Never mind the flip-flopping on his stance on immigration or whether he's hoping his family and their supporters will be doing their part to give Americans a big heaping helping of revisionist history when it comes to his brother's time in office, as Ring of Fire's Mike Papantonio and guest Sam Seder reminded their listeners this week, there is a whole host of other issues that the public should know about if Jeb Bush does actually throw his hat into the ring and runs for president in 2016.

As Pap noted, it's time to stop this campaign before it starts, because we sure as hell can't count on our "mainstream media" to do their part and tell their viewers that Jeb Bush has every bit as much baggage as his brother.

It seems Florida's current Gov. Rick Scott isn't the only one with problems involving Medicare fraud: Jeb Bush Lobbied On Behalf Of Infamous Medicare Swindler, Says Former HHS Secretary.

He was right there with the rest of the PNAC neocons who brought us the invasion of Iraq.

Mother Jones has more on some of the Bush family corruption problems mentioned here along with a host of others in this post: Bush Family Value$.

And as Sam discussed during the interview, eight years is probably not long enough to erase the nation's collective memory about just what a disaster George W. Bush was and for Jebbie to be out there trying to revive the family name. Sadly if the Villagers in the corporate media who care more about a horse race than issues have their way, no one will ever discuss any of Bush's past or he and his family's corruption.

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I'm sure Florida's Gov. Rick Scott will come around on some reasonable gun control laws about the same time he decides to actually do something for the voters of his state other than disenfranchise them with long lines at the polls -- which is never. He did his best to feign concern for both issues on Soledad O'Brien's show this Wednesday morning: CNN Anchor Blasts Florida Governor For Ducking Gun Control, Demands Action Before ‘I Cover Another Tragedy’:

Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R), who has an A rating from the National Rifle Association, refused to say if he would support stronger gun safety measures in the aftermath of the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.

Appearing on CNN’s Starting Point on Wednesday, Scott repeatedly dodged host Soledad O’Brien’s specific questions about which reforms, if any, he would support, at one point responding to a query about limiting assault rifles with a trite, “I support the Second Amendment.” O’Brien repeatedly pressed Scott for a more detailed reply, but the Florida governor claimed that the nation must “respect the families, mourn their losses” but avoid a detailed conversation about what can be done to prevent such tragedies in the future:[...]

During the GOP convention in Florida, Scott made headlines when he rejected a request by Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn (D) to temporarily ban guns in the downtown area.

I'd like to see someone ask this guy how in the hell it is that a crook like himself ever managed to get elected as the governor of Florida in the first place. I'm not holding my breath for that to ever happen though.

Full transcript below the fold.

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Conservative MSNBC host Joe Scarborough on Monday attempted to shut down any talk of voter suppression by shouting "Benghazi! Benghazi! Benghazi!" over and over again to change the subject to the September attacks on Americans in Libya, a topic that Republicans believe hurts President Barack Obama.

During a discussion about the tight presidential race in Florida, co-host Mika Brzezinski attempted to point out that Republicans had restricted early voting, creating long lines and chaos for voters in some counties.

"You just feel like you have to finish with a story, Republicans bad, [Florida Gov.] Rick Scott bad, voting suppression," Scarborough complained, throwing up his arms. "I have three words: Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi. I'm wandering around my ranch house muttering the words, 'Benghazi.' I mean, seriously, are we going here? Are we really going here?"

"But you know what?" Brzezinski attempted to continue. "We've had a..."

"Benghazi! Benghazi! Benghazi!" Scarborough interrupted.

"It's absolutely a story," NBC's David Gregory said of the long voter lines.

"Benghazi's a story," Scarborough quipped.

"It's something we have to watch very carefully," Gregory added. "And by the way, I think the Benghazi issue, I think there are real questions about Benghazi. There are serious questions... well, he brought it up!"

"Why do you want to cover up Benghazi?" Scarborough shouted, pointing at MSNBC.com executive editor Richard Wolffe. "Benghazi! Benghazi! Benghazi!"

"Is the voter story I just read a story?" Brzezinski asked Republican strategist Steve Schmidt.

"Benghazi, Benghazi," Scarborough muttered as Schmidt tried to answer.

"I mean, kind of," the Republican strategist admitted. "Is it possible a local elections officials in Florida screwed up the early voting? Yes. Is it part of some big, giant Republican conspiracy out there? Absolutely not."

"So what happened in Benghazi?" Scarborough said.

"I think we can all agree, Republicans and Democrats -- whatever your preference -- they all should be able to vote," Wolffe explained. "Those lines are offensive wherever they are, whoever's responsible. Lines should not happen for several hours just to allow people to do that."

"I agree," Scarborough replied. "Just like I agree that we really need to get to the bottom of what happened in Benghazi."

(h/t: Media Matters)

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Here we go again with Florida leading the way with more voter suppression -- Florida Early Voting Fiasco: Voters Wait For Hours At Polls As Rick Scott Refuses To Budge:

Once again, Florida and its problems at the polls are at the center of an election.

Early voting is supposed to make it easier for people to carry out their constitutional right. Tuesdays are notoriously inconvenient to take off work, so many states have given voters the option of turning out on weekends or other weekdays in the run-up to Election Day.

But in Florida this year, it has been a nightmare for voters, who have faced record wait times, long lines in the sun and a Republican governor, Rick Scott, who has refused to budge and extend early voting hours.

"People are getting out to vote. That's what's very good," said Scott.

People are getting out to vote -- but many of them are having to wait in line for three or four hours to do so. One contributor to DailyKos claimed it took 9 hours to vote. In Miami-Dade on Saturday, people who had gotten in line by 7:00 p.m. were allowed to vote; the last person wasn't checked in until 1 a.m., meaning it took some individuals six hours to cast a ballot.

"We're looking at an election meltdown that is eerily similar to 2000, minus the hanging chads," said Dan Smith, a political science professor at the University of Florida.

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Former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (R) on Wednesday criticized his successor, Gov. Rick Scott (R), and other Republicans for using "shameless" tactics that suppress voting rights, including requiring photo IDs, preventing felons from voting and purging voter rolls.

"The concern really is on sort of a closing the door on democracy," Crist told MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell. "For example, they've already changed the policy as it relates to former, non-violent felons. We had established a policy where they would have their rights automatically restored, give them the opportunity to vote once they had served their time and paid their debt to society. ... That has now been changed under the new administration."

"In addition, they've also said that early voting -- which is a great tradition is Florida -- has been reduced from a 14-day period before the elections to eight days before, making it again more difficult for legal citizens to have their right to vote be heard."

Mitchell noted that Attorney General Eric Holder had recently compared voter photo ID requirements to Jim Crow laws, telling the NAACP that they were the equivalent of "poll taxes."

"He's on the right track," the former governor agreed. "Anytime that you put more impediments into a citizen's right -- a legal citizen's right to vote and make that more difficult, you impede the natural right of democracy and a citizen's right to have their voice heard in important elections."

"It's just plain wrong," he added.

(h/t: Talking Points Memo)

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After doing a celebration dance over the state of the nation's economy and the predictions that it might not get better, Stephen Colbert brought us tonight's Word: Silver Maligning.

As Colbert noted, the Romney campaign asked Florida Gov. Rick Scott not to brag about his state's job numbers, because that might not be such a good thing for his presidential campaign.

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Republican Florida Gov. Rick Scott on Tuesday declared that the debate about his state's effort to purge thousands of voters "is over" because over 50 non-citizen voters were proof that that the process needed to go forward.

During an interview on CNN, host Christine Romans asked Scott why Florida was suing the Department of Homeland Security to get access to a database of eligible voters even after the federal government insisted that the voter purge be halted.

"Look, the debate is over," Scott insisted. "We know we have almost 100 individuals that are registered to vote that are non-U.S. citizens. Over 50 of them have voted in our elections."

"But on the other side of that, you have to be -- the federal government says you cannot by any way infringe on a citizen's right to vote by purging these noncitizens," Romans pointed out. "So you're going after these 48 right now cases. But are you really being sure that the state -- because, look, the SAVE database, that DHS database of noncitizens, the government says they are happy to give your state access, but they say you're not providing the necessary immigration related information required to use it properly for verification purposes."

"If there's credible evidence that somebody is registered to vote that is not, they are sent a letter," Scott explained. "They've got 30 days to respond. If they don't respond, then there's the notice filed in the paper, if they don't respond, then they're taken off the roles."

"Critics say this is discriminatory," Romans noted. "And one big political move to eliminate potential Democratic voters."

"Absolutely not," Scott replied. "This is nonpartisan."

Records obtained by the liberal website Think Progress showed that the "list compiled by the Scott administration is so riddled with errors that, in Miami-Dade County alone, hundreds of U.S. citizens are being told they are ineligible to vote."

According to the records, 359 of the 1,638 alleged "non-citizen" voters on the Miami-Dade list were able to provide proof of citizenship. The county identified another 26 as U.S. citizens. Most of the remaining 1,200 people targeted by the purge in that area had not yet responded to the letter sent by the Supervisor of Elections.

(h/t: The Huffington Post)

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Anyone who follows this blog regularly may have already read Ken Quinnell's report on Florida Gov. Rick Scott's plan to purge 180,000 Hispanics from the voting rolls in Florida ahead of the 2012 presidential election. This Thursday evening, MSNBC's Ed Schultz thankfully decided to shine a national spotlight on the subject, hopefully before it's too late for those who have received notices from the state to do something about it.

Schultz highlighted this article from The Palm Beach Post News: Fla. Gov. started push to remove voters from rolls:

Florida's quest to identify and remove non-U.S. citizens from the voter rolls was started at the direct urging of Gov. Rick Scott, the state's former top elections official said.

Ex-Secretary of State Kurt Browning, who resigned this year, told The Associated Press that Scott asked him whether or not non-U.S. citizens were registered and if those people were voting. Browning explained to the governor during a face-to-face meeting last year that people who register and falsely claim they are citizens can be charged with a crime.

"He says to me — well, people lie," Browning recalled this week. "Yes, people do. But we have always had to err on the side of the voter."

Browning said the conversation prompted state election officials to begin working to identify non-U.S. citizens. The state's initial list — compiled by comparing driver's licenses with voter registration data — showed that as many as 182,000 registered voters were eligible to be in the country but ineligible to vote.

But Browning said he decided against telling local election supervisors right away because he wanted to make sure the information was accurate in order to avoid a "firestorm of press" and criticism. Florida then spent months trying to get access to a federal database that tracks non-U.S. citizens in the country, but the U.S. Department of Homeland Security would not allow it.

"We were not confident enough about the information for this secretary to hang his hat on it," said Browning, who resigned after the Jan. 31 presidential preference primary.

Browning said media reports earlier this year that raised questions whether non-U.S. citizens were on the rolls required the state to keep pushing ahead with the effort.

In the last few weeks, the state sent a list to county election supervisors of more than 2,600 people who have been identified as non-U.S. citizens. Supervisors have responded warily to the list and have pointed out that it has inaccuracies.

And this article from the Tampa Bay Times: Hispanics, Democrats biggest groups on Florida's list of potential noncitizen voters, analysis shows:

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For anyone that missed this Thursday, The Daily Show's Aasif Mandvi went on location in Florida to speak to former Navy vet, Luis Lebron, who refused to be drug tested as part of the state's new requirement for all welfare recipients to submit to the tests in order to collect their benefits.

As usual, we've got the comedians doing a better job of showing how utterly wasteful and hypocritical the new law is, with Mandvi turning the tables on both State Rep. Scott Plakon and Gov. Rick Scott, by attempting unsuccessfully to get both of them to submit to the same tests they're demanding from those living in poverty in their state.

Mandvi also hit Plakon for the fact that their program is actually costing the state more money than it saves. Once again, it's score one for The Daily Show and the writers over at Comedy Central who are doing their jobs as the court jesters making a mockery of these politicians, who sadly don't get the same scorn or scrutiny from the talking heads and pundits on the corporate "news" channels.

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Miami Herald columnist Carl Hiaasen told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Wednesday that he would be willing to pay for drug tests for the Florida lawmakers who voted to drug test welfare recipients.

"Interestingly, the governor's pee-in-the-cup mandate doesn't apply to the one bunch that whizzes away more tax dollars than anyone else -- the legislators who pass such useless laws," Hiassen wrote in a recent column. "I say line up all 160 of 'em for a patriotic whiz-fest at the Capitol clinic. You think more than 2.5 percent might test positive? Let's find out. And I'll pay for it out of my own pocket. Seriously."

Welfare repents were "an easy target," he explained during an interview with Maddow Wednesday. "This is class warfare. This is picking on the folks who happen to be unemployed, especially the ones with children. And they are testing at such a lower rate than the general population. The most recent federal drug survey shows national drug use at about 8.9 percent -- almost nine percent. These people are living like monks compared to them."

"If you get a majority -- close to a majority [of lawmakers] saying yes, I would please like to be there along with a camera crew if you don't mind," Maddow said.

"Yeah, but the deal is all or nothing," Hiaasen remarked. "That's what they do to the applicants for the welfare fund. It's all or nothing. Everybody's got to do it. So, all 160 of these folks have to stand there with their little cup and do the deed. And if the lab sends me a bill, I'll send a check."

EDITOR'S NOTE: Can we start a whole movement to drug test ALL lawmakers? They're on the gubmint teet. I'd donate to the cause. This is a fantastic idea.