Saturday, December 12, 2009

Pete Sessions highlights his own idiotic remark on YouTube

(h/t David Smith for finding this clip of Pete Sessions' one-liner during the debate on finance reform).

The one-liner Sessions tosses off is in response to Rep. Ed Perlmutter's personal story about his Ukrainian grandfather's continued struggles with nuances of the English language, even after becoming a successful businessman and spending 40 years mastering the language. Perlmutter's point pertaining to today's financial crisis is that a lot of the fraud we've seen in the financial services industry comes from con-artists who take advantage of people for whom English is their second language.

At first glance, this clip appears to be a "gotcha" from Daily Kos, Huffington Post, or some other left-leaning blog because it makes Pete Sessions look so terribly unprofessional. But no, Pete Sessions is so proud of following Perlmutter's statement with the line "pin the tail on the donkey" that he posted this video on his own YouTube site:



The Sessions Watch team often hears criticism that we're "trying to make Pete Sessions look like an idiot." We offer this video as a rebuttal to that accusation; and in defense of Pete, we acknowlege that he's perfectly capable of looking like an idiot all on his own, without assistance from us.

UPDATE: Below is a transcript of the video:
Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-CO-7): Thank you, Madame Speaker, and I would just say to my friend from the Financial Services Committee two things as to his amendments. It was in January of '09, the last month that George Bush was in office, that we had the highest job loss throughout this whole period. Since that time, it has been shrinking. So, under the Bush Administration, tremendous job loss in '08, up to four million jobs. And it has been those jobs, job losses have been shrinking ever since. I'd also say to my friend from the Financial Services Committee, we had this debate in the committee on the language issue and as he knows, I'm [from?] the Ukraine, my grandfather came over here, was a successful business man, but even over a forty, fifty year period he had difficulty with the written language. And where we've seen so much fraud and so much con-artistry is with people who have a difficulty with the language being taken advantage of. And part of this bill, the Consumer Protection Bill, is so that we avoid that kind of fraud and schemery because of people who can't speak...[fade out]

[fade in: Pete Sessions]:

Pete Sessions (R-TX-32): Thank you, Madame Speaker, you know, Madame Speaker, the gentleman from Colorado keeps trying to search and search and search and find who to pin this on. This bad economy, job loss. Well I would direct the gentleman that's something we've known for a long, long time in this country. The answer is pin the tail on the donkey. Madame Speaker, at this time, I would like to yield two minutes to the gentleman from Clinton Township, New Jersey, the gentleman Mr. Lance.

2 comments:

Nick said...

He probably spent all week thinking that one up, and told his staff to be sure to put it on his "highlight reel."

And, yeah, Sessions Watch will get criticized for "being mean," but c'mon, people, this guy needs to retire. Look at the post about the anti-ACORN vote--he doesn't think things through before voting for something that won't stand up to a constitutional test. He's not good at this job, and I'd go so far as to say he's not happy being in Congress.

Let's do everything we can to vote him out of office; he'll thank us later when he's in a regular 9-5 job, spending evenings at home with the family.

Nancy said...

This is also an example of how he's so unwilling to reach out to teh other side, even when there's a place they can agree. Pete's wife is Mexican-American and the kids are English-Spanish bilingual so he could have said something to support the other guy's point about language. But no Pete has to go and embarrass us again by acting like he's in a comedy club, saying a one-liner then yeilding his time.