Courtesy of Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, responding to President Obama's
recess appointment of Don Berwick to be director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Senatus has the
reaction from Roberts:
This recess appointment proves the Obama Administration did not have the support of a majority of Democrats and Republicans in the Senate
Majorty. Ha! That's a good one. Put that man on Jay Leno's show.
On a related note, I don't remember the punditry complaining about the hundreds of recess appointments made by George W Bush, which started early in his administration and included John Bolton for UN Secretary, who was Bush's 106th recess appointment. And that was in 2005
ReplyDeleteSorry I meant UN representative not secretary ....
ReplyDeleteBut, you know, he's technically right. My Mother the English Teacher would tell me to parse that sentence as "...the Obama administration did not have the support of a majority of Democrats AND of a majority of Republicans in the Senate." Which is right. He had a majority of a majority of Democrats, but not of a majority of Republicans.
ReplyDeleteBut as so few people any longer really understand sentence structure, what he means is a lie, even though what he says is sorta true.
Doc,
ReplyDeleteYeah; I actually thought about including some sort of disclaimer about that in the post, but I was going for the quick hit, instead of my usual overly wordy posts. In context, it's pretty clear that he means "a majority of the Senate," since it makes even less sense the other way.
It's clumsy writing, in addition to the whole filibuster thing.