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South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and Rep. Tim Scott appeared on Greta Van Susteren's show on Fox to discuss Haley's decision to appoint Scott to take Sen. Jim DeMint's place, who is off to collect his wingnut welfare over at The Heritage Foundation after his retirement.

Right out of the gate we had Scott promising to focus on getting that government spending, that they all hate when there's a Democratic in the White House so much under control and advocating for a flat tax. Haley heaped praise on Scott and said that "he earned" this appointment. I guess that's true if anyone thinks there's merit in being even more of an extremist than his predecessor and so far, that seems to be the case.

Here's more on that from Think Progress: Meet Sen. Tim Scott: The Tea Party Lawmaker Who Wanted To Impeach President Obama And Kick Kids Off Food Stamps:

Though DeMint left big, controversial shoes to fill for Republicans, few conservatives will be disappointed with Scott’s record. Elected to Congress just two years ago in the Tea Party wave, Scott has already garnered headlines for his plan to impeach President Obama, his legislation to cut off union members’ children from food stamps, and his defense of Big Oil.

Here’s a quick look at Scott’s record:

• Floated impeaching Obama over the debt ceiling. As the debt ceiling debate raged in the summer of 2011 because of the intransigence of Tea Party freshmen like Scott, the nation inched perilously close to defaulting on its obligations. One option discussed by some officials to avoid that scenario was for the president to assert that the debt ceiling itself was an unconstitutional infringement on the 14th Amendment. However, Tim Scott told a South Carolina Tea Party group that if Obama were to go this route, it would be an “impeachable act.”
• Proposed a bill to cut off food stamps for entire families if one member went on strike. One of the most anti-union members of Congress, Scott proposed a bill two months after entering Congress in 2011 to kick families off food stamps if one adult were participating in a strike. Scott’s legislation made no exception for children or other dependents.
• Wanted to spend an unlimited amount of money to display Ten Commandments outside county building. When Scott was on the Charleston County Council, one of his primary issues was displaying the Ten Commandments outside the Council building. According to the Augusta Chronicle, Scott said the display “would remind council members and speakers the moral absolutes they should follow.” When he was sued for violating the Constitution and a Circuit Judge’s orders, Scott was nonplussed: “Whatever it costs in the pursuit of this goal (of displaying the Commandments) is worth it.”
• Defended fairness of giving billions in subsidies to Big Oil. Scott and his Republican allies in Congress voted repeatedly last year to protect more than $50 billion in taxpayer subsidies for Big Oil corporations. When ThinkProgress asked Scott whether it was fair to do that, especially at a time when oil companies are earning tens of billions in profit every quarter, the Tea Party freshman defended the industry: “fair is a relative word,” said Scott.
• Helped slash South Carolina’s HIV/AIDS budget. As a state representative, Scott backed a proposal to cut the state’s entire HIV/AIDS budget, despite the fact that South Carolina ranks in the top-third of reported AIDS cases. The cuts were ultimately included in the state’s budget, impacting more than 2,000 HIV-positive South Carolinians who needed help paying for their medication.

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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was asked by CNN's Candy Crowley about whether or not their attempt to blame President Obama for rising gas prices was going to be successful, given recent polling showing that Americans primarily blamed the oil companies for the problem and the fact that Americans blamed the GOP by only three fewer percentage points than they did the president.

When McConnell responded by taking up for the oil companies and their subsidies, Crowley asked him if he thought those tax breaks were fair given their record profits and McConnell responded by accusing Crowley of "using all of the Democratic talking points" -- because that's generally what these guys do when they're trying to defend the indefensible. You go on the attack and accuse the interviewer of being biased.

Anyone who regularly watches Crowley's show on CNN knows full well whose talking points she's generally repeating, and they're not from the Democrats.

Transcript below the fold.

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Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann told The Associated Press Sunday that as president, she would approve drilling for oil and natural gas in the Everglades.

"The United States needs to be less dependent on foreign sources of energy and more dependent upon American resourcefulness," the candidate said. "Whether that is in the Everglades, or whether that is in the eastern Gulf region, or whether that's in North Dakota, we need to go where the energy is."

"Of course it needs to be done responsibly. If we can't responsibly access energy in the Everglades then we shouldn't do it."

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Grover Norquist was asked a very specific question about one of the talking points that we hear constantly from Republicans, that you can't raise taxes on the small businesses and "job creators" or you'll do terrible damages to those businesses and put them under and of course when he had some actual numbers put in his face, he couldn't defend it.

Rather than address the fact that yes, this is something Republicans claim over and over on the air and defend the talking point, Norquist punts and turns the conversation to tanning salon taxes being increased, the possibility of increasing taxes on big oil companies and whether or not you can trust President Obama to keep campaign promises with not raising taxes on anyone earning over $250,000 a year.

Sorry Grover, but that's not what the man asked you about. He asked if increasing someone's taxes who makes $300,000 a year by a pittance was really going to mean they didn't have the ability to create jobs any more and you got forced to tell the truth here, no, it won't. It's too bad the caller didn't get a chance to do a follow up with him because the useless C-SPAN hosts like Peter Slen here sure aren't going to.

KEN: The Republican argument says do not raise any taxes or the revenue side, because those are the job makers. And if we do that we're going to crush the jobs. Now explain, I want to understand this. So if somebody making $300,000, they've got a small business, they're creating jobs; the tax increases would be for over $250,000 and I think it's a 4% rate.

Now if I have that right, we're saying that the Democrats want to raise taxes for that $50,000 at 4%, $2000 annually on that $300,000 income, so that person's making $25,000 a month. We're going to raise their taxes $2000 a year, or $160 a month; so are we saying, are the Republicans saying that if you raise taxes on somebody making $25,000 a month, by $160, the equivalent of their cable bill, all of the sudden, their business is going to collapse?

NORQUIST: Umm... no. The concerns about what President Obama want to do on taxes under present structure, Obama wants to take the tax rate which is now 35% on individuals and companies, we're talking the uprate and take that up to 44%. He takes it up to 40% by by one and two and the 2001 tax cut. There are tax increases in Obama-care. On our web site at atr.org there's a list of all the tax increases that exist on, as part of Obama-care's nationalization of health care.

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As Keith noted before getting into the meat of this interview, BP apparently doesn't understand that they're not going to improve their image by doing things like this.

In another effort to repair its image, BP picks up tab for fireworks show in Colorado:

In struggling to save its brand name from drowning in backlash from the Gulf oil disaster, BP has launched multiple efforts to revamp its image as “part of the community.” Now, the “embattled oil giant” has “stepped forward to pay” for the annual July Fourth fireworks display in Durango, CO. Agreeing to pay for the display five months before the Deepwater Horizon explosion, BP is pitching the display as a community donation.

...Many conservative leaders have jumped on the “shakedown” bandwagon, seeing BP’s $20 billion for an escrow fund as a real danger to the company’s viability. But if the company can pay for fireworks and baseball trophies while launching aggressive media campaigns and funding a front group to downplay the disaster, BP can cover its responsibility to the victims in the Gulf.

Maybe one of these days the idiots that run PR for BP will figure out that actually taking care of cleaning up and containing rather than hiding and dispersing the oil gushing out of that pipe is the only thing that's going to satisfy anyone who's not a complete moron and that is following how they've handled this disaster. They're obviously so used to getting away with this sort of corporate malfeasance that the media generally ignores that they are hoping this won't be any different than business as usual for them.

And then we have Haley Barbour, who again is showing himself to be nothing but a puppet of big oil.

Haley Barbour: ‘No one has more to lose in this deal than BP.’:

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Boy was this one pathetic interview. This Sunday on CNN's State of the Union Candy Crowley brings on Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski who is one of the top recipients of campaign donations from the oil and gas industries, who recently blocked the Senate from raising the liability cap for oil companies and that just attempted to gut the Clean Air Act and allows her to deny the assertion that Republicans are the party of big oil without challenging her.

I realize that it would make all of these politicians uncomfortable to be challenged about who they're taking money from and how it affects their voting record, but I thought that was what the press was supposed to be doing. Not worrying about whether they're going to come back on their shows again for another "exclusive" interview where they're allowed to lie with no accountability and misinform the public. When you can't challenge someone who's as obviously bought and sold as Murkowski, that's really pathetic.

CROWLEY: Congressman Joe Barton, obviously in the hearings with B.P.

The Democrats have taken this and run with it, and we are now hearing the chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, saying this was not a gaffe; this is the philosophy of the Republican Party; they are big oil; Wall Street; they are the party of corporations.

What is your response to that?

MURKOWSKI: Couldn't be more wrong -- couldn't be more wrong. The statement that Representative Barton made was wrong, absolutely wrong. He has since apologized for it.

But for -- for the White House, for the administration to be, kind of, running with this as the issue -- let's not forget; we had 11 people die. We have an environmental disaster unfolding. We have an economic disaster that is unfolding.

Let's not be distracted by saying, you know, Joe Barton made this gaffe or this -- this inappropriate comment. Let's focus on what we need to do, which is getting relief to the Gulf, making sure that they have every asset possible, making sure that we've got a claims compensation system that works for them. Let's focus on providing what the people of the Gulf need, not pointing fingers back and forth and saying, oh, you know, what you said was wrong.

CROWLEY: B.P. does a lot of business in Alaska. It brings in a lot of revenue. After watching this fiasco, you had some of your own in Alaska, too, that were B.P.-prompted. Do you trust B.P.?

MURKOWSKI: Well, I tell you, B.P.'s operations in Alaska have all been on land. So you've got the offshore/onshore differences. We have had issues with B.P., serious issues where it was clear that they failed in their responsibility as operators. It was unacceptable. They have been fined mightily.

Now, they have said that they have improved their efforts. That needs to be demonstrated. That needs to be demonstrated. And unfortunately, what we are seeing in the Gulf, and as we learn a little bit more every day about what may have happened, this does not reflect well on B.P.

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Stephen Moore doesn't want the taxpayers footing the bill for government to invest in green technologies. Who does he and his fellow conservatives think ends up footing the bill when the government has to come in and clean up big oil's mess as they're demanding happens with this disaster in the Gulf? BP's not going to end up paying for this any more than Exxon Mobil did after their buddies on the Supreme Court took care of them. I made a little video mashup for Mr. Moore after hearing this hackery from him on CNN's Your Money. And a note to Bill Maher, quit bringing this Bush apologist Wall Street Journal hack on your show please. It's bad enough he gets his mug on Fox and CNN as often as he does. John Amato would make a much better guest.

VELSHI: You think the deal for climate change legislation is in trouble, too, as a result?

MOORE: I think it is in a lot of trouble and I think it simply comes back to the one issue we talk about every week on this show, which is jobs. The carbon tax is a big killer of jobs in the U.S.

ROMANS: Howard is like --

Howard --he can't sit still.

GOULD: Not only is it not a carbon tax but the fact is it's not a job killer, it is a job creator. Most people actually think--

MOORE: How? How can you --

GOULD: If you let me speak for a second I'll tell you. Most people actually think that when you look at clean tech and the climate bill that it's solely focused around wind and solar, the fact is that there are companies out there that take trinity industries for example, this is a 100-year-old metal bending company, five years ago they decided to continue on producing their rail cars but also producing wind turbine towers. Now they're hiring people. These are green jobs.

MOORE: I'm all in favor of your green technologies just don't ask taxpayers to pay for it and there is no way you can make energy --

GOULD: Taxpayers pay for oil? Why shouldn't they pay --

MOORE: You can't make energy more expensive and production more expensive in the U.S. which the climate bill does and expect that to create jobs? It does create jobs; it just creates them in China and India.