Hole-y War

Mitt Romney took time out from driving his numerous cars to try to remmber what his rock-solid convictions are when it comes to women’s rights. Good thing that his new BFF, Ron Paul who is scared shitless that his worthless son, Rand, might move home if he doesn’t stay employed, was on hand to remind Mittsie that the conservative stance is that contraception is immoral.

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Hollow Weenies

From Newsweek/THE DAILY BEAST:

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, the Republican leadership’s tether to the Tea Party, flutters the hearts of the government-bashing, budget-slicing faithful with his relentless attacks on runaway federal spending. To Cantor, an $8 billion high-speed rail connecting Las Vegas to Disneyland is wasteful “pork-barrel spending.” The Virginia Republican set up the “You Cut” Web site to demonstrate how easy it is to slash government programs. And he made the Department of Housing and Urban Development the poster child for waste when he disclosed that the agency was paying for housing for Ph.D.s.

But away from the cameras, Cantor sometimes pulls right up to the spending trough, including the very stimulus law he panned in public. Letters obtained by Newsweek show him pressing the Transportation Department to spend nearly $3 billion in stimulus money on a high-speed-rail project—not the one he derided in Nevada, but another in his home state. “Virginia … will demonstrate that this historic investment in rail will create jobs, reduce congestion, spur economic growth and improve our environment,” says a letter he signed with other Virginia members in October 2009, cribbing President Obama’s own argument for the stimulus.

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Darrell Issa Goes Postal!

From Open Secrets blog:

The fate of the U.S. Postal Service, now $9.2 billion in debt, lies with a handful of lawmakers its workers’ unions hope will enact the serious reform needed to save the federal agency.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the committee that oversees the Postal Service, was once one of those lawmakers. But now, after pushing his Postal Reform Act through a House subcommittee, postal unions consider Issa their greatest foe.

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Darrell-iction of Duty

From THINK PROGRESS:

On Thursday, the New York Times responded to a demand for a retraction from Oversight Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa’s (R-CA) office regarding a major piece published two weeks ago about Issa’s many conflicts of interest between his congressional work and his vast financial holdings. In the letter, Dean Baquet, the assistant editor of the paper, debunked claims of factual inaccuracies listed by Issa spokesman Frederick Hill.

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Goldman Sucks

From THINK PROGRESS:

Last week, ThinkProgress revealed that Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) hired Peter Haller, a former Goldman Sachs vice president, as one of his top aides. Haller, who adopted his mother’s maiden name in 2008 and had escaped public scrutiny until now, coordinated an Oversight Committee letter to regulators demanding that they justify new Dodd-Frank rules impacting investment banks like his old employer, Goldman Sachs. After publication of our story, the Project on Government Oversight discovered more of Haller’s Oversight Committee letters, again on issues directly related to Goldman Sachs.

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Time for Sean Duffy to Meet the Real World

From the wausau daily herald:

Democrats are getting some amusing mileage out of Rep. Sean Duffy’s recent exchange with a Polk County constituent about his congressional pay.

In a videotape of a town hall meeting in Amery, Duffy, R-Ashland, is seen telling a construction worker who lost his job and now drives a bus that even he was having difficulty making ends meet. As a member of Congress, the Republican freshman is paid $174,000 a year.

“I struggle to meet my bills right now,” Duffy told the constituent after noting that he has six children and a mortgage, drives a used minivan and is still paying off his student loan. “At this point, I’m not living high off the hog.”

Duffy also pointed out that he resigned from his prosecutor’s job to run for Congress and spent six months without a salary.

Exsqueeze me?  If you can’t afford 6 kids, keep your weewee in your pants, and don’t buy a house if you can’t afford the mortgage payments (isn’t that one of the Rethuglican themes?).  In addition, don’t quit your day job if you can’t afford it, even if it’s to run for Congress.   How ironic that Seanie got his start on The Real World back in 1997, and he still has no clue about it.
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Darrell-iction of Duty

Washington (CNN) – Rep. Darrell Issa (R-California), the brand-new chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government reform, defended comments he had previously made that President Obama is “one of the most corrupt presidents of modern times.”

Speaking to CNN’s Chief National Correspondent John King Wednesday, Issa offered his definition of the word “corrupt”:

“I think people misunderstand the meaning of the word corrupt, and obviously, CNN does. ‘Corrupt’, or ‘corrupted’ or ‘failure’, it’s no different than a disc drive that’s given you some bits that are wrong,” Issa said on CNN.

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Crap Shoot

From the Los Angeles Times:

They want to repeal the healthcare overhaul, pare back financial regulations, slash federal spending and curtail the reach of the Environmental Protection Agency. In essence, they want to challenge the agenda of the Obama administration at every turn.

The new GOP chairmen of key House committees such as Appropriations, Budget, Energy and Commerce, and Oversight and Government Reform believe they have a mandate to check the size and scope of government.

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