CONGRESSMAN JOHN LUIGI MICA (a/k/a "TARBALL") FLUNKS 7th DISTRICT GEOGRAPHY 101: GAFFE BY EIGHT-TERM INCUMBENT CONGRESSMAN JOHN MICA: SAYS PALATKA IS IN ST. JOHNS COUNTY!!

CONGRESSMAN JOHN LUIGI MICA (a/k/a "TARBALL") FLUNKS 7th DISTRICT GEOGRAPHY 101: GAFFE BY EIGHT-TERM INCUMBENT CONGRESSMAN JOHN MICA: SAYS PALATKA IS IN ST. JOHNS COUNTY!!

CONGRESSMAN JOHN MICA FLUNKS 7th DISTRICT GEOGRAPHY 101: GAFFE BY EIGHT-TERM INCUMBENT CONGRESSMAN JOHN MICA: SAYS PALATKA IS IN ST. JOHNS COUNTY
Democrat Faye Armitage won the televised PBS debate in 2008 against eight-term incumbent Republican Congressman JOHN MICA. The debate was sponsored by the League of Women Voters and was held at WMFE-TV, the PBS affiliate in Orlando.
So flustered was MICA in responding to Armitage’s reasoned analysis of MICA’s record that he moved Palatka into St. Johns County. Discussing the demolition of the former HUD public housing in Palatka, Congressman MICA said Palatka was in St. Johns County.
Parts of Putnam County have been part of Congressman JOHN MICA’s Congressional District since January 4, 2003.
Palatka is the county seat of Putnam County, created in 1849.
Palatka has not been part of St. Johns County for 160 years.
We knew that Congressman JOHN MICA was out-of-touch with his District (see below).
But residents of St. Johns and Putnam Counties will be amazed and amused that Congressman JOHN MICA doesn’t know anything about Northeast Florida, added to his district by Republican gerrymandering in 2002, effective January 4, 2003.
Faye Armitage scored MICA for his zero rating from the Disabled American Veterans, five rating by the League of Conservation Voters, and F rating by middleclass.org.
The Faye Armitage-MICA LWV debate is on the WMFE website later this week and will be aired on the Orlando PBS affiliate Sunday.
Rep. JOHN MICA already has a national reputation for being a perpetual gaffe machine, most recently head-butting an ABC news cameraman while skulking away from TOM DELAY’s debauched lobbyist party. MICA’s head-butt videotape is on You Tube and was shown on ABC News by investigative reporter Brian Ross.
During the 30-minute LWV forum, economist Faye Armitage asked 16-year incumbent Florida Congressman JOHN MICA to agree to more debates (she initially challenged him to seven, at least one in each of six counties. MICA refused, saying he was flying right back to Washington for a hearing.
This was the first joint Armitage-MICA debate. It was the only one.
Congressman MICA was a no-show for the St. Augustine Record’s editorial interviews, claiming he had to attend a hearing on the A.I.G. insurance cartel. The Record held Armitage’s interview as scheduled, then invited MICA to sneak in and give an interview separately and unequally.
With American school children increasingly oblivious to geography, it’s appalling to have a Congressman who doesn’t know anything about his District. Other geography gaffes by politicians:

President Gerald R. Ford said during the Cold War, in the 1976 Presidential debate with Jimmy Carter that there was “no Soviet domination” of Eastern Europe and that Poland was free.
Senator John McCain said that Iraq was the first major conflict after 9/11. The first was Afghanistan.
Senator John McCain repeatedly referred to “Czechoslovakia,” a country that ceased to exist in 1993, when the Czech Republic and Slovakia went their separate ways as two different countries.
Senator John McCain confused the Presidents of Mexico and Spain, as if Mexico were still a Spanish colony.
U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie told Iraqi dictator Saddam Husein in 1991, “"We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960s, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America." This dumb remakr caused Iraq to invade Kuwait, bringing on the First Gulf War and hundreds of billions of dollars of war-making, 1991-2008.
While people in St. Johns and Putnam Counties won’t go to war out of wrong-way-MICA’s gaffe, they’re laughing at MICA today.
We’re used to politicians who can’t spell and can’t think and can’t vote independently of pressure groups.
Out-of-touch U.S. Congressman JOHN LUIGI MICA (a/k/a "TARBALL") can’t even tell you in which County the County Seat of Palatka is located. According to Wikipedia, “Putnam County was created in 1849. It was Florida's 28th county created from parts of St. Johns, Alachua, Orange, Duval, and Marion counties. The county was named for Benjamin A. Putnam, who was a soldier in the First Seminole War, a lawyer, Florida legislator, and the first president of the Florida Historic Society. Putnam died in the county seat of Palatka in 1869.”
Americans are increasingly illiterate of geography, with half the 18-24 year olds tested in 2006 unable to find New York State on a map. What a bad example Congressman JOHM MICA (who says he loves history) is for our youth, head-butting an ABC news cameraman and not knowing the basic contours of his own gerrymandered District (created to give Rep. Tom Feeney a District, carving a new District for MICA that wends its way from Winter Park in the South all the way to Ponte Vedra Beach in the North.
Geographically illiterate CONGRESSMAN JOHN LUIGI MICA’s annual salary is $169,300, plus generous health care, pension, staff hire, free postage (franking privildge), domestic and foreign travel, expenses and (in MICA’s case) “meals with constituents” at fancy restaurants, bars and casinos paid from campaign funds
It’s hard to get kids to study geography when their Congressman is a know-nothing who knows nothing about the geography of his own District. MICA’s Palatka gaffe shows he’s all hat and no cattle, a hater who takes all the credit for government grants and contracts while taking none of the responsibility for the mess in Washington.