Today’s edition of quick hits:
* Undermining the Christie boomlet: “Lights out for Chris Christie. Today there was buzz about him possibly jumping into the race, but that’s over. New Jersey just got its credit rating downgraded by Fitch from AA to AA-.” Yesterday, Fitch gave the federal government a AAA rating.
* In Ohio, Gov. John Kasich (R) said he’s willing to revisit his recently passed anti-union measure if public unions agree to “drop their campaign to repeal the bill on the November ballot.”
* I’m starting to get the impression that the House GOP isn’t particularly interested in job creation: “House Republicans are unlikely to support a Democratic plan to create a congressional supercommittee tasked with helping to spur U.S. job creation, seeing the proposal as leading to costly and ineffective jobs programs.”
* The left has been urging President Obama to be more aggressive in pushing a jobs agenda and combating Republican rhetoric. A Daily Kos diarist makes the case that the president is doing this week exactly what progressives have been asking him to do.
* The recent partial FAA shutdown was embarrassing for Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), but that’s not a good reason for him to lie about it: “In a letter to the editor of the Florida Times-Union last Friday, Rep. John Mica (R-FL) attempted to rewrite the reasons behind the recent shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration. Unfortunately for the Republican transportation chairman, the real reasons are well documented.”
* Speaking of Florida, the Sunshine State’s far-right governor isn’t having much luck: “Gov. Rick Scott suffered a legal setback Tuesday when the Florida Supreme Court ruled that an effort to hold up new state regulations was unconstitutional, but the practical effects of the decision are still unclear.”
* The overwhelming majority of servicemen and women in the U.S. military are extraordinary professionals and American heroes. There are, alas, a few exceptions: “An Air Force staff sergeant based in Germany says he’s been AWOL since last week because he read on the Internet that President Barack Obama’s long form birth certificate is a fraud.”
* Daniel Luzer: “[I]t seems like in both Europe and the United States there’s a lot of talk about increasing access to higher education but not much money available to actually make that happen.”
* Rush Limbaugh continues to use racially-charged language in going after the president: “Today on his radio show, Rush Limbaugh described a new Oreo that will have both chocolate and vanilla cream as a ‘biracial’ cookie and said that ‘it isn’t going to be long before it’s going to be called the Or-Bam-eo or something like this.’ Limbaugh later called it the ‘Or-Bam-eo’ himself.”
Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.
