For Christie , the cavalry is arriving...

Have you been following the anxiety attacks of  some Republicans who want to spin the bridge crises away from Gov. Christie's shadow?  Benghazi and Obama have fallen from the lips of the president's enemies. So have reprises of the IRS story. Anything to distract from the Fort Lee quake.

Some samples:

 Haley Barbour, the former GOP national chairman,  blamed Christie's woes on the "liberal media elite who continue to treat this like Lincoln's assassination."  (Shocking that right-wing Republicans from Mississippi even mention Lincoln these days.)

Reince Priebus, the current GOP chairman who is always good for a laugh, described Christie as a "smart person" and unlikely to know anything about his staff's involvement.  Not a "single link to Chris Christie  has been found," Reince protested.

But the runaway winner of the Grumpy Abe Linguistic Lunacy Award (GALL)  goes to Fox News panelist Brit Hume, who framed Christie's troubles as the consequence of a gender bias that denigrates macho men:

"I would have to say that in this sort of feminized   atmosphere in which we exist today, guys who are masculine and muscular like that in their private conduct, kind of old fashion tough guys run some risk...This guy is very much an old fashioned masculine, muscular guy  and there are political risks associated with that.  Maybe it shouldn't be, but that's how it is."

Maybe?

Christie: Kasich and I have similar approached to governing

As Custer learned at Little Big Horn and Christie at Fort  Lee, there are no certainties in war and politics. The Custer story has long been assigned to the archives.  The Christie story, past, present and future, is still unfolding. In its wake will be the love-in between the New Jersey and Ohio governors at the Republican Governors Association meeting in Arizona last November.

It was there on the widely reported stage that drew trend-conscience reporters from everywhere that Chris Christie giddily declared, "I love John Kasich".  (Please don't read sex!)

According to reporting by Kasich Chronicler Joe Vardon of the Columbus Dispatch, our governor had already heartily commended Christie the day before by declaring :  "Chris and I are friends.  He texts me, we laugh, we bust each other's chops."

Want to hear more from  the Ohio man?  Kasich, Vardon wrote,   predicted great success"  for his friend, noting that Christie had "celebrity" working for him, an important asset in politics. (He was even elected chairman of the Republican association in Scottsdale. )

"Christie is going to do great out there," Vardon  quoted  Kasich.  " Are you kidding?  He is like a a force now.  People want to be around  Kasich. He came out to Ohio during my last campaign, people just love him.   He said if you don't elect this guy I am coming back New Jersey style.  They like it."

New Jersey style?

Christie returned the accolade , pointing out that he and Kasich "get along very well because we have very similar approaches to governing."

Well, now,  similar approaches to governing?

Kasich will probably call me  an idiot and bust my chops (!) for bringing up ancient history, but I don't mind.  I'm not running for reelection - a campaign that he had once hoped would be supercharged by his celebrated friend from New Jersey.

PS:  On the plus side for Kasich in the Dispatch report  was that Kasich was "kind of a magnet in Scottsdale for national reporters looking for insight."  Hope that they didn't take that one too seriously.)

What's in a name? A plugged bridge!

 OK, gang.  Was there an ominous forewarning that was encoded in the name of the woman responsible for Bridgegate? (See Gail Collins)  Why did it take weeks after Gov. Christie's loyal team had plugged  the George Washington Bridge to connect the dots with Christie's deputy chief of staff, Bridget Anne Kelly?   Who knew?

As one who has never been confused with Abe Lincoln or Abe Vigoda I have not  been  overly sensitive about name association and for the large part gotten away with it.

But in this instance, do you think Bridget was trying to tell us something all along for weeks?

Gail Collins wrapped up the mess this way:

"This is very big.  Voters have been known to overlook financial chicanery or stuffed ballot boxes.  They might continue to love a guy who screwed up the local bond rating  or got evicted from the governor's mansion by an irate wife.  But could you ever trust a politician who was implicated in a deliberate  effort to ruin rush hour?"

Well said.  But even Collins overlooked the portent in Bridget's name.

Yes, congressman, there ARE free lunches

Civilized people have always been expected to know that the only certainties in life are death, taxes and the myth of free lunches.  As Republican conservative Rep. Jack Kingston of Georgia recently addressed the question of school lunches, poor kids should have to mop floors or  pay a dime  for such traditional entitlements to teach them ...umm... "there are no free lunches."

Way to go, congressman!  But a nosy Savannah TV station, WSAV 3,  has now reported that Kingston hasn't practiced what he now preaches during his three years in Congress.  He and his staff expensed $4,182 for "business" meals and received $4,289.33 in free meals from special interests that included the Georgia Bankers Assn.

Kingston's  campaign also expensed more than $145,000 for meals and catering.

As you might suspect, the  congressman was annoyed that he was even asked about this disconnect, saying he grew up with a "good work ethic" but  "it's hard in today's society to have a discussion where you want to challenge the status quo because of today's 'I gotcha'  politics."

From what I can tell, the only status quo that he challenged was the free lunch program for the kids.

Browns search: Rebuilding sand castles at high tide

The Browns have interviewed -  or will interview - so many prospects on their list to hire a new coach that it wasn't until this morning that an office janitor in Berea happened to see a calendar scheduling  an interview next week with a coach they just fired -   Rod Chudzinski.

When reporters asked Team CEO Joe Banner about the odd entry on the calendar, he  said there may have been some things "on the upside" about Chud that have since turned up after he left.  "If nothing else," Banner explained, "it's entirely possible that Chud has now had plenty of experience to be the perfect transitional coach for 2014 until we find someone else for 2015."

Meantime, the great media mentioning game has now turned to Jim Tressel, who needs no introduction at this point in his career. He's widely mentioned  now in the media's   Department of Contagious Speculation as a candidate for the Browns, which have earnestly  - if clumsily - tried to rebuild sand castles at high tide.  But he's been teasingly coy about his next move, whether as University of Akron  President or Browns coach.

In fairness to Chud, as well as the team's choice for 2015, it would be charitable if
Tressel announced something soon enough to cancel further interviews with Chud,who is out of work with no unemployment insurance. .

P.S.  You heard it here first: neither Sam Rutigliano nor Knute Rockne has come up in any of the conversations.  

Renacci's 16th District: a gerrymandered fortress

It now appears that two-term Rep. Jim Renacci, the oh-so conservative Republican congressman from Wadsworth , will get a free ride in the 2014 congressional election. That, at least, is the concession of Democratic leaders in Summit  and Stark counties.  At best, they say it would be a costly uphill battle against Renacci  in the 16th district that might also be labeled Gerrymander Central.

A glance at the district's disheveled boxy boundaries would convince some people that it was stuck together with Lego blocks connecting  awkwardly from the farms of Wayne  County through part of Summit County on the way to the urban shores of
Lake Erie - the Republican nod to diversity.  Folks, Chile has a sleeker form.

A second look might also suggest its contours resemble a holdup man pointing  a gun at Youngstown.  It was all in the interest, of course, of herding as many Republican voters into Renacci's District as the law would allow while granting voting privileges to  possible GOP dogs and cats from good homes.

 Gerrymandering has been around  for a long time for both parties; but the 16th may have lowered the bar beyond further partisan imagination. For Renacci, it was as though he arrived on an elevator equipped with a hammock.

All of which has left Summit County Democratic Chairman Wayne Jones without much hope of challenging Renacci. He has a terse  answer:  He has found no candidates.

Renacci went to Capitol Hill by defeating   Democratic incumbent John Boccieri in 2010 and later beat Incumbent Betty Sutton (2012) when both were dropped into the same redrawn base friendly to him.  One of the wealthiest guys on Capitol Hill (est. $35-  to $100 million) , earning his keep with nursing homes and as the owner of the arena football team, the  Columbus Dragons, Renacci can now relax in the luxury of knowing the plantation belongs entirely to him.

He should have been playing golf that day...

FROM THE BBC:

"Bombings of bus stations, cafes, restaurants and even mosques have become part of everyday life.

"More than 400 people have been killed in attacks in Iraq this month alone, mostly in the Capital. And 
the figures do not include those who may die later of their injuries." 

* * * *

SOMEBODY OVER THERE DIDN'T GET THE MEMO: 

Whatever happened to El Nino?

Polar vortex, did someone call it?  The icy burden of zero-dipping weather, I mean.  In America, where we must have names and explanations for everything, the term was just one more blank in the pre-millennial dictionary in my head. And we had long thought that with El Nino, we had heard  everything there was to know about crazy weather.

(Along with the thousands of flight cancellations and dead batteries, PV aIso will lead to friendly approaches by folks blithely asking: "Is it cold enough for you?"  I have yet to figure out an appropriate response.)

The media loves freaky weather.  Headline writers can top stories with "Brrrr..."  or "city digs out"  - observations that do not require advanced journalism degrees. And then there was the news  editor across the room from me who who lived for the moment that we would get a photo of  an old woman, head scarf flat out and a twisted umbrella,  bent forward against the wind!

The interesting  non-confrontational thing about freaky weather is that nobody can trace it to the liberal media.  Can't happen when nature takes over. No risks that anybody will turn off the TV or cancel a newspaper subscription over sub-zero reports. And although the TV meteorologist  commands the screen with weird looking maps (a benefit I never enjoyed growing up in a frigid hill town)  their boasts of being first with the stories lose some credibility when you consider that all of the reports arrive from the same  National Weather Service.

At the same time, we've noticed that the climate deniers are stomping with finger-pointing delight to the minus-30s in some northern states.  Numbing evidence, they'll  tell you, with anecdotal science to satisfy their spinning.The Plain Dealer's Kevin O'Brien, the very conservative editorial page columnist, went to great, if fog-bound, lengths to satirically link an ice-trapped ship in Anarctica to the myth of climate change.

In my old town, they closed the mile-long east-west Main Street in snowy weather so we kids could belly slam our sleds at the top of the hill and burst all the way down  to the other end below.   If we had only known about polar vortex as the source of our pleasure!    But now that we've mentioned Newt Gingrich's attempt to be cool with soy latte, I wonder if the TV millennials with their weather maps will  accept me as a senior  observer if I mention polar vortex to them with a  wind chill factor thrown in to be even cooler. Better yet, frozen.  

Newt trying to be hip with soy latte

How long, would you guess, would it take the conservative gag team to ridicule New York City's new liberal mayor Bill de Blasio?  After all, the new guy at City Hall  could be  a  Democratic presidential candidate against  Sarah Palin  as early as 2028. These days you damn well can't  take a chance.

So it was left to Newt Gingrich who, like the dust on a curio shelf that never goes away, to turn up on CNN's "Crossfire" with some  props to convince us that de Blasio was a   soy latte phony.  I can't believe I wrote  soy latte, having never heard of it before my received wisdom from Newt, who forever impresses me as a latter-day Crazy Guggenheim.   And, folks, I drink a lot of coffee.

To illustrate his point, whatever it was, Newt lined up three Starbucks cups to suggest that de Blasio's support of a tax increase for the rich would amount to no more than a cup of, um,  soy latte.    When you stretch that far to show how hip you are to modern trends,   it still is sort of phony by itself, don't you think, for an old-timer like Newt trying to be cool.

As Republicans go, it resets the terms used by his brethren, like Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel, who is remarkably still comfortable referring to "limousine liberals"  in his press releases.

Modifiers for liberals have been around a long time.  Spiro Agnew put much stock in "pointy-headed liberals". He was a coffee drinker of sorts and when he was offered a cup during a sit-down visit to our newspaper office, he jiggled the cup  and tipped out a little into the saucer. None of us, of course, pretended to notice it.  Maybe as his host we should have settled on his unflattering nattering nabobs  and left the care of coffee to others.

As for Newt, I promise to think of him the next time  I'm standing in a mile-long line at the Starbucks counter at the mall.  When my turn finally arrives, I will order two cups of straight, espresso-power coffee, one for me... and one for Newt. I know.  It would have been spiteful for me to order soy latte for him.

Naming names: The James A. Rhodes Arena, a.k.a. JAR

The clamor hereabouts over building a new sports arena to replace the James A. Rhodes hardwood is another example  of faded athletic crowd-keeping. In this instance, the JAR, the  acronym quickly assigned to the place by the sports crowd who thought it a cute substitute,   turned 30 in 2013.  That meant by today's standards, it's  a relic with too few seats (and other modern conveniences), regardless of whether they were ever fully filled.

For the proposed modern  structure claimed by the University of Akron,  the name was offered  as a kind of  honorific for the sitting governor in the early 80s. Among the  witnesses to a  a pre-arena meeting between then-UA President Dominic Guzzetta and Rhodes was Guzzetta's aide, Dick Wright.

"Before leaving for Columbus to meet  with  the governor with an appeal for his support,  I urged Guzzetta not to begin by promising Rhodes that the  arena would be named  after him, " Wright told me years later. A veteran of the give and take of state politics, Wright figured the official flattery  would only be useful as a last resort to win the governor's support.

"So what do you think happened?",  Wright said.   "As soon as we sat down in the governor's office, Dom  eagerly assured Rhodes that the University  would put the governor's name on it."

So much for Wright's counseling.  And that, dear reader, is how it proclaimed  James A. Rhodes for the ages before it became the JAR.

We can only  consider the consequences if a later governor, Robert Alphonso Taft II  had been in the office.

But given our addiction to acronyms, best that we not go there.



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