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MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell took Tennessee Rep. Stephen Fincher to task for using the bible to justify making billions in cuts to the food stamp program, while, as a member of the House Agriculture Committee, attempting to justify the millions of dollars he receives in federal farm subsidies.

These Republicans love welfare for the wealthiest among us, but if you're a poor starving child in America, well, you'd better go find yourself a job. O'Donnell also took the members of Congress to task as a whole for refusing to do something about the massive conflicts of interest we see like this one, where they're allowed to vote on policies that are going to benefit themselves financially. He's absolutely correct that it ought to be illegal, but it's not.

Here's more on Fincher: Congressman’s Misuse Of Bible Verse Belies Bad Theology And Ideology On Food Stamps:

As the House Agriculture Committee convened earlier this week to discuss whether or not to cut as much as $4.1 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as food stamps), the conversation between lawmakers devolved into an exchange that was equal parts bad policy and bad theology.

As House members discussed slashing the budget for the Farm Bill, which funds SNAP, Rep. Stephen Fincher (R-TN) took issue with some Democrats who cited Jesus Christ’s call to care for “the least of these” when describing the government’s need to assist the hungry. Instead, Fincher explained his support for the proposed cuts by quoting a very different Bible verse – 2 Thessalonians 3:10: “For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: Anyone unwilling to work should not eat.”

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Jon Stewart returned from vacation this Tuesday night and responded to the article he read at the Huffington Post where Fox News chief Roger Ailes went after Stewart for admitting he's a "Socialist" and wouldn't do well without Fox. What we got in response was Stewart doing a really good job of explaining why being called a Socialist should not be a pejorative.

As far as not having enough material for his show if Fox did not exist, I'm sure Fox existing makes his job as a comedian easier, but as long as we've got wingnut politicians who are on the air either at the other networks or on C-SPAN spouting nonsense from the House or Senate floor, I don't think Stewart is in danger of running out of new material that's ripe for mockery any time soon.

After having a bit of fun with his "scenario" about what actually happened during that meeting with Ailes, Stewart went on to explain just what he meant by his remarks and what he considers "Socialism" such as protecting things like Social Security and Medicare.

He also took some shots at Republicans for pretending the health care law, or "Obamacare" is that dreaded "s- word", Socialism:

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During the lead up to the Ames Straw Poll in Iowa, their senior senator, Chuck Grassley, made an appearance and took the opportunity to rail on about Obama not taking responsibility for his policies and apparently was very unhappy with Republicans being blamed for any of our economic problems. He also lied and repeated the same tired old line we've heard out of them time after time:

GRASSLEY: By any measure of the economy or the fiscal policy, you [President Obama] have made every statistic worse.

I hate to break it to the good senator, but no, he hasn't as the article linked from Media Matters documents. He went on to say we need new leadership and a president who will take responsibility for their actions. What followed was a lot of cheerleading for American “exceptionalism” and more repetition promoting what we know are the failed fiscal policies of conservatism that we've seen slowly destroy what's left of our middle class over the last thirty or forty years.

President Obama is not far enough to the left to suit me. And I've been extremely irritated to see his administration adopting way too much of the same language from the right on anything from deficit reduction to tax cuts, to the confidence fairy to you name it. That said, a member of what has been a part of one of the most obstructionist Senates in the United States in history that continually blocked the hundreds of bills that were passed by the House of Representatives that could have improved our economy when the Democrats had control of both houses of Congress has absolutely no credibility whatsoever railing on about how President Obama hasn't done more to get Americans back to work and our economy back on track.

Our own Jon Perr wrote about that in March of last year here -- GOP Wins Filibuster Gold Medal.

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Looks like some more bad news for the Bachmann presidential campaign -- Bachmann's husband got $137,000 in Medicaid funds:

While Rep. Michele Bachmann has forcefully denounced the Medicaid program for swelling the "welfare rolls," the mental health clinic run by her husband has been collecting annual Medicaid payments totaling over $137,000 for the treatment of patients since 2005, according to new figures obtained by NBC News.

The previously unreported payments are on top of the $24,000 in federal and state funds that Bachmann & Associates, the clinic founded by Marcus Bachmann, a clinical therapist, received in recent years under a state grant to train its employees, state records show. The figures were provided to NBC News in response to a Freedom of Information request.

The clinic, based in Lake Elmo, Minn., describes itself on its website as offering "quality Christian counseling" for a large number of mental health problems ranging from "anger management" to addictions and eating disorders.

The $161,000 in payments from the Minnesota Department of Human Services to her husband's clinic appear to contradict some of Michelle Bachmann's public accounts this week when she was first asked about the extent to which her family has benefited from government aid. Contacted this afternoon, Alice Stewart, a spokeswoman for Bachmann, said the congresswoman was doing campaign events and was not immediately available for comment.

Questions about the Bachmann family's receipt of government funds arose this week after a Los Angeles Times story reported that a family farm in which Michelle Bachmann is a partner had received nearly $260,000 in federal farm subsidies.

When asked by anchor Chris Wallace on "Fox News Sunday" about the story's assertion that her husband's counseling clinic had also gotten federal and state funds, Bachmann replied that it was "one-time training money that came from the federal government. And it certainly didn't help our clinic."

At another point, she said, "My husband and I did not get the money," adding that it was "mental health training money that went to the employees."

But state records show that Bachmann & Associates has been collecting payments under the Minnesota's Medicaid program every year for the past six years. Karen Smigielski, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Human Services, said the state's Medicaid program is funded "about 50-50" with federal and state monies. The funds to Bachmann & Associates are for the treatment of low-income mentally ill patients and are based on a "fee for service" basis, meaning the clinic was reimbursed by Medicaid for the services it provided. Read on...

And keep in mind that this clinic of his is reportedly one where they "pray away the gay" as TPM wrote about back in '06 -- MN-06: Does GOPer Bachmann's Husband "Ungay" Homosexuals?:

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Lawrence O'Donnell reminded us again why hypocrites like Republican presidential hopefuls Tim Pawlenty and Michele Bachmann with their anti-government, "free-market" rhetoric where they decry the Democrats as being Socialists are nothing but flame throwing hypocrites. They love the kind of Socialism that benefits their big business constituents in their home states.

When it comes to the kind of Socialism that helps out everyday Americans even the playing field with the have-mores in our society, not so much.

As Lawrence reported, Sam Stein at the HuffPo has uncovered a record through the Freedom of Information Act where Bachmann was praising the kind of Socialism she does like.

Michele Bachmann Literally Praised Government Pork In Letter To Obama Official:

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) has built a large part of her conservative appeal on strict opposition to federal intervention in the free market. Her real-time criticism of the Troubled Asset Relief Program earned her plaudits among the base voters who will soon decide Republican primary elections. Her pledge to repeal President Obama's health care law, on grounds that it imposes an across-the-board government solution, has become a focal point of her presidential campaign.

When it comes to the agriculture industry, however, Bachmann's record doesn't match the fiscal conservative hype. A Freedom of Information Act request for communications the Minnesota Republican has had with the Department of Agriculture shows that she leaned heavily on federal officials for help -- never more so than when it came to aiding the pork and dairy producers in her state.

On Oct. 5, 2009, Bachmann wrote Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack praising him for injecting money into the pork industry through the form of direct government purchases. She went on to request additional assistance.

"Your efforts to stabilize prices through direct government purchasing of pork and dairy products are very much welcomed by the producers in Minnesota, and I would encourage you to take any additional steps necessary to prevent further deterioration of these critical industries, such as making additional commodity purchases and working to expand trade outlets for these and other agricultural goods," Bachmann wrote.

At the time, the pork industry was facing a two-pronged calamity: fallout from the H1N1 influenza crisis and the ripple effects of the recession. Pork producers had lost nearly $4.6 billion in equity since 2007 and Vilsack, sensing greater market doom, had injected funds into the industry at least four times since that spring. In March 2009, the USDA purchased $25 million in pork, in April it made a $50 million purchase and in July it bought 775,000 pounds of ham, according to reports. In September, just one month before receiving Bachmann's letter, Vilsack had signed off on $30 million in additional federal purchases of pork.

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Lawrence O'Donnell went after these hypocritical so-called "tea party" Republicans who claim to hate "socialism" except of course when it come so their farm subsidies.

O‘DONNELL: Time for tonight‘s Rewrite. Republican freshman who rode to office on the support of free market worshiping Tea Partiers now have a little problem, which—no surprise here—is how much they really love socialism.

As we‘ve discussed in this space before, there is good socialism, like Social Security and Medicare, and there is bad socialism, wasteful socialism like agriculture subsidies. There are 15 Republican freshman on the House Agriculture Committee, the group of lawmakers who will have to deal with the 15 to 20 billion dollars this country spends every year in handouts, agriculture subsidies.

And as first noted in a report by “Politico,” several of those 15 Republicans have actually received hundreds of thousands of dollars in farm subsidies themselves over the years. Farm subsidies have only one purpose, to protect farmers and only farmers from the cruelties of the free market.

But Tea Partiers and Republicans like to pretend that the free market has no cruelties. Sure, it has winners and losers, but the losers, they‘re not entrepreneurial enough. They don‘t really want to work. That‘s why Tea Partiers and Republicans oppose extending unemployment benefits in a recession when the cruelties of the free market leave millions of people out of work.

Missouri Republican Congressman Vicky Hartzler, a freshman, crystallized Tea Party limited government philosophy during her campaign in 2010.

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Cenk Uygur with The Dylan Ratigan Show's Daily Rant on the Republican welfare queens. Looks like Cenk might have caught this article by NPR.

INSIDE WASHINGTON: Farm Subsidies' Staying Power:

"They are here to represent their districts, and if their district is clearly a strong agricultural district that uses the programs in the farm bill, it may be something where they have to break with what they campaigned on," says Chandler Goule, a lobbyist for the National Farmers Union.

For some deficit-cutting Republicans, it's a question that's close to home.

Consider Vicky Hartzler of Missouri, who courted tea party support and dethroned the chairman of the House Armed Service Committee, Democratic Rep. Ike Skelton.

Hartzler and her husband own a farm equipment business and a farm where they grow corn and soybeans. She received more than $770,000 in farm subsidies over the past 15 years, according to the Environmental Working Group, a Washington advocacy group that collects and analyzes farm subsidy data.

While promising to cut what she called wasteful spending, Hartzler says protecting farmers is a national security issue because the decline of farms could mean more imported food.

"There are fewer and fewer farmers today so it makes them more of an easy target than others," she says. "American consumers have a vested interest in making sure we have a safe and reliable food supply that is home grown."

Still, she believes some programs may need to be cut.

"There's a benefit to keeping that food safety net there, but we need to look at all discretionary spending and ask the hard questions," she says.

Crop insurance — it costs taxpayers billions of dollars a year — is an effective way to give farmers the security they need when weather ruins a harvest, Hartzler said. She suggests the Conservation Reserve Program, which pays farmers to idle environmentally sensitive land, may have to go.

GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, an outspoken critic of farm payments, listed between $15,000 and $50,000 in farm income as one source of revenue on her personal financial disclosure statement last year, citing a Bachmann family farm in Independence, Wis., as an asset.

That farm, which was owned by her father-in-law, received more than $250,000 in subsidies over the past 15 years, according to the Environmental Working Group. A Bachmann spokesman said she is not involved in any operational decisions.

South Dakota Republican Kristi Noem, who ousted Democratic Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, had partial ownership in a ranch that received more than $3 million in subsidies over 15 years, though her family bought her out last year.

Farmer and gospel singer Stephen Fincher won an open seat House race in Tennessee this year while both railing against federal spending and deflecting criticism that his family had received $3.2 million in federal farm subsidies in the past 10 years.

And then there's welfare queen, Cubs owner Joe Ricketts -- The Ricketts family is against “wasteful government spending” unless it helps make them rich:

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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.