Cenk Uygur highlights this excellent article from Truthdig--Michele Bachmann: Welfare Queen:

Michele Bachmann has become well known for her anti-government tea-bagger antics, protesting health care reform and every other government “handout” as socialism. What her followers probably don’t know is that Rep. Bachmann is, to use that anti-government slur, something of a welfare queen. That’s right, the anti-government insurrectionist has taken more than a quarter-million dollars in government handouts thanks to corrupt farming subsidies she has been collecting for at least a decade.

And she’s not the only one who has been padding her bank account with taxpayer money.

Bachmann, of Minnesota, has spent much of this year agitating against health care reform, whipping up the so-called tea-baggers with stories of death panels and rationed health care. She has called for a revolution against what she sees as Barack Obama’s attempted socialist takeover of America, saying presidential policy is “reaching down the throat and ripping the guts out of freedom.”

But data compiled from federal records by Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit watchdog that tracks the recipients of agricultural subsidies in the United States, shows that Bachmann has an inner Marxist that is perfectly at ease with profiting from taxpayer largesse. According to the organization’s records, Bachmann’s family farm received $251,973 in federal subsidies between 1995 and 2006. The farm had been managed by Bachmann’s recently deceased father-in-law and took in roughly $20,000 in 2006 and $28,000 in 2005, with the bulk of the subsidies going to dairy and corn. Both dairy and corn are heavily subsidized—or “socialized”—businesses in America (in 2005 alone, Washington spent $4.8 billion propping up corn prices) and are subject to strict government price controls. These subsidies are at the heart of America’s bizarre planned agricultural economy and as far away from Michele Bachmann’s free-market dream world as Cuba’s free medical system. If American farms such as hers were forced to compete in the global free market, they would collapse.

However, Bachmann doesn’t think other Americans should benefit from such protection and assistance. She voted against every foreclosure relief bill aimed at helping average homeowners (despite the fact that her district had the highest foreclosure rate in Minnesota), saying that bailing out homeowners would be “rewarding the irresponsible while punishing those who have been playing by the rules.” That’s right, the subsidy queen wants the rest of us to be responsible.

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Here's Grassley getting asked about his welfare checks.

Very good news, I think, on the climate change front. This is an excellent way to sidestep the political process and keep the necessary changes from getting bogged down in the politics:

The Obama administration will formally declare Monday that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions pose a danger to the public's health and welfare, a move that lays the groundwork for an economy-wide carbon cap even if Congress fails to enact climate legislation, sources familiar with the process said.

The move, which Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa P. Jackson will announce at an afternoon press conference, comes as the largest climate change conference in history gets underway in Copenhagen. It will finalize an initial "endangerment finding" by the government in April.

While an EPA spokeswoman declined to comment on the matter, the agency sent out a press advisory that Jackson will make "a significant climate announcement at a press briefing" at 1:15 p.m. at EPA headquarters. Jackson will also speak at the U.N.-sponsored climate conference Wednesday; her address is titled "Taking Action at Home." Obama, who will attend the end of the U.N. talks Dec. 18, has sent a series of recent signals to the international community that the United States will curb its carbon output as part of a new global climate deal.

The endangerment finding stems from a 2007 Supreme Court decision in which the court ordered the EPA to determine whether greenhouse gases qualify as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. It could trigger a series of federal regulations affecting polluters, from vehicles to coal-fired power plants.

Businesses argue that such a finding would mean even emitters as small as a mom-and-pop grocery store would be forced to comply with onerous greenhouse gas regulations. The administration has crafted rules that would exempt facilities that emit less than 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide or its equivalent annually. But it remains unclear if that exemption would hold up in court.

"An endangerment finding from the EPA could result in a top-down command-and-control regime that will choke off growth by adding new mandates to virtually every major construction and renovation project," Thomas Donohue, president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said in a statement. "The devil will be in the details, and we look forward to working with the government to ensure we don't stifle our economic recovery."

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I caught this on Hardball as well and was focused on Matthews touting tort reform as a solution to health care costs, which is nothing but a distraction and right wing talking point as Daphne Eviatar does a nice job of summing up here. Digby took note of why allowing the likes of Haley Barbour to tout Mississippi as a model for health care reform is absolutely ridiculous.

The state is a disaster when it comes to health care on every front. But they have reduced their premiums and now nobody can expect restitution if a drunk doctor cuts off the wrong limb, so everything's just ducky in Haley's world. In fact the whole country should "experiment" with Mississippi's great successes.

In case you were wondering, number one is Vermont, followed by Hawaii and Iowa. If Barbour and his buddies were willing to take the lead of the states that actually deliver pretty good health care his words wouldn't ring so hollow. But all he cares about is destroying trial lawyers on behalf of his rich friends and throwing poor people off Medicaid. I don't think that's a serious solution to the problem so there's no reason to listen to anything he or any other Republican says on this subject.

Lots of stats and more over at Digby's place. So much for that "librul" media huh?

Transcript via Nexis Lexis below the fold.

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Star Parker who decided that wingnut welfare paid a lot better than actual welfare was one of the speakers at the Values Voters Summit 2009 this year, so C-SPAN decided to grace us with her presence on Washington Journal.

Here's Brad at Sadly, No!'s description of a wingnut welfare queen which I could not have described any better.

Basically, I define wingnut welfare queens as people who:

a.) Have very little talent.

b.) Work in the right-wing media machine, think-tank circles, or the Republican Party.

c.) Are employed solely on their willingness to act as shills for the GOP or wingnuttery in general.

When a Democratic caller noted the racism coming from the likes of Glenn Beck and many of those at the Tea Bag protests and said there is racism on all sides of the aisle, and asked Ms. Parker why evangelicals don't get upset about the death penalty or about the number of Iraqi babies killed in "this useless war we had", here's how she responds.

Parker: He's also not the first President that has gotten opposition from day one. We saw it under Bush and even before Sept. 11th. This is what we do as Americans. This is our society.

Now getting to the question of racism, you're absolutely right. I am sure that there are racists in this society on both sides. There are white racists, there are black racists, there are Korean racists, there are Japanese racists, there are... race is an issue regardless.

But now what we have to say are... is that everybody in the Republican Party racist. See this is what liberals have tried to convince society of. All of the racists are in the Republican Party.

Well I think it's just as racist for ah... for somebody to say that black children cannot learn in a private environment, so we're going to force them to a government school. I think it's just as racist to say that black people will never be able to learn how to save and invest their money, so we're going to force them into a Social Security that we know that they're going to die before they recover all of the money that they put into it.

I think it's just as racist to say that when we're having health care discussions we have to start at the premise that people can't fend for themselves--that they will not be able to look at private insurance options and choose one.

So, you know we can keep throwing that term on the table and acting like either everybody has to be all pure or everybody is not, but we can say let's move beyond the name calling and talk about the issues of the day. And on this issue of the day with health care and with this expansion of government, from the stimulus, to the auto industry, to the banking industry, you're absolutely right.

There is tremendous push back from the right against Barack Obama's policies and it's because we disagree with him.

Wow. I'm white, but I have quite a few very good black friends and I cannot imagine any one of them being able to listen to this tripe without being completely insulted. I don't think I've ever heard anyone denigrate their own race this badly before with the exception of possibly Michelle Malkin.

So apparently in Star Parker's world, if you're not for funneling tax dollars to private religious schools, you think black children can't learn in that environment. Social Security is somehow keeping black people from understanding how to invest their money if they’re lucky enough to have any to invest in the first place. And last but not least saying that anyone that thinks everyone should have affordable health insurance coverage which is possibly provided by the government thinks that black people are too stupid to pick from the non-existent choices they have now.

These wingnuts sure know how to pick 'em for their choice of speakers at these conferences, don't they?

Maybe Star Parker could just get all of the black people in America jobs shilling at right wing think tanks and Fox News for the Republican Party like she did and all of their problems would be solved.

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Following these remarks by Jimmy Carter...

"I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man," Carter said. "I live in the South, and I've seen the South come a long way, and I've seen the rest of the country that share the South's attitude toward minority groups at that time, particularly African Americans."

...who does Anderson Cooper think deserves another spot on his show to weigh in on the subject of racism? Racist Tea Bagger Mark Williams of course! Who else could he have possibly had on besides Williams after that insightful commentary we just had from him on the previous show?

If you're as disgusted as I am with Cooper for bringing this guy back on you can weigh in at his blog, or contact CNN here.

Transcript below the fold.

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[H/t Heather]

Nutbag wingnuts never ever go away even when they lose their tiny radio shows. They just come back again and again and again. Big money republicans always keep their wingnuts around in one form or another.
Anyway, Conservatives are crying a little more than usual lately because their racism has been so prominently displayed in their teabagger meetings and protests. And what do you know, my old pal Mark Williams is leading a teabagger party and his racism gets exposed by Anderson Cooper last night quite easily. He lies with the best of them and got caught by Anderson. Check it out.

COOPER: But I mean, Mark, what you're saying makes sense to me here when I'm hearing what you're saying. But then I read on your blog, you say -- you call the president an Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug and a racist in chief.

WILLIAMS: Yes.

COOPER: Is that the kind of...

WILLIAMS: That's the way he's behaving.

COOPER: But I mean...

WILLIAMS: I mean, if he cares to be...

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: Do you believe he's Indonesian? Do you believe he's a Muslim? Do you really believe he's a welfare thug?

WILLIAMS: He's certainly acting like it.

GERGEN: You think he's a racist in chief? Racist in chief? Is that what you called him? That's unbelievable. It's unbelievable,

WILLIAMS: Until he embraces the whole country -- what else can I conclude? He and guys like James are totally, totally isolating the rest of this country; if you're a working-class American, then you know, that's it.
CARVILLE: I tell you, if you're an American, and you like what you're hearing from this guy, if you like celebrating a man's death, go over there with these people.

Mark Williams found his new calling by joining up with the teabaggers which seems like a good fit to me since there was no where for him to go after he lost his radio show in Sacramento. In the segment he tries to downplay the psychos that make up a large part of the teabaggers and says there is no racism and then is exposed as a racist. You can't make this up.

Here's some context on this guy. His behavior was so outlandish that I've posted several clips of him over the years and he doesn't like me so much. I remember when I called Williams "Puke" in a post for his obnoxious comments he made on Hardball about Cindy Sheehan's son during Cindy's stand at Crawford ranch back in August of 2005.

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O'Donnell: "Mark, if you don't mind, you're making the case that Cindy Sheehan is hurting the morale of our troops?"

Williams: "She is aiding and abetting the enemies of this country and the people who killed her son. And right now Casey Sheehan is spinning in his grave!"

And the best response he could make to me was that I was trying to have his dog assassinated.

After Katrina hit, he acted like the lowest of the low when he attacked Katrina victims by saying they were too dumb and lazy to get out of NOLA.

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Williams: ..they didn't have the necessary brains and common sense to get out of the way of a Cat 5 Hurricane and then when it hit them- stood on the side of the convention Center expiring while reporters were coming and going..

Morris:...that's just sickening---that is atrocious what you are saying...

He calls Kanye West a racist while he spews racism.

Williams: The only role race plays in this is that the American black population has been the prototype for an entire race of people being, being turned into a group of dependents of the government--trapped there, I'm using that word very loosely are screaming we want help, we want help..

This is a man who is leading the teabagger brigade and is lapping up the attention. I hope the media sees these clips so they know who they are dealing with.

World Net Daily has done it! They've finally proven that President Obama was, in fact, born in Kenya:

The document lists Obama's parents as Barack Hussein Obama and Stanley Ann Obama, formerly Stanley Ann Dunham, the birth date as Aug. 4, 1961, and the hospital of birth as Coast General Hospital in Mombasa, Kenya. Read on...

There's just one teensy little problem here -- The Republic of Kenya didn't exist until 1964 -- three years after Obama's birth. Right wing blog Little Green Footballs is calling this a hoax, but leave it to the nutbags at Free Republic to take the debunked myth to a whole new level. See, the whole thing ties into the divorce of President Obama's parents!

Judge Samuel P. King who granted the divorce – last I heard was retired and alive (for now) in his 90s in Hawaii -- MAY or MAY NOT have asked to see the Marriage Certificate. BUT, I bet Judge King asked to see Obama JR's Birth Certificate to confirm Ann's claims that Obama SR was in fact the father. That is “standard” policy to have a Birth Certificate in case the mother asks for child support from the father (or Welfare) later after the divorce. Judge King probably told Ann to produce a birth certificate before or at trial, which would have been sometime in mid- to late-February 1964 HAD Obama SR answered his notice that was sent to Cambridge.

When Judge King wrote the order on Jan. 23, he had his clerk notify Obama SR via what's referred to as a "knock and nail". That is, the postman leaves the notification on the door for (generally) 10 days and retrieves it after that time passes -- signed or unsigned. That order was sent on Jan. 23 via airmail from Hawaii and was probably posted on Obama SR's door Jan. 27-28. Read on...

Nevermind the fact that Barack Obama's birth announcement appeared in two Hawaiian newspapers in 1961. Hell, even Karl Rove says it's likely a forgery. You can be sure the Fox News gang will be running with this story, but will CNN's Lou Dobbs continue to go down the Birther path that's killing his ratings and embarrassing the entire network?

Wait, isn't President Obama the Antichrist? My brain hurts. If I could speak directly to every Birther face to face, this is what I would say.

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David has more at the main site as I'm sure everyone already knows, but here's one portion of Limbaugh's hour and fifteen minute long free commercial that CNN and Fox gave him where he's talking about the "war on poverty" or a.k.a. the lazy Negroes are ruining the country by being on welfare. My husband was wondering if they were going to give the Democrats some equal time for a rebuttal. I honestly think subjecting people who don't normally listen to his gas bag to him is probably the best thing CNN could have done for the Democrats without meaning to.

With unemployment numbers rising as they are this is the brain dead state of the Republican party right now. Their great leader decrying helping poor people.

This is what the Republicans and Blue Dog Dems are turning their backs on:

All over the New Jersey, the welfare lines are getting longer and longer. Victims of the recession are lining up to apply for food stamps and seek help paying for utilities, rent and subsidized health care in numbers that veteran social service workers have never seen before.

While the lines may run the longest in urban Essex County, rural Salem County and suburban Middlesex see the same thing: lines getting longer, lines made up more and more of people that have never stood there before.

Nikki Hernez, a 45-year-old Newark bus driver looking for work since October, said she has stood in lines all over the county. She walked 2 1/2 miles to a Newark office Monday to pick up a bus pass, only to be told to come back Thursday because the office was so jammed.

Hernez finds the line in East Orange office the most chaotic.

"The line at 50 South Clinton Avenue is crazy -- people get there early in the morning, a lot of the people are cursing, yelling and screaming," Hernez said.

"You gotta understand, people are under so much pressure there is only so much they can take," said Hernez, who ran out of unemployment benefits and applied for welfare in the fall. "But even I tell them, real nice, you're not going to get anything quick by cursing the worker out."

[...] They include people like Joan, a 52-year-old Warren County resident who applied for public assistance in December, after years of holding white-collar and part-time tutoring jobs. County workers told her to come back in January because they were "so overloaded," she said.

Joan, who declined to reveal her full name to protect her son's privacy, said she doesn't blame the county workers -- "good people doing the best they can. But I have always been a taxpaying citizen. I am playing by the rules and I can't get help."

And really, that's what it's about. If even people who worked hard and played by the rules can't get help, our leadership is a joke and our system a complete failure:

She said she pawned jewelry to make a car payment, and put food on the table by going to food pantries and taking handouts from friends and family until, upon her third visit, the county came through with a one-time food stamp grant for $227 last month.

"I never thought I would be in this situation," Joan added. "Something has to be done about people like me."

The state Department of Human Services, which oversees the distribution of welfare, Medicaid and food stamps benefits, saw a dramatic spike in the demand for these programs in the fall. Food-stamp applications doubled from 2,234 people in October 2007 to 4,547 people in October 2008, according to the most recent state data available.

During roughly the same period, there was a 61 percent spike in the number of people seeking cash assistance through public welfare, known as Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, or General Assistance. State unemployment rose to 7.1 percent in November, the highest in 15 years.

I remember some months after 9/11 when my unemployment checks ran out, there were no jobs to be found, I couldn't pay my rent and I desperately needed health care. So I swallowed my pride and applied for assistance. That's when I found out I'd simply made too much money in the past year to be eligible.

And that's when I began to wonder about the so-called "safety net." Did it actually exist for the working class? Apparently not, and that's when I realized the reality of Bill Clinton's welfare "reform" - it's only for the hardcore, chronically poor. Everyone else has earned too much or has too many assets to qualify.

So my guess is, the welfare rolls aren't going up because in most cases, those unemployed in the past year simply aren't eligible. The story would be a lot more informative if it looked at the number of applications that were turned down:

WASHINGTON — Despite soaring unemployment and the worst economic crisis in decades, 18 states cut their welfare rolls last year, and nationally the number of people receiving cash assistance remained at or near the lowest in more than 40 years.

The trends, based on an analysis of new state data collected by The New York Times, raise questions about how well a revamped welfare system with great state discretion is responding to growing hardships.

Michigan cut its welfare rolls 13 percent, though it was one of two states whose October unemployment rate topped 9 percent. Rhode Island, the other, had the nation’s largest welfare decline, 17 percent.

Of the 12 states where joblessness grew most rapidly, eight reduced or kept constant the number of people receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the main cash welfare program for families with children. Nationally, for the 12 months ending October 2008, the rolls inched up a fraction of 1 percent.

The deepening recession offers a fresh challenge to the program, which was passed by a Republican Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996 amid bitter protest and became one of the most closely watched social experiments in modern memory.

The program, which mostly serves single mothers, ended a 60-year-old entitlement to cash aid, replacing it with time limits and work requirements, and giving states latitude to discourage people from joining the welfare rolls. While it was widely praised in the boom years that followed, skeptics warned it would fail the needy when times turned tough.

Supporters of the program say the flat caseloads may reflect a lag between the loss of a job and the decision to seek help. They also say the recession may have initially spared the low-skilled jobs that many poor people take.

But critics argue that years of pressure to cut the welfare rolls has left an obstacle-ridden program that chases off the poor, even when times are difficult.