Video: Tommy Thompson asks "who better than me...to do away with Medicaid and Medicare?"

Unlike the James E. O'Keefe edited videos that distorted the truth, Republicans like Tommy Thompson are getting caught with their own words, unedited. They're afraid of speaking like this in public because they know they are highly unpopular. We know that the Republicans want to destroy Medicare and anyone who votes for them, better be clear that destruction is their mission. Read the rest of this post...

Ohio Teabaggers attempt to intimidate Ohio State students to block their votes

There's nothing quite like the smell of hypocrisy with the Teabaggers.

As the article mentions, can you imagine being a young, poor student and receiving a legal-looking document challenging your voter registration? If you're a student, you're probably wondering how you could afford legal counsel to defend your registration, which is already legal.

The Teabaggers, like the rest of the GOP, can't win on issues so they're determined to disrupt the vote.  Remember what John always say: The Republicans accuse us (read: ACORN) of things we're not doing, but they are.

How very patriotic of them.

On September 13th, Hilliard Tea Party member Carol D. Bicking submitted a voter challenge to hundreds of OSU students. Bicking appears to be following the strategy promoted by True the Vote which aims to intimidate Democratic voters, like students or African Americans, into staying away from the polls this November.

If the Board of Elections accepts the challenge, students would be sent a subpoena to appear at a hearing to question their voting status. Students would then have a minimum of three days to prepare for the hearing, and possibly hire legal counsel, all because some nasty Tea Partier didn’t like the way their address appeared on the voting registration form.

According to documents obtained by Plunderbund, the bulk of the challenges (246) are for students who registered to vote at their dorm buildings at OSU but failed to provide a specific room number on the application. We confirmed with OSU’s Housing Department that “as long as everything else is accurate including their name” the students will, most likely, still receive their mail even without the room number.

Read the rest of this post...

GOP hero Nikki Haley put 14 year old daughter on state payroll

Was Haley's 14 year old daughter really the most qualified for the job?

I never understand how the Republicans can so often criticize government and government workers yet so easily provide jobs for their family inside government. Dick Cheney was no stranger to it, having his daughter Mary run his re-election campaign, and now the Tea Party and Sarah Palin hero, Nikki Haley, is doing the same.

The unemployment rate in South Carolina remains above the national average, so why is the governor giving a job to her daughter when so many others need work?

Gov. Nikki Haley’s 14-year-old daughter having a summer job at the State House gift shop is a tad more unusual than some may have thought.

Haley’s daughter was, in fact, the only 14-year-old to hold a state job as of July 2012. And no 14-year-olds were employed by the state in either July 2011 or July 2010, according to data from the State Budget and Control Board.

UPDATE: A reader notes:

Dick Cheney's other daughter, Elizabeth, was also on the public payroll. She was a Deputy Assistant Secretary at the State Department. She was in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, as I recall. This is a matter of public record.

In my humble opinion, it's one thing to put your own relative on your campaign payroll. If the donors don't like that, well, they can effectively voice their concern. And if the media doesn't like it, well, they can report it. In the end, not a big deal.

But it's another thing entirely when it's taxpayer money.

Read the rest of this post...

Aussie minister: Republican party taken over by "cranks and crazies"

So I'm guessing he's not a fan of the Tea Party. Foreign ministers don't often inject themselves into the politics of other countries but how else does a sane, rational person explain the modern GOP? They are lunatics are running the asylum and there's no way to candy coat it.

What foreign leader would honestly want to work with someone like Rick Santorum or Sarah Palin? It's embarrassing that either have ever even been considered serious candidates. The US used to care about its reputation around the world and both parties used to look to the future. The modern GOP does look crazy so I'm glad someone in power outside of the US said it so bluntly.

Whether the Republicans like it or not, the US needs good relations around the world. For both US business expansion and national security, the US has to be on good terms with traditional allies. Sending the village idiots out to talk about either of these issues is never going to be productive.

The Guardian has more remarks from Australia's deputy prime minister and treasurer, Wayne Swan.

"Let's be blunt and acknowledge the biggest threat to the world's biggest economy are the cranks and crazies that have taken over the Republican party," Swan said in a speech to a conference in Sydney.

The Republican party's position on the US budget had led a year ago to the deadlock in negotiations, Swan said, to prevent the looming "fiscal cliff" – nearly $600bn in planned spending cuts and tax hikes that will bite early next year.

Congress had been debating whether to increase the US borrowing ceiling but the Republicans would not budge.

"Despite President Obama's goodwill and strong efforts, the national interest was held hostage by the rise of the extreme Tea Party wing of the Republican party," he said.

What's terrifying is that Mitt Romney is the best they have to offer, as Kevin Drum wrote about yesterday. Read the rest of this post...

Comrade Jindal complains Obama isn't giving him enough taxpayer socialism for hurricane damage

UPDATE: Brian Beutler has uncovered that Jindal is in fact demanding more federal aid than states normally get in these circumstances.  And what's more, he didn't demand the extra aid when Gustav hit when Bush was president, only when a Democrat is president. So he's a commie and a hypocrite.
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That crazy socialist governor from the People's Republic of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, and the rest of the Teabagging Republicans are such complete frauds but can't admit it.

They're always glad to complain about handouts - such as when Jindal turned down $90m in stimulus monies meant to help 24,000 unemployed in Louisiana, or when Jindal turned down $300m for high speed rail - but then, when it's politically popular (like during a hurricane) suddenly Jindal is Chairman Mao begging at the people's teet, like Jindal is now doing over federal disaster monies for Hurricane Isaac.

Republicans like Jindal believe that the Bible has all the answers, not science and of course not the government - but the only thing they're praying for right now is more money from Uncle Sam. You know, the kind of handouts and money that they dismiss and blast when it's for others.

Jindal should quit complaining and join the modern world.  Or figure out how to raise his own money.  CBS News:

The White House said Obama informed Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal of the emergency declaration in a phone call. The declaration makes federal support available to save lives, protect public health and safety and preserve property in coastal areas.

Jindal, a Republican, shot back late Monday in a letter to the Obama administration that the declaration fell short of the help he was requesting.

"We appreciate your response to our request and your approval," Jindal wrote. "However, the state's original request for federal assistance .... included a request for reimbursement for all emergency protective measures. The federal declaration of emergency only provides for direct federal assistance."

One day someone in Washington needs to call out the crazies like Jindal. If you're going to make a name for yourself ripping science and government taxes they don't ask for them and don't accept them. Why should Jindal dirty his hands with socialist tax dollars that probably came from the Blue States who pay much more into the federal government than they receive. What does the Bible have to say about that?

Let's also not forget that it has been the Republicans who have been chopping the FEMA budget, so Governor Jindal ought to be talking with his GOP friends instead of complaining about the president. Read the rest of this post...

Tea Party groups jokes about beating Obama, who of course is a socialist and Muslim

From Igor Volsky at ThinkProgress:

Read the rest of this post...

Sen. Lugar appears to be headed for defeat by Teabagger next week

Chalk this up as another victory for GOP extremism. It's scary to think that Lugar is not conservative enough for the Republican party. Will the people of Indiana elect the Teabagger to the US Senate in November?

Senator Richard Lugar, a six-term incumbent representing Indiana and a leading voice on foreign policy in Congress, trails his Tea Party-backed challenger by double-digits ahead of Tuesday's Republican primary, a poll showed on Friday.

Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock, who draws support from the conservative Tea Party movement, leads Lugar by 10 percentage points ahead of Tuesday's primary, the Howey/Depauw Indiana Battleground Poll showed.

Read the rest of this post...

The Tokyo Tea Party (shivers)

From Molly Ball in the Atlantic:

Aeba, one of the leaders of Japan’s right-wing Happiness Realization Party, was accompanied by Yuya Watase, the founder of the Tokyo Tea Party; their interpreter, a Happiness Realization Party official named Yuki Oikawa; and Bob Sparks, their American political consultant. Together, they said, they were on a mission to export American-style conservatism—the gospel of small government, low taxes, and free enterprise—to the Land of the Rising Sun.

The Tokyo Tea Party uses the same slogan as its American counterpart—“Taxed Enough Already”—and even goes by the same name (though I was assured that there was no danger of confusion with the traditional Japanese tea ceremony). Aeba’s Happiness Realization Party, meanwhile, is the political arm of a new-wave religious movement called Happy Science, whose founder claims to be a reincarnation of the Buddha. The Happies, as they are called, envision a Japan that is at once more muscular on the world stage—they propose eliminating the constitutional ban on waging war—and more religious at home. “The best analogy would be the Christian Coalition, Buddhist-style,” Sparks offered helpfully.

Yes, because that's what the world needs is a newly militaristic evangelical Japan. Read the rest of this post...

Team Romney goes full Teabag and joins birthers

Maybe they've been wearing their Mormon underwear a little too tight lately because they're losing it. Of course, Romney has never been afraid to dive into a new position every other day so it's not too surprising either.

One of Mitt Romney's sons has an answer for those who say his father should release his tax returns. He jokes that President Barack Obama should go first and release his birth certificate and other records. Matt Romney's wisecrack came before an audience in New Hampshire on Friday. In response on Twitter, the Obama campaign tweeted, in part, "Guess he doesn't have one of our mugs?" The Obama campaign sells mugs with a picture of Obama's birth certificate.

Just as unsurprising as the denier charge, Romney later Tweeted that it was all just a joke. Of course it was. Of course it was. Mitt Romney, meanwhile, had the audacity to suggest Obama is an elitist since he's vacationing in Hawaii with his family. Yes, the man who made a few hundred million dollars by chopping jobs and has houses all over America is not an elitist. Just because Romney is cashing in on Wall Street money and doing his best to make life even easier for Wall Street, it doesn't make him an elitist. It makes him an asshole. Read the rest of this post...

John Boehner: Worst. Speaker. Ever.

If the Republicans are going to keep wooing crazies to their party, then they need to learn how to control the crazies once they're in office.  Washington Post:

The undoing of what many on both sides of the aisle thought was a deal on Saturday is a reflection of the continued difficulty Boehner has had in managing his cantankerous caucus.

Repeatedly, over the past year, he has allowed some of the most conservative members, particularly an influential group of freshmen, to call the shots at crucial moments.

This time, Boehner and his leadership team may have allowed the House Republicans to place their party in real political peril with no obvious exit strategy.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) left a meeting with House leaders on Friday believing that Boehner and his top deputy, House Majority Leader Eric I. Cantor (R-Va.), would find the votes to approve a two-month extension of the tax holiday. Both Boehner and Cantor have since disavowed giving McConnell the go-ahead to make the deal, and McConnell has issued a statement supporting Boehner’s position.

Regardless of what exactly was said, McConnell, a 27-year veteran of the Senate, has a reputation as a master negotiator, known for playing hardball and then cutting the best deal possible; he has no history of communication errors.

Read the rest of this post...

Pew: Tea Party seriously not liked, even in Tea Party run congressional districts

This is interesting news, and could be a bell-wether for the next election. From Pew:

Since the 2010 midterm elections, the Tea Party has not only lost support nationwide, but also in the congressional districts represented by members of the House Tea Party Caucus. And this year, the image of the Republican Party has declined even more sharply in these GOP-controlled districts than across the country at large.

In the latest Pew Research Center survey, conducted Nov. 9-14, more Americans say they disagree (27%) than agree (20%) with the Tea Party movement. A year ago, in the wake of the sweeping GOP gains in the midterm elections, the balance of opinion was just the opposite: 27% agreed and 22% disagreed with the Tea Party. At both points, more than half offered no opinion.

Throughout the 2010 election cycle, agreement with the Tea Party far outweighed disagreement in the 60 House districts represented by members of the Congressional Tea Party Caucus. But as is the case nationwide, support has decreased significantly over the past year; now about as many people living in Tea Party districts disagree (23%) as agree (25%) with the Tea Party.

Check out the rest of the polling. The Republicans are plummeting nationally, while Dems are holding their own. Even in Tea Party districts, voters now rate Ds and Rs equally in terms of favorability. No wonder Boehner and Cantor pretty much shut up two months ago, you never hear from them anymore. They must have seen similar numbers privately, and realized that if they kept doing what they were doing, the end was nigh. Read the rest of this post...

Tea Party / OWS rapprochement?

AP:

Occupy Memphis member Mallory Pope had just finished telling a group of about 75 tea party followers Thursday night that politicians should not allow themselves to be influenced by lobbyists and unions when she received an unexpected invitation.

"It sounds to me that y'all ought to be joining us," said Jerry Rains, a 64-year-old computer programmer and tea party member. "You have a lot of the same goals we have, which is to take our country back."

I'm not sure how I see the two groups truly cooperating.  I suspect a good chunk of Tea Party members are Fox News devotees who simply do not have any clear idea of what's going on in this country - they listen to Fox, believe the lies that they hear, and of course they think Obama is a socialist on the very of turning us over to the Soviet Union.  How do you work together with someone who doesn't have the same grasp on what the reality is?  It's like negotiating with someone in a foreign language that you don't speak.

Second, I think another chunk of Tea Party members are Republicans who legitimately think government isn't working, our representatives in Washington stink, etc.  But again, I worry that underneath it all they're conservative  Republicans.  Their solutions are going to be Paul Ryan's solutions.  Things that don't bear much resemblance to the actual problem at hand.  They rail against the stimulus because they've been sold a lie, that stimulus plans don't work, when they do, and it did.

Having said all of that, one thing I learned in politics a long time ago, is that some days you're my enemy, some days you're my friend.  Just because someone is, oh I don't know, the former head of the Republican party, doesn't mean that with some cultivation you can't turn them into a million dollar gay rights activists.  You'd be surprised at some of the wooing I've seen that has worked in politics in the past.  So, I don't think people should write off discussions with the Tea Party.  I simply worry as to how much of the Tea Party isn't a front for Dick Armey and Fox News, and I think it's not much. Read the rest of this post...

Chris Matthews implies Rick Perry is a "clown at the rodeo" for wanting to close down 3 agencies

It's really more than that. It's not just thinking that government is bad and wanting to close three agencies.  It's being such a tool of your own politics that Perry didn't even know which was the third agency he wanted to shut down. That suggests that Perry only wants to shut down agencies because he thinks that's what the Tea Party wants, not because he actually believes it or understands it.  A really terrific comment, only a minute and a half long, from Chris Matthews tonight.

Read the rest of this post...

Third Way’s racist advice to the Tea Party about the Super Committee

The conservative Democratic think tank Third Way has written a policy memo as to why the Tea Party should support the Super Committee making big budget cuts, as opposed to the sequestration that would happen if the Super Committee can't come to agreement. Some examples of Third Way's reasoning:

Sequestration will lead to:
• 12,000 Criminals Evading Incarceration
• Possible Prison Furloughs
• A More Porous Southern Border
• Gun Purchase Delays

Basically Third Way is saying that unless the Super Committee gets to make big cuts to the federal budget, the automatic cuts will make it harder for Tea Partiers to buy guns to defend themselves against all the dangerous brown people who will come rampaging across the Mexican-American border.

Remind me again why any Democrat would listen to Third Way's advice? Read the rest of this post...

Tea Party heckler calls Elizabeth Warren "socialist whore," Obama "foreign born"

Democratic Senate candidate from Massachusetts Elizabeth Warren engaged with a Tea Party heckler today at a community forum when he suddenly went nuts.  At 1:45 in to the video you can just hear him say: "You're a socialist whore, and your boss is a foreign-born..."  This is reminiscent of the time the Tea Partiers called African-American member of Congress, and civil rights hero, John Lewis a "n*gger," spat on another member, and then called Barney Frank a "f*ggot." Read the rest of this post...

Nearly 60% of Ohio voters want repeal of anti-union law

Isn't it interesting to see what happens when Teabagging politicians try to game the system by forcing through legislation that was never discussed? The next step is to vote out the Teabagging politicians who pull these scams.

Almost 6 out of 10 Ohio voters say they want to repeal a law that restricts collective bargaining by public sector unions, according to a poll released Tuesday which shows opposition has grown in the past month.

Ohio voters by 57 percent to 32 percent support the repeal of the law, which forbids government workers from going on strike, according to the poll, conducted by Quinnipiac University. In a late September Quinnipiac poll, the margin was 51 percent to 38 percent.

The bill was passed by the legislature this past spring, and was put on the November 8 ballot for a referendum vote and has not yet taken effect.

Read the rest of this post...

#OccupyWallStreet is mainstream.

There is another big difference between #OccupyWallStreet and the Tea Party: The #OccupyWallStreet demands are popular and mainstream.

Demanding the end of an unfunded tax cut for the rich when there is concern about the deficit is a mainstream position. Demanding that the government out the interests of ordinary people ahead of Wall Street bankers is a mainstream position.

Until #OccupyWallStreet the idea of increasing taxes for the rich was not even open for discussion. The GOP had said that they would not allow any tax to rise under any circumstance, they also said that the biggest problem facing the country right now was the deficit. So as far as the establishment media was concerned the only possible option that could be considered was which entitlements to cut.

I don't want to let the GOP steal my pension to give the Koch brothers another tax cut.

Less than a month ago the establishment media was telling us that cuts in Social Security and the end of Medicare for the under 50s was a foregone conclusion. That story line seems to have been completely cut. Read the rest of this post...

Another #OccupyWallStreet double standard: GOP mobs with guns are a-ok

Number two House Republican Eric Cantor is getting really worried that #OccupyWallStreet might be a dangerous mob:

I'm increasingly concerned about the growing mobs occupying Wall Street and other cities around the country. … Believe it or not, some in this town have actually condoned the pitting of Americans against other Americans

Funny that Cantor never seemed to find it scary when Sarah Palin's supporters were openly carrying automatic weapons. Read the rest of this post...

Remember when Tea Partiers were maced and mass arrested just like the #OccupyWallStreet protesters?

Me neither. Read the rest of this post...

Cantor spokesman tries to "clarify" attack on #OccupyWallStreet protesters

Politico

FIRST LOOK: House Democratic leader NANCY PELOSI, to CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, for ABC’s “This Week,” on whether she supports the Occupy Wall Street protests: “Well, I support the message to the establishment -- whether it's Wall Street or the political establishment and the rest -- that change has to happen. … I think one of the most angry responses I've seen to actions in Washington came after we passed the TARP bill. … People are angry … that they don’t have jobs. … [T]here's nothing that makes you angrier than not being able to provide for your family or understand what your prospects are for the future. And I do think that, from what we saw after TARP, that the focus on Wall Street was one that they thought was a legitimate place to go: ‘Don't do this again. Don't put Main Street at the mercy of Wall Street.’ … [N]ot to paint everyone on Wall Street with the same brush. That would not be fair.”

AMANPOUR: “I just want to get your reaction to some comments by Eric Cantor [at the Values Voter Summit]. He said, quote: ‘I'm increasingly concerned about the growing mobs occupying Wall Street and other cities around the country. … Believe it or not, some in this town have actually condoned the pitting of Americans against other Americans.’”

PELOSI: “I didn't hear him say anything when the Tea Party was out demonstrating, actually spitting on members of Congress right here in the Capitol. And he and his colleagues were putting signs in the windows encouraging them.”

AMANPOUR: “But do you think it's pitting Americans against Americans?”

PELOSI: “Well, that's the American system. It's the democratic system. We don't all agree. We'd have a king if we were all of one mind. We don't. We have different views. And the part of the democracy of our country is the expression that people give, and the Constitution guarantees that.”

CANTOR SPOKESMAN Brad Dayspring responds: “People are angry and obviously have the protected right to express that. His point was that some politicians in Washington who are encouraging and applauding this are ‘pitting Americans against Americans.’ … [T]he basis of the Tea Party was redress of their elected government. The goal of these protesters remains unclear, other than a unity of protest in and of itself. … Leader Cantor merely said that he was growing concerned with the occupy protests -- and I would think that most Americans, whether they agree or not with any or all of the varied causes evident there, feel the same.”

The Tea Party was about redress? No it wasn't. It was formed and run by Newt Gingrich's deputy in the 1990s, Dick Armey, and is simply an assemblage of far-right Republicans intent on kicking Democrats out of office and dismantling government. That is, when they're not spitting on black members of Congress and calling them the n-word. Does anyone remember when the Teabaggers were shutting down congressional townhall meetings with angry cries of "socialism!"? That was okay, but protesting in the streets is not.

Eric Cantor like far too many of his far right brethren running the Republican party simply isn't very comfortable with democracy, Read the rest of this post...