18 January 2008

From The Mothership That Brought You Dennis Kucinich

This is rather sad. Representative Marcy Kaptur (Dem - OH 9) mistook the Federal Reserve Chairman for the Treasury Secretary during a hearing before the House Budget Committee on 17 January 2008.

"Seeing as how you were the former CEO of Goldman Sachs ..." But the only person testifying at the hearing interrupted.

"No, no, no, you're confusing me with the Treasury Secretary," said Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.

"I've got the wrong firm? Paulson, Oh, OK. Where were you sir?" Kaptur said.

Bernanke noted that he was head of the Princeton University economics department.

"Oh, Princeton, oh, all right, sorry. I got you confused with the other one ... I'm glad you clarified that for the record," she said.
Now, I am willing to bet that a majority of Americans couldn't tell you the name of the Treasury Secretary or the Fed Chairman. Then again, Rep. Kaptur isn't just any American; she is one of the most senior women in Congress and is actually on the House Budget Committee. She should really be able to identify the Fed Chairman and the Treasury Secretary.

Considering past Kaptur statements, however, this may not be all that surprising. After all, this is the same congresswoman who compared American revolutionaries to Bin Laden and al-Qaeda back in early 2003.

"If you think back to our founding as a country, we are a country of revolution," Miss Kaptur said in an interview this week. [...]

When America "cast off monarchical Britain" in 1776, it involved the help of many religious people who had fled repression in other countries, the 11-term Toledo congressman said. Among the nontraditional American revolutionaries were the Green Mountain Boys, a patriot militia organized in 1770 in Bennington, Vt., to confront British forces, she said.

"One could say that Osama bin Laden and these non-nation-state fighters with religious purpose are very similar to those kind of atypical revolutionaries that helped to cast off the British crown," Miss Kaptur said. [...]

"I think that one thing that people of faith understand about the world of Islam is that the kind of insurgency we see occurring in many of these countries is an act of hope that life will be better using Islam as the only reed that they have to lean on.

"I think that people of faith understand that for many of the terrorists, their actions are acts of sacred piety to the point of losing their lives. And I think that people of faith understand that there is a heavy religious overtone to the opposition."
I'd like to thank Ohio's 9th District for sending such compelling leadership to Washington, D.C. for the past twenty-five years. What a winner.

USMC 9971 OUT

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