch, the latest discovery is a photo album filled with page after page of pictures of Condoleezza Rice.Annnnnd, that's weird.
The former U.S. Secretary of State paid a visit to Tripoli in 2008 during a brief interlude that saw Gadhafi begin to be welcomed back into the international fold. As Jason Ukman of the Washington Post wrote on Wednesday, "it was only three short years ago that Rice shared a late-night dinner with Gaddafi to break the Ramadan fast, three short years ago that the United States and Libya were celebrating what was to be a new chapter in their relations."
In a 2007 interview with al-Jazeera television, Gadhafi spoke of Rice in glowing terms. "I support my darling black African woman," he said. "I admire and am very proud of the way she leans back and gives orders to the Arab leaders ... Leezza, Leezza, Leezza. ... I love her very much. I admire her and I'm proud of her because she's a black woman of African origin."
Here’s a look at George Pataki’s presidential campaign web site, which is mostly behind password protection.My guess is that Pataki is probably pretty miffed at his web-development team right now.
Earlier this morning, it was hosting some dummy info about a congressional candidate. That info was removed and the site was put under password protection after I emailed Pataki spokesman David Catalfamo.
But if you try logging onto the site, it brings you to a page that shows some of Pataki’s site. One category is called “Pataki’s Record” which has links to things like “budget” “taxes” “job and business climate” “national security” “welfare” “death penalty and crime” “healthcare” “k-12 education” and “higher education.”
...then, via @MelissaTweets, I found the perpetrator: Carlos R. Graterol, who blogs at CampaignFix.com:Well, this is interesting. I hear that the not-so-good people at National Review are attacking me over something I said on my Google+ page. Except, I don’t have a Google+ page.
This is the third incident I’m aware of — there may well be more — in which people are claiming to be me. There was also my nonexistent connection with academia.edu, and at least one web opinion piece by someone claiming to be me (and sounding not at all like me).
This is really cute, not. Apparently some people can’t find enough things to attack in what I actually say, so they’re busy creating fake quotes. And I have enough on my plate without trying to chase all this stuff down.
So if you see me quoted as saying something really stupid or outrageous, and it didn’t come from the Times or some other verifiable site, you should probably assume it was a fake.
If you showed any disgust at my fake comment written on Google+, I expect you would show equal antipathy for the two quotes above. For too long now, Krugman along with other Keynesian economists such as Nouriel Roubini have supported Keynesian policies which advocate for more taxation of the job creating private sector to contribute to the job destroying public sector. While he public sector has “created” jobs, one must remember and take into account the opportunity cost of taxing the private sector.Let me explain to you why Carlos R. Graterol is a f**king douche...
I am not ashamed of what I have said in Paul Krugman’s name on Google+. It is but an example of the many misguided beliefs that Paul Krugman holds, defends, and espouses on a daily basis. It is a shame that based on Paul Krugman’s reputation, I can write a statement about the East Coast earthquake as I did above and many of Krugman’s supporters would defend it and share it with others.
Below are two screenshots of access only I possess of the Paul Krugman’s Google+ account. It was fun while it lasted, but even pretending to be Paul Krugman has become too much for me to bear. My name is Carlos R. Graterol. I studied Economics and Political Science at Florida State University and graduated in Spring 2010, Go Noles!
[W]e must ask about the economic aftershocks from Tuesday’s horror. These aftershocks need not be major. Ghastly as it may seem to say this, the terror attack — like the original day of infamy, which brought an end to the Great Depression — could even do some economic good....which to me, was completely out-of-line given the timing of the writing only three days after the attacks.
I am not ashamed of what I have said in Paul Krugman’s name on Google+. It is but an example of the many misguided beliefs that Paul Krugman holds, defends, and espouses on a daily basis.See? Really, it's no big deal! Because I completely disagree with Krugman on "issue X" or "issue Y", it's okay to pretend that I'm him and post inaccurate things on a fake Google+ account.
A 6.0 quake in Mineral, Virginia that was felt as far away Burlington, Vermont has prompted a precautionary evacuation of the US Capital and the Pentagon in Washington DC. The quake has also triggered evacuations and closures up and down the Eastern seaboard including the Holland Tunnel, the control towers at JFK and Newark Airports. CBS News’ Norah O’Donnell tweeted that Secret Service was rushing people out of the White House.
This quake come not long after a 5.3 quake hit Colorado, it’s strongest quake since 1967. The two are not connected.
My emphasis.Let's dial back and introduce some reality to this partisan point-scoring.
The president of the United States never gets a vacation, not really. The nuclear football follows wherever the president goes. He receives the daily intelligence briefing every morning, including Christmas. The decisions never stop, the cares of state never lighten, the burden of responsibility is never lifted.
When a president goes "on vacation," here's what happens:
1) He or she is spared the ceremonial parts of the job: the state dinners, the meetings with the girl who sold the most Girl Scout cookies that year, that kind of thing;
2) The other members of the first family are liberated from living inside the White House, aptly described by Harry Truman as "the crown jewel of the federal prison system."
But this game of tallying "vacation days" to make a point about presidential work ethic tells us nothing. Franklin Roosevelt devised the concept of Lend Lease, which provided aid to Britain and other nations in the early years of World War II, while on a two-week cruise through the Caribbean in December 1940. That seems a very good week's work -- even if he also managed to find time for a little sunbathing.
We don't measure presidential productivity by hours spent behind a desk in Washington. We measure by results.
Even sillier than complaints about days away from Washington is the tit for tat whereby presidential vacations are used by one set of partisans to depict another set of partisans as "out of touch."
“I’m not afraid of anybody. This is a tough game. You can’t be intimidated. You can’t be frightened. And as far as I’m concerned — the tea party can go straight to hell.” -Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D), in footage shot by the local ABC News affiliate.
Yea, I'm kind of self-promoting here. Ha-ha.
Dang.Former Treasury official Bruce Bartlett labeled newly-minted Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry "an idiot" Friday.
Bartlett, who served at Treasury under former President George H.W. Bush and as a domestic policy adviser to the late President Ronald Reagan, delivered the choice words to the Texas Gov. in reference to his recent comments about Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.
"Rick Perry's an idiot, and I don't think anyone would disagree with that," Bartlett said Friday on CNN's "American Morning."
"What people recognize is that there's a fear that the United States is in an unstoppable decline. They see the rise of China, the rise of India, the rise of the Soviet Union and our loss militarily going forward. And especially with this very bad debt ceiling bill, what we have done is given a favor to President Obama and the first thing he'll whack is five hundred billion out of the military defense at a time when we're fighting three wars. People recognize that."
Insignificant, silly little things -- we don't waste a whole lot of time on.Right -- because whether the GOP establishment likes it or not, Ron Paul is a serious candidate, who could be a serious contender in the Republican primaries next spring.
Can you believe how bad Huntsman is doing? Can you believe how well Bachmann is doing? And why is Ron Paul getting no loving?Indeed.
Video via GOP12.
We change the economy by changing the tax code. How many of you love the IRS? No! It’s time to change it. I went to work in that system because the first rule of war is ‘know your enemy.’ So I went to the inside to learn how they work because I wanted to beat them.My emphasis.
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Eat your Wheaties -- it's cartoon time! 
