Playinghardball
Playinghardball's Journal
USA Today: Obama on Air Force One: ‘It’s a nice plane’
…. President Obama talked about his very special form of transportation during his education speech Thursday in Nashville, where he talked about more professional training for students — including aviation.
Students can “work on your very own airplane,” Obama said. “That’s pretty cool — I didn’t get my own plane until I was 47 years old.”
“And it’s big!” one student helpfully added.
“Yes, it’s a nice plane,” Obama said. “But I’ve got to give it back.
“That’s the only thing. It’s a rental.”
More at: http://www.usatoday.com/story/theoval/2014/01/31/obama-air-force-one-joke-nashville-speech/5077031/
Found on the Obama Diary
Timothy Egan (NYT): When Biography Trumps Substance
Only the snarkiest would not be open to the likable life story of Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the Eastern Washington politician who gave the “official” Republican response to the president’s State of the Union speech. She’s a farm girl from a big empty county just north of here, first in her family to attend college, mother of three, a rare woman in the retrograde men’s club of her party’s leadership.
Her district, poorer than the west side of the state, with much of the broken-family, broken-promise poverty of white rural America, is in real trouble. But the policy prescriptions of McMorris Rodgers have nothing to offer these people. Through her, you can see what happens when biography trumps substance in politics.
…. it would seem surprising that McMorris Rodgers voted to drastically cut food aid last year, and joined her party in resisting emergency benefits to the unemployed. She has been a leading strategist in the unrelenting Republican attempt to kill the Affordable Care Act.
And yet, in her district, people are flocking to Obamacare — well beyond the national average. Though she has been screening town hall meetings to highlight only critics of the new law, her constituents are doing something entirely different in making their personal health decisions.
More here: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/31/opinion/egan-when-biography-trumps-substance.html?_r=0
Found on the Obama Diary
Steve Benen: ‘Bette in Spokane’
For the last several months, conservative opponents of the Affordable Care Act, including congressional Republicans, have encouraged Americans to contact the GOP with “Obamacare horror stories.” The more the right can highlight those adversely affected by the law, the argument goes, the more ACA critics can undermine public support for reform.
To that end, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), the House Republican Conference chair, used her party’s official response to the State of the Union to highlight a woman in her home state who, she claimed, was better off before the law.
… it was only natural to wonder about the circumstances surrounding “Bette in Spokane,” who presumably represented the single best piece of anecdotal evidence McMorris Rodgers could find as part of her ACA indictment. Fortunately, we now have a better sense of the relevant details, which, like so many “Obamacare horror stories,” don’t help the Republicans’ case at all.
More here: http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/bette-spokane?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
Found on the Obama Diary
