TN State Rep. Campfield’s “Using Children as Props” comment to 8 year old girl Appalling.

For all those conservatives out there who whine, “Why isn’t the press covering this,” are you just as outraged at Rep. Campfield’s derogatory verbal slap at an 8 year old politically active girl trying to protect families from cruel laws like his? Is this the way to encourage citizens to get involved or to feel free to question their own government? Wow.

Besides the welfare cutting bill to children not performing well in schools, it’s now brutally clear how right wing discipline must be doled out. This is what we don’t see behind their closed door meetings.

The authoritarian nature of self-righteous assholes like Campfield should make any parents skin crawl. Personally, anyone who would try to discourage my kid from being politically involved would have to deal with a very pissed off parent.  

Think Progress: On Thursday, State Rep. Stacey Campfield (R-TN) withdrew his widely criticized bill to reduce welfare assistance for needy families if their children did not perform well in school. Campfield was presented with a petition of more than 2500 signatures collected by Clergy for Justice to protest the bill. The deliverer of the petition was an 8-year-old girl, Aamira Fetuga, whose mother, Rasheedat Fetuga, is the founder of a local child advocacy group. As Aamira prepared to explain to Campfield why she was worried about his bill, Campfield dismissed her as a “prop” and hurried away, repeating over and over again, “Using children as props is shameful” as Aamira and her mother tried to talk to him.

In Romney's Campaign, Nothing is Real, and that's just what Tea Party voters want!

Obama’s putting everybody on the taxpayer dole, passing food stamps out to everyone, and telling people they'll never have to work again. Life is good.

That might be crazy public policy, but that’s what tea party voters already think, so Romney’s bizarre allegations against Obama appeals to the rampant paranoia.

The truth is, Obama’s welfare policy change is at the request of two Republican governors.

TPM: Mitt Romney’(s) accusations that President Obama is trying to “gut” the (welfare to work) program by waiving its work requirements don’t jibe with the administration’s actual work guidelines. They also sidestep the fact that Romney himself supported such changes … “President Obama, in just the last few days, has tried to reverse that accomplishment, by taking the work requirement out of welfare. That is wrong. If I’m president I’ll put work back in welfare.” His new campaign ad asserts that “Under Obama’s plan, you wouldn’t have to work and wouldn’t have to train for a job — they just send you your welfare check.”

The truth?

The Department of Health and Human Services (made the changes) … in response to requests from at least two Republican governors in Utah and Nevada, who complained paperwork requirements and narrow participation metrics were hampering their ability find recipients work. This had been a complaint from Republican-led states in the past: Romney himself signed a letter with 28 other Republican governors in 2005 requesting Congress grant waivers to allow more flexibility in administering the program.

And the work rules?

“The Obama administration, working with the Republican governors of states like Nevada and Utah, is giving states additional flexibility only if they move more people from welfare to work — not fewer,” Obama campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith said in a statement.

Affordable Care Act Refund!!! Repeal, repeal...huh!

The Affordable Care Act required insurers to put most of your premium money into health care, not their pockets. If they take too much, they have to refund that amount. Simple, right?

But wait, Republicans want to repeal the law, and will probably get the activist Supreme Court to legislate from the bench and rule it unconstitutional. How lucky is that? Yeh, we get to pay more in premiums so tea party losers, who don't have coverage, can be free and freeload off the rest of us.

Cato Institute offers "tools:" Get a Job, any Job.

With so many American now in poverty, maybe the lack of jobs, a Great Recession and a decade of stagnant wages has something to do with it?

Not if you’re conservative. For some reason, the conservative mind is unable to take the cause of poverty into account. Instead of tackling the problem that caused so much poverty, they would rather attack the safety nets. Tort reform is similar in that instead of preventing medical injuries and death, they would much rather go after the victims monetary settlements.

It’s all this upside down thinking that drives me crazy.

According to the conservative whack jobs at Newsmax, in an email summary:  

Welfare Spending Up 41 Percent Under Obama: In 1964, when President Lyndon Johnson declared a “war on poverty” in America, the poverty rate stood at around 19 percent. Since then, total federal, state, and local spending on anti-poverty programs has amounted to $15 trillion, yet the poverty rate now stands at 15.1 percent, the highest level in nearly a decade. “Clearly we are doing something wrong,” according to the Cato Institute.

Instead of considering the Great Recession, joblessness and the lack of wage increases that promote consumer demand, the Cato institute is focused on government spending:

The federal government will spend more than $668 billion on anti-poverty programs this year, an increase of 41 percent or more than $193 billion since President Barack Obama took office. Tanner concludes … “The vast majority of current programs are focused on making poverty more comfortable rather than giving people the tools that will help them escape poverty.”

The Cato Institute’s ridiculous set of “tools” (where have we heard that term used before…Scott Walker. Thank you Frank Luntz)?  

“Finish school, do not get pregnant outside marriage, and get a job, any job, and stick with it.”

That was easy, blame the victim. Really, not getting pregnant outside of marriage is part of the plan? But more importantly, getting “any job” is just where they want us; desperate. Americans will then give themselves up to business. A feudal system of lords and serfs.  

Sean Duffy Breaks into Tea Party Top Ten

Look who's got the extremist cred's going for himself. Anytime you're standing shoulder to shoulder with an authoritarian militant dictator like Rep. Alan West, you know you've truly crossed over. Welcome guys, to the political rubber room: 

According to CREDO action, 

Sean Duffy – Lives in Gov. Walker's world, not the Real World

Once a reality TV star on MTV's Real World: Boston, it's clear he has now lost touch with the actual real world. Duffy has complained to constituents that he has trouble paying his bills on his $174,000 Congressional salary. His policies are even more out of touch: He haspraised Gov. Scott Walker and said he is "trying to do right" in Wisconsin. Duffy is a co-sponsor of every anti-choice bill that moved through this Congress, including H.R. 3 which would have redefined rape, and the "Protect Life Act" which would literally let women die in addition to prohibiting federal funds from being to used to cover any part of the costs of any health plan that includes coverage of abortion services.

A Tea Party Republican America.

Republicans have complained for decades that liberals hated America, whined constantly, and always wanted to change what was already "exceptional." But that was Republican projection. A lie. 

Tea Party Republicans hate America. Proof? They want to change everything about it. Instead of health care tweaks, or a few new regulations, America needs to be replaced, torn down and rebuilt into a little shack. 

Tearing it Down...Fast:

"TeaParty Debt Commission-according to FreedomWorks Chairman Dick Armey, balances the federal budget in four years and cuts spending by $9.7 trillion through a repeal of health care reform, eliminating or reducing federal agencies, ending student loans and cuts to foreign aid and government services. "The American people are ready for big bold cuts and eliminating entire departments."

(But) the CBO has disputed the cost savings like repealing the health care legislation passed in 2010 … eliminate four cabinet agencies –Education, Commerce, Energy and Housing and Urban Development … Legal Services, the Small Business Administration, the AmeriCorps volunteer program and the National Endowment for the Arts … repeal the health care legislation arguing that this would save more than $1 trillion over 10 years. But the CBO has said that would increase the deficit by $210 billion in that time.

Sets up a budgeting-by-popularity-contest feature, where taxpayers could earmark 10 percent of their tax payments each year to three federal agencies of their choice … allow all new Medicare beneficiaries to enroll in the Federal Employees Health Benefit Program … turn Medicaid into a block grant program – (where) states would get a certain amount of money to spend, forcing them to come up with ways to cut costs … workers born after 1981 to invest half of their payroll taxes in a private account, an approach it calls the Galveston or Chilean plan … But the plan in Galveston has actually cost more than Social Security, with the higher cost being borne by the county’s taxpayers. And workers do not rely solely on these plans for retirement income: they are also enrolled in pension and 401(k)-type programs.

Arguing “massive over-regulation is killing this economy”… But a survey by the National Federation of Small Business, which has joined Republicans and Tea Party supporters in fighting the health care legislation, says that the “single biggest problem” facing its members is low sales, not government regulation. 

Koch Brother Nation....our new American Flag.

Who Wants to destroy the country? Who's against the government? The Hatriots are here.

The first step is to arm all the conservative paranoids out there with guns, guns, guns. 

All the while running a campaign vilifying liberals and Democrats as traitors trying to destroy the country. 

Daily Beast: The Hatriots have reared their heads again—this time in the form of a Georgia domestic terrorist plot against law-enforcement officials that variously contemplated ricin attacks, blowing up a federal building, and targeted assassination.

The defendants … age … ranging between their 60s and early 70s … their rhetoric was what we’ve come to expect from these unhinged self-styled super-patriots who love their country but hate their government. They would do violence to the Constitution in order to save it. “There’s no way for us, as militiamen, to save this country, to save Georgia, without doing something that’s highly illegal: murder,” said group leader Frederick Thomas according to an affidavit released by the FBI. "When it comes to saving the Constitution that means some people gotta die." “Let's shoot the bastards that we discover are anti-American,” Thomas said. “And to me the best way to do that is to walk up behind them with a suppressed .22"  "I could shoot ATF [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives] and IRS all day long," he continued. "All the judges and the DOJ [Justice Department], and the attorneys and prosecutors."

These aren’t liberals or progressives. They aren’t Scott Walker teachers and union members. They aren’t the peaceful Occupy Wall Street demonstrators “beating their drums” either. These are conservatives.

Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center: "In 2008 we counted 149 patriot militia groups operating in the United States—by 2010 that number had increased to 824—that's a 500 percent increase. It's hard not to notice that this jump coincides with both the rise to power of Barack Obama and the subprime mortgage collapse."

The Georgia men in question are claiming they gained inspiration for the attacks from a self-published online novel written by Mike Vanderbough, an Alabama militia leader in the 1990s, who now lives on disability but infamously called for bricks to be thrown through the windows of Democratic congressional-district offices during the health-care vote. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the introduction of Vanderboegh’s self-published novel Absolved; “I must also present what amounts to a combination field manual, technical manual and call to arms for my beloved gunnies of the armed citizenry," Vanderboegh writes. "They need to know how powerful they could truly be if they were pushed into a corner."

Here's an older clip of Alan Colmes interviewing Mike Vanderbough:

What I especially like is that two of the three senior militia men were former government employees, who probably have nice retirement benefits. 

Tea Party Nation Tells Members not to hire Employees!!!

This pretty much says it all about the tea party and the Republican efforts to take back the presidency by killing jobs. 


Thanks to Stephen Colbert for the heads up:

The Tea Party Nation asks its members to pledge not to hire employees.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Tip/Wag - Tea Party Nation Pledge & Spirit Airlines' Ad Revenue
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

From Right wing watch: Tea Party Nation sent to their members today a message from activist Melissa Brookstone urging businesspeople to “not hire a single person” to protest the Obama administration’s supposed “war against business and my country.” Brookstone writes:

Resolved that: The Obama administration and the Democrat-controlled Senate, in alliance with a global Progressive socialist movement, have participated in what appears to be a globalist socialist agenda of redistribution of wealth, and the waging of class warfare against our constitutional republic's heritage of individual rights, free market capitalism, and indeed our Constitution itself, with the ultimate goal of collapsing the U.S. economy and globalizing us into socialism.

Resolved that: President Obama has seized what amount to dictatorial powers to bypass our Congress, and that because the Congress is controlled by a Progressive socialist Senate that will not impeach one of their kind, they have allowed this and yielded what are rightfully congressional powers to this new dictator.

Resolved that: By their agenda and actions, those in our government who swore oaths to protect and defend our Constitution have committed treason against the United States.

Resolved that: The current administration and Democrat majority in the Senate, in conjunction with Progressive socialists from all around the country, especially those from Hollywood and the left leaning news media (Indeed, most of the news media.) have worked in unison to advance an anti-business, an anti-free market, and an anti-capitalist (anti-individual rights and property ownership) agenda.

Resolved that: Our President, the Democrats-Socialists, most of the media, and most of those from Hollywood, have now encouraged and supported "Occupy" demonstrations in our streets, which are now being perpetrated across the globe, and which are being populated by various marxists, socialists and even communists, and are protesting against business, private property ownership and capitalism, something I thought I'd never see in my country, in my lifetime.

I, an American small business owner, part of the class that produces the vast majority of real, wealth producing jobs in this country, hereby resolve that I will not hire a single person until this war against business and my country is stopped.

Revisionist History Revised Again: Tea Party peaceful, thoughtful and non-violent

WTMJ Radio's Charlie Sykes made the bizarre audio comment below, after bashing a few Occupy Wall Street speeches making the rounds online.

He's claiming the tea party never once called for a violent, bloody revolution to take back the country.

I didn't have to dig to deeply into my archives to put together the compilation below.

Chicago Tea Party's Steve Stevlic gets heat for year old solicitation of a Prostitute.

Social issues are huge for the Tea Party movement. They've embraced the religious rights agenda and are attempting to slip radical change past everyone while they're off defending against the attack on their labor rights.

So imagine the anger from tea party participants at their Schaumburg convention when they found out one of their big name backers solicited a prostitute...last year and didn't know.

Caledonia Patch: Chicago Tea Party activist Steve Stevlic’s arrest for soliciting a hooker over a year ago was the talk of TeaCon 2011 that is being held this weekend in Schaumburg, IL. Gawker.com confronted Stevlic about his June 2010 arrest on opening day of the Midwest tea party’s confab. Stevlic is one of the top organizers of TeaCon 2011. Gawker chided Stevlic for his attacks against Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr.’s revelations of his extra-marital affair just months after Stevlic’s own prostitution arrest.

Charges against Stevlic, who resides in Berwyn, IL, were ultimately dropped after he completed a rehab program “Unhooked Johns,” Gawker reports.

News of Stevlic’s past arrest also seemed to catch many of Chicago’s elite conservative bloggers live blogging from TeaCon 2011 unaware. “The sex issue isn’t the bad part for Tea Party supporters, though, Warner Todd Huston wrote on his Publius' Forum blog. "The sad thing is that Steve knew of his troubles but all these revelations have hit his supporters and followers completely unawares. He did not reveal his troubles even to the higher members of the Chicago Tea Party.”

Huston also hinted at improprieties with the Chicago Tea Party organization’s funds on his Publius' Forum blog. According to Huston’s unnamed sources from the Chicago Tea Party’s upper echelon, party members don’t know where the funds have gone or who’s handling the accounts.

Perry challenges Obama with a slice of Real America...

Paul Fanlund/Cap Times put this Republican Tea Party list together that should bode well for job creation and the American Dream:

The governor of Texas has vaulted ahead in polls for the Republican presidential nomination in recent days by taking positions like these:
• Evolution is "just a theory that's out there."

• Scientific consensus on climate change is "all one contrived phony mess that is falling apart under its own weight."

• All top jobs in his administration would be filled by abortion foes.

• It's time to "turn America over to God" for Him to fix.

• Social Security is a "Ponzi scheme" and it and Medicare are unconstitutional.

• Gay Americans are "part of Satan."

• Actions by the Bush-appointed chairman of the Federal Reserve are "treasonous."

• President Obama is not sufficiently American or does not necessarily love his country.

Texas Candidate Roger Williams Compares Dems to Donkeys. Another Condescending Republican Elitist Vying for a Cushy Government Job.

Ed Schultz should be congratulated for not ripping candidate Williams a new one for this outrageous comparison and shot at jobless and working poor. Why is this tolerated on the right?