* “This president thought he could shape global events by the sheer force of his personality. How naive. How vain. We need a leader who’s not laid back and ‘intellectual.’ Somebody who can get in the face of Putin and Maduro. Somebody like, well, me. Calculation, charisma, duplicity–and more nukes than anybody else–has never mattered more. You don’t bring a knife to a gun fight.”–Florida Sen. Marco Rubio at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.
* “If you want to lose elections, stand for nothing. If you want to be on another losing Republican ticket, stand next to me.”–Texas Sen. Ted Cruz at CPAC.
*”Howdy, everybody. You remember me: I’m Rick Perry, the telegenic, down-home, nearly well-spoken version of Rick Scott.”–Texas Gov. Rick Perry at CPAC.
* “Don’t forget, we are the party, the only party, that had a woman on the presidential ticket this century. We are the only party with enough guts to say: ‘Gender doesn’t matter. If we find a woman who is every bit as ill-informed, clueless, self-serving and ideologically pandering as a man, why should she not have a shot at the ticket?'”–Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann at CPAC.
*No surprise that the Tampa Tribune is giving significant exposure to the financial challenges over at the Tampa Bay Times. And it’s hardly shocking that it’s not exactly page-one fodder for the Times.
According to company memos posted online, the Times is offering buy-outs to workers in advance of layoffs. Word is copy editors are among the targeted positions. A Times spokeswoman, Jounice Nealy-Brown, put the increasingly pressing issue of quality-control into perspective in a statement.
“Were finding sum ways to improve r results without compromising r quantity,” wrote Nealy-Brown. “We want to support the coleagues who’s jobs will be effected.”