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Your quote of the day from Coalition to Stop Gun Violence's Ladd Everitt when asked by Melissa-Harris Perry about the NRA's incoming president, Jim Porter:

EVERITT: If you love Ted Nugent, you're going to love the new incoming president of the NRA, Jim Porter. This guy basically could have walked right out of a militia camp.

Oh joy! Just what we need. Someone at the NRA more extreme than crazy Wayne LaPierre. Here's more on this wingnut from Hunter at Kos: NRA elevates crackpot conspiracy theorist to be their new president:

It looks like the NRA has no intention of toning down the batshit crazy, and calls for "responsible NRA leadership" just got shot in the thigh and left to bleed out behind the ol' shed. The new NRA president (the job rotates every two years, presumably because maintaining such a high level of indignant batshit crazy is a high-effort job) is current NRA vice president Jim Porter, who ascends to the job because apparently every last member of the NRA leadership is entirely off their rockers. Let's meet Jim, shall we?

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Rachel Maddow detailed the surprising dynamic going on in a Democratic primary in Illinois where a former congresswoman likely won't win because of her vocal support of the gun nuts lobby, even to the point of channelling Wayne LaPierre with her [gun laws] "always hurt law-abiding citizens" crap from a 2010 YouTube video for a Second Amendment Freedom Rally in Chicago.

via Maddow Blog:

As Rachel noted on the show on Friday, a super PAC run by New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg (I) has taken an active interest in the special election, hitting Chicago's airwaves with ads targeting Hutchinson and former U.S. Rep. Debbie Halvorson (D) for having earned "A" ratings from the National Rifle Association.

The RNA's grade, Rachel noted, "is a scarlet letter" in the heavily-Democratic district, so much so that it helped push Hutchinson out of the race altogether.

If there were any doubts that the post-Newtown environment has changed, ask yourself: when was the last time a congressional candidate was forced to quit after taking heat over a positive NRA rating?

Robin Kelly, meanwhile, is eager to tout her "F" rating from the right-wing organization. Though the Democratic primary remains quite crowded, the race increasing appears to be a showdown between Kelly, who enjoys backing from Bloomberg and progressive groups like the CREDO super PAC, and Halvorson, who is scrambling to convince voters she disagrees with the NRA on a series of key issues, her previous boasts about her "A" rating notwithstanding.

The Democratic primary is a week from tomorrow, the winner of which is very likely to win the seat. Given the national implications, it's a race worth watching -- we haven't seen one like this in a long while, but it may prove to be a sign of things to come.

For her part, Halvorson blames outside groups like Bloomberg's PAC for trying to buy a congressional seat. Halvorson even claims she's still the frontrunner, seemingly oblivious to her fate. Or perhaps she figures she'll land a gig at Fox News slamming Democrats anyway, as evidenced by this segment with Megyn Kelly last week.

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Rachel Maddow took viewers through the litany of statements made by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid about the need to reform the filibuster rules to prevent the Republican minority from forcing 60 votes on every single bill, but as she noted, what ended up passing this Thursday was nothing that anyone could consider any type of meaningful reform.

About the only issue I'd take with Rachel's reporting on the subject is that I'm not sure if it's fair to lay all of the blame at Reid's feet, or if it's what I believe is a more likely scenario, which is that he'd have gladly signed onto the reforms himself if he thought he had the votes within his own caucus, which he did not. If that is the case, I'd like to know which Senators he was dealing with that refused to go along with stopping the unprecedented obstruction we've seen from the Republicans since Barack Obama was elected president.

And in regard to the failure to pass any new reforms now, as long as Democrats do not control the House, it's not like there is going to be any actual progressive legislation making it through our Congress that Senate Republicans would be blocking. It would make a big difference with nominees and treaties being held up (which I don't want to minimize) to get the rules changed now, but if Democrats were going to reform the filibuster rules, it would have made a real difference when they had control of the House as well and they refused to do it then. I'm disgusted but not shocked that they didn't do anything about it now as well, given their track record.

I've read jokes about the day Al Franken finally got sworn in being the worst day of Harry Reid's life because they couldn't use the Republicans as an excuse any more for not getting anything done in the Senate. I think we're seeing right now that we're not going to have any reforms as long as we've got a bunch of Democrats mucking up the works who are not much better than their counterparts on the right.

Here's more from Ezra Klein on the latest: Harry Reid: “I’m not personally, at this stage, ready to get rid of the 60-vote threshold”:

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Former C&L contributor and now Rachel Maddow Show producer and Maddow Blog contributor Steve Benen joined guest host Ezra Klein on Maddow's show and discussed the subject of one of his recent posts, which is the fact that Republicans can't run against President Obama's actual policies, so they have to resort to constantly taking him out of context.

All out of context, all the time:

The Republican National Committee is excitedly sending around this clip today, showing 17 seconds of a speech President Obama delivered to supporters in Oakland on Tuesday. Some of the RNC's media allies are already on board with the attack. [...]

The idea, apparently, is for voters to recoil at the notion that the president believes his economic plan has "worked." I appear to be in the minority, but I happen to think this is true -- the economy that was hemorrhaging jobs is now adding jobs; the economy that was shrinking is now growing; the stock market that was headed into a death spiral is now headed up; an auto industry that was on the verge of collapse is now thriving, etc.

That said, it's obviously a contentious point, and the economy is not yet close to where it needs to be. But as Dave Weigel noted, the significance of the RNC's gambit isn't a debate over the efficacy of Obama's policies, but rather, the Republicans' bad habit of wrenching quotes from context.

As Steve noted, he was talking about the Clinton era as compared to the Bush era and the RNC decided to just leave that part of the clip out. More with his running list of this nonsense below the fold.

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From this Tuesday's The Rachel Maddow Show with guest host Ezra Klein, Klein lays out very plainly why Republicans don't think our health care system and insurance system in the United States needs reform. As Klein noted, their leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell laid out very plainly on Fox News Sunday this weekend the fact that he and his party do not think the number of uninsured Americans is a problem they need to be concerned with.

EZRA KLEIN: But before that, I have to begin with a confession. You know Mitch McConnell, kind of a jolly guy. He`s a Kentuckian. He leads the Senate Republicans.

He is my favorite politician by far, and not just because of his good looks or his Southern charm. It`s because Mitch McConnell is the most honest man in Washington.

You ask almost anyone else in a position of power on Capitol Hill why they`re doing, what they`re doing, and you get spin, spin, and more spin. You know, they`re reaching across the aisle to make the country better, because freedom is the most important freedom, that any freedom and American value, and then you think about the children and their freedom, and et cetera, et cetera.

Meanwhile, they just got done 10 minutes before that meeting with six mega donors and the way they`re voting on the amendment because they`re settling a score they have been nursing since the 2005 budget fight.

Mitch McConnell is not really like that. He tells you what`s going on. When he speaks I have learned to listen. In fact, of every politician and I`m not kidding about this, he`s literally the one I listen to the most closely because his mixture of real power and frankly honesty maim hick the best guy to what is going to happen next in the Capitol.

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From this Monday evening's The Rachel Maddow Show, guest host Ezra Klein does a recap of the column he wrote earlier that same day, debunking the right wing's latest talking point that the Affordable Care Act is “the largest tax increase in the history of the world.”

No, ‘Obamacare’ isn’t ‘the largest tax increase in the history of the world’ (in one chart):

Since the Supreme Court decision, Republicans have been calling the Affordable Care Act “the largest tax increase in the history of the world.” Politifact rates this false. Kevin Drum’s got a table of the 15 significant tax increases since 1950, and the Affordable Care Act, which amounts to a tax increase of 0.49 percent of GDP, comes in 10th. Austin Frakt took Drum’s table and made a chart: [...]

So no, the Affordable Care Act isn’t the “biggest tax hike in history.” It’s not even the biggest tax hike in the past 60 years. Or 50 years. Or 30 years. Or 20 years.

But it does include a number of tax hikes. The individual mandate, however, isn’t one of the big ones. It’s only expected to raise $27 billion during the next decade. The largest tax increase in the law is on high earners, who will see their Medicare payroll taxes increase by 0.9 percentage point and who will also pay a slightly higher rate on investment income. That raises more than $200 billion. There’s also the tax on unusually expensive health insurance plans, which raises $30 billion in the first decade, and much more in the second. There’s a $60 billion tax on insurance companies. You can find the whole list here.

And as Derek Thompson at The Atlantic rightfully pointed out: 2 of the Last 3 GOP Presidents Signed Larger Tax Increases Than Obamacare.

And as Klein noted in the clip above, President Obama has also cut taxes as he did in the stimulus, by extending the Bush tax cuts for two years and as he's promising to do with extending most of the Bush tax cuts for the lower and middle class permanently. None of those facts seem to matter to Republicans much, who are just desperate to paint Democrats as tax and spend liberals and make paying taxes of any sort a dirty word rather than all of our duty to make sure our government functions and that we protect the most vulnerable in our society and our society and democracy as a whole.

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm really just exhausted from watching and listening to this Libertarian wing and bunch of extremists that have taken over the Republican Party and the media's unwillingness to call them out as the dangerous ideologues that they are. Klein did a good job of calling out their lies and the fact that they want to demagogue the issue of paying taxes here. Sadly segments like this one have been the exception when it comes to Republicans and their reaction to the Supreme Court's ruling on the Affordable Care Act. For the most part they've been aided and abetted by our corporate media, and not just Fox.

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Just in case anyone ever had any doubts where the campaign of Herman Cain would go with his defense against allegations of past sexual harassment, there was little doubt left when they began to attack the accusers. Last Tuesday when Cain "lawyered up" he did so with one of the most well-known anti-defamation lawyers in the country. L. Lin Wood though let slip their strategy going forward, in a not so veiled threat against anyone else making these kind of charges.

Rachel had an extended piece the other night (of nearly 15 minutes straight) on this subject, saying she was "shocked" by the comment and the attitude on display by the Cain campaign. She lets them have it with both barrels in a devastating segment. The video above is 5 minutes of that.

via The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Standing at Cain’s side at a news conference Tuesday in Phoenix, Wood said his newest client has been “falsely accused, first by anonymous sources, and then yesterday by Sharon Bialek, who chose to come forward for whatever reason after 14 years, when recollections have faded and witnesses cannot be located.”

Wood, in an interview from Arizona, was hired this week after rumors of a fourth woman bringing sexual accusations against Cain emerged. The lawyer said the campaign hadn’t necessarily thought about bringing legal action against anyone -- at least yet.

“I’m not here to scare anyone off,” Wood said, referring to the prospect of more allegations. “[However] they should think twice, anyway.”

And the strategy going forward from here on in will be character assassination, as noted in the NY Times:

Ms. Allred, who represents Ms. Bialek and has her own national reputation for representing women in high-profile sexual harassment cases, said she had prepared her client for criticism, but accused the Cain campaign of taking a “scorched-earth” approach.

“He’s got millions of dollars to spend on investigators, high priced attorneys, P.R. people, political operatives, you name it, he can spend it to get what he needs to basically get the high-priced weapons of war ready and aimed at our clients,” Ms. Allred said. “The women we represent don’t have those kinds of resources, and that makes their willingness to speak out all the more heroic.”

And while Herman Cain looks out for his own interests, it does appear that Republicans --specifically moderate Republican women-- are looking elsewhere, Herman Cain having slipped to #3 in a recent McClatchy-Marist poll, ironically enough behind another man with a checkered past in Newt Gingrich.

Republicans, who already have problems attracting minority voters such as Blacks and Hispanics, would be well-advised to steer clear of Herman Cain, lest they antagonize any further the largest "minority" group of all: Women.

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From MSNBC:

Richard Engel, NBC News Chief Correspondent, takes Rachel on a tour of Kabul's Chicken Street shopping district where she forgoes inexpensive jewels [pure one carat emeralds for $120] and purchases a rug with a gun on it for her mother.

And although not the same one here's a reasonable facsimile of the one she bought.

Scott Coen of Mass Live gives the details:

Under a picture perfect blue sky the 2010 Smith College graduates were treated to the musings of MSNBC commentator Rachel Maddow.

Now an institution of higher learning like Smith College never needs to settle for a commencement speaker, and this year the 'Smithies' didn't settle on Rachel Maddow.

Maddow, who still lives in the Pioneer Valley, is in a higher education class all by herself.

Rachel graduated from Stanford with a degree in public policy, she's a Rhodes Scholar who earned an Oxford PhD in politics. On any college campus Rachel Maddow would be described as the real deal.

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As Chris Hayes noted, it's rare you find this kind of bipartisanship in Washington D.C. these days, but we got it with the 96-0 vote to pass Sen. Bernie Sanders amendment to audit the Federal Reserve.

Senate Passes Amendment for One-Time Audit of Fed:

The Senate adopted an amendment Tuesday to the financial-overhaul bill that would boost transparency of the Federal Reserve's emergency lending actions during the financial crisis. Lawmakers voted 96-0 to incorporate the modified amendment offered by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), who scaled back his original language last week to overcome White House objections.

"This amendment begins the process of lifting the veil of secrecy of perhaps the most powerful federal agency," Mr. Sanders said at a news conference after the vote. Once the audit is completed, Mr. Sanders said he hopes it will unveil so many "back-room deals" that people will push for even more disclosure.

Sen. Sanders explained what's in his amendment to Chris Hayes who was filling in for Rachel Maddow. I know a lot of people would have liked to this audit to go further but considering the political environment we're living in, I'm surprised he managed to get this passed. Sanders gave credit to a strong grass roots movement from both sides of the aisle coming together and pushing our politicians for its success. This is one instance I must say where I'm glad to see that happen. I want to see the Fed audited.

Here's more from Sen. Sanders press release.

Release: Senate Approves Fed Audit Sanders Amendment to End Fed Secrecy Passes

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