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After a really unfortunate visual of John Boehner that I don't have enough brain-bleach to get out of my head, Jon Stewart slammed these "tea partiers" (note to Jon Stewart, there is no "tea party") for still not being satisfied with the outcome of this ridiculous debt ceiling hostage taking.

As Stewart noted, they control less than one half of one chamber of Congress and even though our deficit is primarily a result of Republican policies like the Bush tax cuts, they still won't "take the win" because they're pissed off that "government still exists."

STEWART: This whole process has been like, you're in a bank, it's a negotiation where you've got some hostages and after getting everything you wanted, you're still going "Oh, and one last demand. I still get to kill the hostages, right?"

That about sums it up. They're all of the Grover Norquist ilk where they want to shrink government to the size of a baby and then drown the baby in a bathtub. People who do not believe in government working should not be allowed to be running our government, but here we are. I can only hope everyone of these astroturf, Koch-funded TeaBirchers finds themselves looking for new employment after the next election or whenever the rest of them have to run again.

Maybe we can get Stewart to ask one of these days as many of our commenters have suggested here and as I would also suggest myself, if these "free market" anti-regulation, anti-government zealots want to live in a country where their ideology has come to fruition, can we get them all to move to Somalia and leave the rest of us that still want government to work for the people that have elected our politicians into office, and that they're supposed to be representing, the hell alone? I suspect that's too much to ask for from the crowd that just wants to burn the whole house down.



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Cenk Uygur had better not stay on vacation for too much longer or he might find his job in jeopardy from the Rev. Al Sharpton who's been filling in for him for the last week or so. Sharpton has shown himself to be more than willing to go head to head with these right-wing conservative House members over the last week and this Monday's interview with Rep. Tom Graves (R-GA) and self proclaimed astroturf "tea party" member was no exception.

I wish more people would give these people the same treatment every time they came on the air and maybe they'd decide doing television interviews wasn't such a good idea any more, but I don't have any hope of that happening any time soon.

Sharpton started out with hitting him for his uber-patriotic nonsense of claiming to "love America" and asking him if he also loved actual Americans like seniors on Social Security and working people who need Medicaid. Sharpton summed that up nicely when he said to Graves "I appreciate you loving America, but do you love Americans that have to survive in America?"

Graves comeback to that was to say that Sharpton had probably never been to a tea party rally, but a lot of them are on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and pretended that their policies are actually going to preserve our social safety nets rather than destroy them and that their new slogan of “cut, cap and balance” was just common sense that most Americans should agree with.

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Despite the fact that the funding for Planned Parenthood only accounts for a tiny portion of the budget, Rep. Tom Graves (R-GA) insisted to MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell that this assault on women's reproductive rights and health care was somehow about getting our deficit under control.

I'm not sure how someone like this guy sleeps at night because given the smirk on his face as O'Donnell laid into him for playing politics with women's health care, he thinks this is some kind of a game. It's a deadly game they're playing and one where they obviously don't care how many lives might be lost in the process of either threatening to or actually shutting down the government, or as a result of their extremist ideology.

And as far as his claim that the Republicans are somehow doing "the will of the American people", well here are some polls to the contrary:

Two new public polls released today show majority support for Planned Parenthood, and clear opposition to efforts to bar Planned Parenthood from receiving federal funds for preventive health care such as lifesaving cancer screenings, breast exams, birth control, and STD testing and treatment, including HIV testing.

A Quinnipiac University poll released today found that a majority of voters (53 percent) opposed “cutting off federal government funding to Planned Parenthood.” The margin was 53 percent to 43 percent.

The poll also found that 50 percent of Independent voters — as well as 66 percent of voters aged 18–34 and 60 percent of “moderate” voters — opposed “cutting off federal government funding to Planned Parenthood.”

Read the full poll HERE.

An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll also released today found that 53 percent of Americans found it “mostly or totally unacceptable” to “eliminate funding to Planned Parenthood for family planning and preventive health services.”

Among women overall, 56% found it “mostly or totally unacceptable” to “eliminate funding to Planned Parenthood for family planning and preventive health services.”

Among women 18–49, 60% found it “mostly or totally unacceptable” to “eliminate funding to Planned Parenthood for family planning and preventive health services.”

Read the full poll HERE. (Planned Parenthood question on page 16).

Below, please find a statement by Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, on the two new public polls:

“It’s clear that Americans understand that the proposal to bar Planned Parenthood from receiving federal funds for preventive health care such as lifesaving cancer screenings, breast exams, birth control, and STD and HIV testing, would have a devastating impact on women’s health, lead to more unintended pregnancies and more women detecting cancers at a later and less treatable stage. Americans know this to be true, because one in five women has been cared for by a Planned Parenthood health center at some point in her lifetime.

O'Donnell also tore into Graves for his support of their ridiculous and unconstitutional bill titled the “Government Shutdown Prevention Act.” O'Donnell slammed Minority Leader Eric Cantor for his defense of that bill last week -- Lawrence O'Donnell Slams Eric Cantor For Not Knowing How a Bill Becomes a Law.