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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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Jon Stewart did his best to make a mockery of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz for being brazen enough to consider a presidential run in 2016, given the fact that he's not exactly popular with most of the country, or even within his own party, with his penchant to stick his finger in the eye of his fellow Republicans if it means he's elevating his own profile.

After going through a series of video clips and a long list of why most Americans should never take this man seriously, Stewart brought up the one other item that might prove problematic for Cruz should he decide to run for president -- and that's the fact that he was born in Canada. He was however, ready to put "the Donald" on the case since he's already been so helpful with investing President Obama's birth certificate.

I had to wonder after watching the clip above from the Daily Show if one of Stewart's staffers read this post on Cruz: 5 Reasons Ted Cruz Would Be A Democrat’s Dream 2016 GOP Nominee:

In a move that only surprised people who assume there’s some limit to the ego of Ted Cruz (R-TX), the freshman senator from Texas has let it be known that he is considering running for president in 2016.

“If you don’t think this is real, then you’re not paying attention,” says a Republican insider. “Cruz already has grassroots on his side, and in this climate, that’s all he may need.”

“There’s not a lot of hesitation there,” adds a Cruz donor who has known the Texan for decades. “He’s fearless.”

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From this Thursday's Hardball, former RNC Chairman and now unfortunately for anyone who watches the network, MSNBC contributor Michael Steele, decided to get into a spat with Chris Matthews over whether CPAC 2013 ought to be inviting the likes of birthers like Donald Trump to speak at the conference rather than those from the Republican party who might actually have a chance of winning a national election. Steele's response was basically to dismiss all of Trump's birther talk and attempt to paint it as ancient history.

That was so last month, don't you know. Al Cardenas, chairman of the American Conservative Union which runs the event defended their choice of speakers as well, but I'm with Matthews on what we're likely to hear from The Donald when he takes the stage:

Matthews surmised CPAC’s theory was, “invite the noisemakers and snub the people who might actually lead you out of the wilderness.”

If you look at the scheduled speaking times, CPAC’s priorities are clear. Sen. Ted Cruz is allotted 33 minutes of speaking time, Sarah Palin has 16 minutes, and Donald Trump gets 14 minutes. Down at the bottom are Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan with 11 minutes a piece.

Matthews asked former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele if Trump’s conservative message at CPAC could be overshadowed by all of his birther talk about President Obama.

“I think that characterization can be put behind Donald Trump…Let’s see what the man says tomorrow,” said Steele, telling Matthews that no one’s talking about the birther issue “but you. You’re the only person bringing it up.”

“You know why?” Matthews said. “Because people who think that the president is an illegal immigrant shouldn’t be talking out loud almost anywhere.”

Cardenas said Trump was invited because he’s a “successful businessman” who can reflect on the realities of today’s economy. “I think he’ll be a positive influence on the youngsters here.”

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A Republican official in Pennsylvania says that he doesn't regret hanging at least three American flags upside down to protest President Barack Obama's second inauguration because "our nation is in a horrible place."

WPXI's Julie Fine took a news crew to party headquarters in McKeesport to speak to Mon Valley Republican Party Chair Brent Kovac after the station began receiving complaints that the official signal of distress was over the line on a day that most Americans put partisanship aside.

"Sometimes people need a strong statement," Kovac explained to Fine. "The nation is in distress, and this isn't the first time this has been done, whether you agree with the sentiment or not."

Outside the committee offices, Kovac hung one upside-down flag beneath a sign supporting former nominee Mitt Romney that read, "Ambassador murdered in Libya by terrorists. Obama is running Big Bird TV ads against Romney. Vote for an adult for president..."

"Military people fight for that flag everyday," the WPXI reporter noted. "What do you say to them?"

"Some of them might be flying their flag upside down too," Kovac insisted.

"You're telling me you think somebody in the military is flying their flag upside down today?" Fine pressed.

"I didn't say that I know that," Kovac admitted. "I think I've created a little bit of dialog."

Allegheny County Republican Party Chair Jim Roddey told WPXI that he disagreed with Kovac's actions.

"We are disappointed in the outcome of the election but we would do nothing to disrespect the Office of the President of the United States," Roddey said in a statement.

In a letter posted on the Mon Valley Republican Party website prior to the Nov. 6 election, Kovac had suggested that the president may not be a U.S. citizen and conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart may have been murdered as part of a liberal conspiracy.

"[C]onveniently the most ferocious and effective conservative activists Andrew Brietbart, dies of a heart attack at 42 years old, just seven months from the Presidential election, followed by the coroner that performed his autopsy from poisoning," he wrote. "Yea.. I’m just a paranoid right winger.. however, before I became one.. I didn’t believe in coincidences, .. I definitely don’t believe in that kind of coincidence."

"As if that wasn’t cause for inquiry alone, our President hasn’t proven himself a natural-born citizen, satisfactorily to anyone yet, and is thumbing his nose at us by producing the laughable birth certificate that he came up with... the media.. gives him a total pass. While chasing down a story about what Mitt Romney was doing in high school."

He concluded: "What we’ve lost, was lost long before Barack Obama took office. He is here to finish a job that was started years ago.. but the level of disrespect and disdain for the average American that President Obama has shown is insulting and it is obvious that the powers that be are confident that they barely need to disguise their efforts to turn us into a socialist country."

(h/t: Think Progress)

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Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who is a Republican, is lashing out at a "dark vein of intolerance" in his own party, which he says is being created by people like former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu who use racial code words and "slave terms" to attack President Barack Obama.

During a Sunday interview, NBC's David Gregory asked Powell why he continued to consider himself a Republican after supporting Obama and taking moderate policy positions.

"I think the Republican Party right now is having an identity problem, and I am still a Republican," Powell explained. "In recent years, there has been a significant shift to the right and we have seen what that shift has produced: two losing presidential campaigns."

"When we see that in one more generation that the minorities of America -- African Americans, Hispanic Americans and Asian Americans -- will be the majority of the country, you can't go around saying, 'We don't want to have a solid immigration policy, we're going to dismiss the 47 percent, we are going to make it hard for the minorities to vote,' as they did in the last election."

"There is also a dark vein of intolerance in some parts of the party," he continued. "They still sort of look down on minorities. How can I evidence that? When I see [Palin] saying that the president is 'shucking and jiving,' that's a racial-era slave term. When I see [Sununu] after the president's first debate, where he didn't do very well, says that the president was 'lazy' -- he didn't say he was slow, he was tired, he didn't do well -- he said he was lazy. Now, it may not mean anything to most Americans, but to those of use who are African Americans, the second word is 'shiftless' and there's a third word that goes along with it."

Powell went on to slam Republicans for "the whole birther movement."

"Why do senior Republican leaders tolerate this kind of discussion within the party?" he wondered. "I think the party has to take a look at itself. It has to take a look at it's responsibilities for health care, it has to take a look at immigration, it has to take a look at those less fortunate than us."

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Fox News host Bill O'Reilly sent his best ambush journalist to Hawaii this week to get the scoop on President Barack Obama's roots ahead of his Christmas vacation and found out about a guy named Barry who had a "big afro," and and "African father" who "talked about Kenya" and lived on an island with lazy people, lots of marijuana and prostitution.

In a segment that aired on Thursday's O'Reilly Factor, Fox News producer Jesse Watters put on a polo shirt, turned up the collar and hit the beach to talk to women in bikinis in hopes of finding out the truth about Barack Obama.

"Growing up in Hawaii, President Obama was known as Barry," Watters reported. "He was abandoned by his African father and lived with his mother and grandparents in a small apartment complex in Honolulu."

"My mother-in-law remembers him scooping Baskin-Robbins ice cream on King Street with a big afro in high school," one resident explained.

"There were several memories that I think that we all had and one was very strong, and one was his father came to speak to the 5th-grade class," a woman who had gone to school with Obama recalled. "It was actually about Kenya."

"He's a little lazy and he's lazy because he grew up here," Watters observed to one bikini-clad woman, who said she voted for Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) in 2008.

"He's Hawaiian!" the woman agreed. "Dude, if you're Hawaiian, you have no ambition, you're lazy."

Watters found several African-American women who said that they supported the president because if Mitt Romney had won then "we would get no more food stamps. We need Obama."

"He said he experimented with pot and sometimes cocaine," the Fox News producer reported.

After Watters returned to New York to present his investigation, O'Reilly wanted to know if he had discovered why Hawaii was so liberal.

"I think it's very multi-cultural and there's a lot of an Asian influence too," Watters opined. "And the economy is such that you don't have a big middle class. So, you have extreme wealth and extreme poverty and the sun makes you lazy. So, they kind of try to take care of everybody. And then, you know, you have very loose pot laws, prostitution is not technically legal but..."

"It's a libertine society," O'Reilly agreed. "A lot of people want to know why you have the little collar on the polo shirt up?"

"It's my trademark, Bill," Watters insisted. "That's my pop collar."

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Okay, let me get this straight. Apparently, according to Politico's John Harris, running ads against Mitt Romney for things that are true, like the fact that he is out of touch with most Americans and their struggles and that his time at Bain Capital just reinforces that, is somehow "personal," but Romney running lying ads about President Obama supposedly gutting welfare work requirements, calling him a "food stamp president" and diving into birtherism is somehow either not "personal" or it's not even worth mentioning during this segment on The Chris Matthews Show.

Here's Harris responding to Matthews asking him about their recent article: Verdict is in: Obama levels more personal attacks.

MATTHEWS: You know I thought John that Bill Clinton gave a heck of a punching kind of speech. He had every one of the Republican points, punched back at them. And the question is, how negative are they going to get? You say they're running... in your recent piece at Politico, you say that the Obama campaign is running a personal assault on whether this guy Romney is even qualified to be president.

HARRIS: The essence of what Obama's doing is to say Mitt Romney is just at a personal level not credible as a potential president of the United States because of his personal values – too greedy – his personal experience is too disconnected from the concerns of average Americans.

I'm not trying to give a Good Housekeeping seal of approval to the Romney campaign. They too are running an intensely negative campaign. It's not based so much on Obama's personal characteristics, his values, or that he is somehow, in some sort of fundamentally way... fundamental way, corrupt. Where as, the Obama people are calling Romney a charlatan, suggesting that he might be a felon because of how he's handled the Bain issue as Stephanie Cutter did. That's aimed at tearing him down personally.

But I don't have any sympathy for Romney. That's what he did in the Republican... he did that to Santorum and he did it to Gingrich.

The Politico article does admit that there are a bunch of personal attacks that have been waged against President Obama from others on the right, but they ignore or lie about the fact that many of them have come directly from the Romney campaign and they also give Romney a pass for not doing more to refute those on the right who have been happy to push those lies or to stand up to the extremists in his own party.

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Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus may have canceled the first day of the party's convention due to weather, but he couldn't evacuate in time to escape the wrath of Hurricane Chris.

The party chairman found himself on Monday weathering a blistering rant from MSNBC host Chris Matthews about how Republicans were playing the "race card" with birther jokes and falsehoods about ending work requirements for welfare.

"That cheap shot about 'I don't have a problem with my birth certificate' was awful," Matthews said of GOP hopeful Mitt Romney's Friday embrace of the birther notion that President Barack Obama was not born in the U.S. "It is an embarrassment to your party to play that card."

"This stuff about getting rid of the work requirement for welfare is dishonest, everyone has pointed out that it's dishonest," he continued. "And you are playing that little ethnic card there. You can play your games and giggle about it, but the fact is, your side is playing that card. You start talking about work requirements, you know what game you're playing, everybody knows what game you're playing. It's a race card."

"And this thing about birthers -- yeah, if your name's Romney, you were well born, you went to prep school, you can brag about it. And this [Barack Obama] guy, he's got an African name, he's got to live with it. ... This is absurdity! Making fun of this guy's birth certificate issue when it was never a real issue, except on the right wing."

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough tried to give Priebus some cover, defending Romney as simply "misfiring badly" with the so-called birther joke. But the RNC chairman decided to take Matthews on.

"You got your monologue in, so congratulations," Priebus quipped to Matthews. "You're loaded up, you got it out. So, good for you. The fact of the matter is, is he's from Michigan, he was born in Michigan, he was making the point that I was born in Michigan. And you know what? We've gotten to a place in politics that any moment of levity totally frowned upon by guys like you just so that you can push your brand."

"It just seems funny that the first joke that he's ever told in his life is about Obama's birth certificate," Matthews pointed out.

"I think Obama's policies have created a sense that, for whatever reason, he's looking for guidance, as far as health care is concerned, as far as our spending is concerned, as far as these stimulus packages are concerned -- he's looking to Europe for guidance," Priebus explained.

"What?" Matthews exclaimed. "Where do you get this from? This is insane! ... What's this got to do with Europe and the foreignization of the guy. You're doing it again now! You think he's influenced by foreign influences? You're playing that card again."

"I'm not going to get into a shouting match with Chris," the RNC chairman said, dismissing the MSNBC host with a wave of his hand.

"Because you're losing, that's why," Matthews shot back.

"No, I'm not losing," Priebus insisted. "I'm not going to sit here and take shots."

"Cheap shots about how Obama being a foreigner is the thing your party's been pushing," Matthews noted. "[Romney surrogate John] Sununu pushes it. Everybody pushes it in your party."

"It's garbage," Priebus replied. "Garbage."

"It's your garbage," Matthews concluded.

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Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) on Sunday asserted that presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney was sending "coded messages" and pandering to white voters by making jokes suggesting that President Barack Obama was not a U.S. citizen.

Speaking to a large crowd of supporters in Michigan on Friday, Romney had come the closest yet to personally embracing the so-called birther movement’s theory that President Barack Obama was not born in the U.S.

“No one’s ever asked to see my birth certificate,” the former Massachusetts governor said. “They know that this is the place that we were born and raised.”

On Sunday, O'Malley told CNN's Candy Crowley that Americans watching the Republican National Convention would be able to clearly see that Republicans were the "party of exclusion."

"The Republicans have kind of painted themselves into a real demographic corner," he explained. "And you hear people like even Jeb Bush saying that they have to change for the long term because this view of white, Anglo-Saxon Americans -- 'I'm a true American, no one questions where I was born' -- sort of thing is really off-putting to those of us who believe that our diversity is our strength."

"Can't you just take Mitt Romney at his word, he was joking?" Crowley asked. "What is so wrong with that? Have we lost -- quote -- our sense of humor, as [RNC Chairman Reince Priebus] suggested?"

"When you have policies, when you advance positions that are bashing of new Americans and new immigrants, when you have policies that want to take us back in terms of women's rights and freedom of women to choose, I think it becomes a very exclusive party," O'Malley insisted. "And that birther comment is simply more icing on that cake."

He continued: "The birther comment, when you combine it with Mitt Romney's other comments, comments he made abroad about the president not truly appreciating -- when he was in England -- the Anglo-Saxon perspective in the world, when you put it together with his anti-immigrant policies and the things that he has said, I think that what it reveals is sort of a perspective on America that would take us back to the days of [1950s sitcom] Ozzie and Harriet."

"Is that code for you think he's appealing to the white vote?" Crowley wondered.

"Look at the number of Republicans that have signed bills that make it harder to vote," the Maryland governor replied. "When you have a party that says coded things, that makes totally false ads up about saying the president is trying to undo welfare reform, I think you're going to see a lot of pretty heavily and not-so-subtly coded messages from the Romney-Ryan campaign that it is not in keeping an America with that is moving forward, that is growing, that is becoming more diverse with fuller freedoms for every individual."

(h/t: Talking Points Memo)

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Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus on Sunday said he supported presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's joke about President Barack Obama's birth certificate because the race needs "levity."

Speaking to a large crowd of supporters in Michigan on Friday, Romney had come the closest yet to personally embracing the so-called birther movement’s theory that President Barack Obama is not a U.S. citizen.

"I love being home in this place where Ann and I were raised, where both of us were born,” the former Massachusetts governor said. “Ann was born at Henry Ford Hospital, I was born at Harper Hospital.”

“No one’s ever asked to see my birth certificate,” he added. “They know that this is the place that we were born and raised.”

During a Sunday interview on CNN, host Candy Crowley asked Priebus if it was helpful for Romney to suggest that Obama was not a citizen.

"You know what? I think it's a nothing," the RNC chairman replied, pointing out that Romney had repeated acknowledged that the president was born in Hawaii.

"But why even bring it up?" Crowley wondered. "When you bring it up, you put it out there and you're a high-profile guy, you're about to be the Republican nominee, and people think this is just playing to that group."

"That wasn't what he was doing," Priebus insisted. "He's making the point, 'I'm from Michigan, I was born here.'"

"And you know what? Have we really gotten to the point we can't have any levity at all in politics? I mean, we've gotten to a place in politics that is just ridiculous. No one can say anything that's remotely humorous. You know, the president makes jokes about this all the time."

(h/t: Talking Points Memo)