Rachel Maddow points out that even the GOP's latest darling Paul Ryan who is the only member of Congress who's written a budget proposal is out there with the wingnuts and buying into Jonah Goldberg's revisionist history book Liberal Fascism. She forgot to mention that he's also a big fan of Ayn Rand.

Maddow: Congressman Paul Ryan is the Republican Party’s budget guy. He has proposed a GOP budget this year that would essentially get rid of Social Security and Medicare in the long run, slashes both programs dramatically and then privatizes them, so goodbye Medicare safety net, goodbye Social Security safety net. The Republicans are proposing to get rid of them.

Republicans like Michele Bachmann, Marsha Blackburn, Jack Kingston, Jim DeMint, these folks have been, recently been very happily arguing to kill Social Security and Medicare, but they are thought of as being on the far right of even their own party.

Paul Ryan proposing to kill Social Security and Medicare is another thing. He’s the only; his is the only budget that the Republicans have proposed for 2010. He’s supposed to be the Republican Party’s big brain on policy. He’s supposed to be a serious guy.

Well in an interview with The Daily Beast yesterday Paul Ryan was asked why if he’s so fiscally conservative he voted for the bank bailouts. In response the Republican Party’s serious, big brain policy guy explained that he voted for the bank bailout because of this.

Get it. See it’s a smiley face but it has a Hitler moustache! Because liberals seem nice but they’re really Nazis—Nazis were liberals and liberals are Nazis! Paul Ryan, the budget guy for the Republican Party tells The Daily Beast that a conservative book of revisionist history about how the Nazis were secretly liberals and liberals today are secretly Nazis, convinced him to vote for the bank bailout, because otherwise we’d have a great depression and then Obama could use that great depression as an excuse to impose his secret Nazi agenda. Obama’s liberal fascism.

And that is both an admission that even the Republicans admit that the bailout staved off the next great depression and a revelation that even the supposedly sane Republicans in Congress right now believe this stuff. Keep that in mind the next time someone proposes a bipartisan compromise with guys like Paul Ryan who proposed to kill Medicare and Social Security and who justify it by their votes on worries that Obama might secretly be Hitler.

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Sarah Palin confirmed on Greta Van Susteren's show last night that she's very much planning to show up and speak at the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville, despite the distinct odor of Scam the whole affair is giving off.

Palin: Oh, you betcha I'm going to be there. I'm going to speak there because there are people traveling from many miles away to hear what that Tea Party movement is all about and what that message is that should be received by our politicians in Washington. I'm honored to get to be there.

This, even as some of her fellow wingnuts are catching the same whiff -- namely, Reps. Michele Bachmann and Marsha Blackburn, who have pulled out of the event:

In separate statements, released by their congressional offices, the lawmakers said that appearing at the convention might conflict with House ethics rules. But they also said they are concerned about how money raised from the event will be spent.

Palin last night had no such concerns -- and said no one should be concerned about that big wad of cash the convention organizers are paying her:

Palin: The speaker's fee will go right back into the cause. I'll be able to donate it to people and those events, those things that I believe in, that will help perpetuate the message, the message being: Government, you have constitutional limits. You better start abiding by them.

Hmmmmm. It sounds like we're going to have to rely on Sarah's say-so when it comes to how she actually spends the money. Smells even more like Scam, doesn't it?

Of course, the whole scenario, as David Corn explored with Keith Olbermann last night, is developing into quite a fiasco -- mainly because Tea Partier and Birther J.D. Hayworth has decided to challenge Palin's former running mate, John McCain, in the Arizona Senate primary.

Palin is staying loyal to McCain. This has outraged the Tea Partiers, as Alan Colmes points out:

She has now chose to align herself with several bad actors. What should this be called, the Rinoization of Sarah Palin. [...]

She is certainly entitled to write a book and make money for her and her family, but other than what has she has done to support Republican and patriotic candidates. … Perhaps, Sarah was too busy talking to her agent about her Fox deal. Where the hell was Sarah?

This is what you get when you build a movement around paranoid right-wingers. There is probably no faction more historically famous for viciously turning on each other in struggles over money and power than right-wing populists.

Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch.

From The Uptake--Ed Schultz "I'd Kick Their Ass" If I Ran For US Senate:

Talk show host Ed Schultz says he's not running for US Senate in North Dakota but if he were he'd "kick their ass" referring to Republicans. Schultz also says " We need to get the people who have infiltrated the Democratic-Progressive movement and get them the hell out" and "We need to get rid of Michele Bachmann" (wild applause)

Schultz spoke at AM950's Blue State Bash in Minneapolis. Distributed by Tubemogul.

And Think Progress--Ed Schultz Tells Robert Gibbs He’s ‘Full Of Sh*t’ And ‘You’re Losing Your Base’:

Last night, MSNBC’s Ed Schultz spoke at Minnesota progressive talk radio AM950’s Blue State Bash at the Minneapolis Convention Center. During his remarks, Schultz revealed that he recently had a testy confrontation with White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs (Gibbs appeared on Schultz’s show this past Thursday). “Mr. Gibbs and I had quite a conversation off the air the other night,” he revealed:

SCHULTZ: I told him he was full of sh*t is what I told him. … And then he gave me the Dick Cheney f-bomb. … I told Robert Gibbs, I said “And I’m sorry you’re swearing at me, but I’m just trying to help you out. I’m telling you you’re losing your base. Do you understand you’re losing your base?”

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Give 'em hell big Eddie. Somebody needs to tell them what they don't want to hear. This isn't all that surprising after watching them the other night. The interview was already pretty heated before they got off the air.

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The first Republican, Abraham Lincoln, famously proclaimed, "My concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side." Sadly, as Sarah Palin and RNC Chairman Michael Steele revealed again this week, Honest Abe's successors believe the GOP truly is God's Own Party. As it turns out, Palin and Steele joined George W. Bush, Mike Huckabee, Michele Bachmann, Mark Sanford and others on the long and growing list of Republican leaders who claim they have been chosen by God.

On 60 Minutes Sunday, McCain-Palin campaign chief Steve Schmitt disclosed to Anderson Cooper that the Quitta from Wasilla viewed her selection as John McCain's running mate as part of God's plan:

COOPER: After Senator McCain asked her to be his vice president, how did she respond?

SCHMITT: She was very calm, nonplussed. I said, "You don't seem nervous at all about this," and she said, "No, it's God's plan."

(For more on Palin's belief in the "natural progression" of a grand divine plan for her, continue reading below.)

Echoing Arizona Governor Jan Brewer's announcement in September that "God has placed me in this powerful position," Michael Steele claimed he, too, was tapped by the Almighty in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN). Under siege by fellow Republicans for his endless series of gaffes and shameless self-promotion, Steele announced:

"I'm not defined by this job. When this job is over I will go back to doing something else. But God, I really believe, has placed me here for a reason because who else and why else would you do this unless there's something inside of you that says right now you need to be here to do this?"

Of course, Steele is far from alone among God's chosen Republicans, as George W. Bush and his amen corner long ago made clear.

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Cenk Uygur highlights this excellent article from Truthdig--Michele Bachmann: Welfare Queen:

Michele Bachmann has become well known for her anti-government tea-bagger antics, protesting health care reform and every other government “handout” as socialism. What her followers probably don’t know is that Rep. Bachmann is, to use that anti-government slur, something of a welfare queen. That’s right, the anti-government insurrectionist has taken more than a quarter-million dollars in government handouts thanks to corrupt farming subsidies she has been collecting for at least a decade.

And she’s not the only one who has been padding her bank account with taxpayer money.

Bachmann, of Minnesota, has spent much of this year agitating against health care reform, whipping up the so-called tea-baggers with stories of death panels and rationed health care. She has called for a revolution against what she sees as Barack Obama’s attempted socialist takeover of America, saying presidential policy is “reaching down the throat and ripping the guts out of freedom.”

But data compiled from federal records by Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit watchdog that tracks the recipients of agricultural subsidies in the United States, shows that Bachmann has an inner Marxist that is perfectly at ease with profiting from taxpayer largesse. According to the organization’s records, Bachmann’s family farm received $251,973 in federal subsidies between 1995 and 2006. The farm had been managed by Bachmann’s recently deceased father-in-law and took in roughly $20,000 in 2006 and $28,000 in 2005, with the bulk of the subsidies going to dairy and corn. Both dairy and corn are heavily subsidized—or “socialized”—businesses in America (in 2005 alone, Washington spent $4.8 billion propping up corn prices) and are subject to strict government price controls. These subsidies are at the heart of America’s bizarre planned agricultural economy and as far away from Michele Bachmann’s free-market dream world as Cuba’s free medical system. If American farms such as hers were forced to compete in the global free market, they would collapse.

However, Bachmann doesn’t think other Americans should benefit from such protection and assistance. She voted against every foreclosure relief bill aimed at helping average homeowners (despite the fact that her district had the highest foreclosure rate in Minnesota), saying that bailing out homeowners would be “rewarding the irresponsible while punishing those who have been playing by the rules.” That’s right, the subsidy queen wants the rest of us to be responsible.

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Here's Grassley getting asked about his welfare checks.

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Rachel Maddow reports on the 'PrayerCast' attended by Senators Jim DeMint and Sam Brownback and Rep. Michele Bachmann where they prayed for the defeat of the health care bill. This has to be one of the creepiest things I've watched in a long time.

Transcript via MSNBC.

MADDOW: A lot of attention being paid today to the fight within the left over whether or not to support health reform now that it‘s been so watered down. I‘m here to tell you that this is the other side of that fight.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LOU ENGLE, PASTOR: Let‘s take hands together and let‘s pray right now for our leaders, the senators who are in this debate now. Would you just lift your voices just for a few moments? And let‘s just altogether pray together.

Lord, right now, we‘re calling on you. Oh, Lord, come and come to our senators. Would you break into their hearts and minds? Would you rule over them?

Lord, we‘re praying, give them wisdom. The wisdom that comes down from up above. For such a time as this we cry out to you!

And we thank you, Living God, that you hear in Jesus name, amen.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: Those two vaguely looking familiar men you see there at the end of that clip, those are two sitting Republican U.S. senators, Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina and Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas. They were the headlining politicians at last night‘s effort to stop health reform with prayer.

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From Countdown Dec. 16, 2009, Keith's Worst Persons segment.

OLBERMANN: First time for Countdown‘s number two story, tonight‘s worst persons in the world.

The bronze to Jay Walder, this month‘s chairman of New York City‘s MTA, the Metropolitan Transit Authority, the city‘s managers of subways and buses and stuff. The authority today approved budget cuts, closing two subway lines, reducing trains, charging school kids more to take public transportation to school. This is a result of the shocking, total surprise budget shortfall that the MTA has had every 18 months or so for the last four decades. The latest, 400 million dollars they suddenly discovered last week they just didn‘t have.

I know this is a local thing, but this has been going on since I was a kid. It is the biggest running scam in this town since they caught Boss Tweed.

Our runner-up, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann—although we really must thank her for unintentionally lightening the mood tonight—compared a Code Red anti-health care reform rally to a moment in history I guess she thought she understood. “It‘s the charge of the light brigade.” You know, like the poem, half a league, half a league, half a league onward, all in the valley of death road the 600? A little over 600 British cavalry men charged the Russian lines at Balaclava in the Crimean War on October 25th, 1854. At least half of them were killed, injured or captured, largely because the 600 were attacking 20 Russian infantry battalions that had 5,240 men and 40 siege guns.

Supposedly, Lord Cardagan was ordered to make the charge by Lord Lucan, because Cardagan was his brother in law and Lucan had hated his guts for 30 years. So, Congresswoman, if you want to compare your nut bags to the charge of light brigade, have a nice ride.

But our winner, former Bush Press Secretary Dana Perino. I‘ll admit it, when she was still on the job, I wondered, was she specifically selected because she had no clue? Had she been trained to not have a clue? Did she have one of those memory imprinting problems?

But after the president told CBS last night that he didn‘t wave the flag at West Point about Afghanistan because he thought, quote, “one of the mistakes that was made over the last eight years is for us to have a triumphant sense about war,” Ms. Perino followed up on Fixed News by saying, “I hope President Obama didn‘t mean it the way it came across, when he suggested that President Bush was too triumphant in his rhetoric when talking about war.”

Ms. Perino, over here, ma‘am. I‘d like to show you a photograph and ask you if you recognize when or where it‘s from. Hmm? No? No clue? Any idea who the guy was? Seriously? You‘re hoping President Obama didn‘t think President Bush was too triumphant in his rhetoric when talking about war? I mean, even Mr. Bush has now said mission accomplished was now a mistake.

Dana, is my head attached to my shoulders or did I leave it at home by accident, Perino, today‘s worst person in the world.

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Without a doubt, one of the worst aspects of watching health-care reform crumble before our eyes is dealing with gloating of the wingnuts who made it crumble -- and especially watching them lying again and again and again as they do so. It's just in their nature to lie, and to do it repeatedly.

Case in point: Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Outer Wingnuttia, went on Fox News last night with Sean Hannity and talked about how she hoped the health-care reform was dead and finished, and both she and Hannity were obviously gleeful at the prospect. At every corner she was a font of disinformation and false "facts". The topper came at the end:

BACHMANN: We need bipartisan reform, and we Republicans are there ready, willing, and able. We want bipartisan reform. Let's scrap what we have and let's move forward, because President Obama's bill will mean 5.5 million jobs lost, and that's according to his own economist, Christina Romer.

Well, as Media Matters explains, there's simply no such figure anywhere in anything Romer has ever said -- indeed, she has said that "health care reform is an economic necessity," and that it will "allow lower unemployment".

Politifact seems to have uncovered the source of Bachmann's "5.5 million" figure, other than the nether regions of her posterior:

Obama's economic adviser -- Christina Romer, chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers -- has never said that a tax in the health care bill would cost up to 5.5 million jobs. Republicans have used her 2007 research to develop a calculation for job losses for any type of tax increase. If you have a number for tax revenues generated, then this model will give you a number of jobs lost. But there are factors that make this type of analysis troublesome when it comes to the health care bill. Romer's 2007 research, for example, said that tax increases that fund spending for social programs tend to balance out, and economic growth stays on an even keel. Another problem is that the Republicans take tax increases that happen over 10 years and treat them as if they happen in one year, which inflates the numbers of jobs that might be lost. Finally, this particular Republican analysis includes more taxes than just the surtax of page 336; it also includes the employer mandates of page 313. We find this analysis to be problematic and contrary to how Obama's economic adviser said the model should work.

Ah, but being truthful would not be as much fun as going on national television and lying.

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Countdown's Worst Persons for Dec. 2, 2009 with winner Bill O'Reilly. Runners up Michele Bachmann and Lou Dobbs.

...why do Americans care if taxes are raised at all? And why should Americans care about tax cuts also?

As you guys know, I watch the mind numbingly sophomoric Fox Saturday block of Stock Shows that goes by the name of "The Cost of Freedom." They consist of four 30-minute shows, and every single week there's an idiot on who says the only people that pay taxes are the richest members of our society.

OK, let's say I agree. Then why should 290,000,000 Americans more or less give a rip about the ramifications of raising taxes? They make the argument for us that taxes should be raised since only the very rich pay them.

Dave Neiwert wrote about this in one of his earlier posts: Populism: It's all the right-wing rage these days

The Tea Parties, in every incarnation -- from the Tax Day protests to the health-care town halls to the "Tea Party Express" and the "912 March on Washington" to Michele Bachmann's lame "Super Bowl of Freedom" -- has been all about populism, and it is distinctly right-wing populism.

A giveaway moment came during Sean Hannity's April 15 evening "Tea Party" broadcast from Atlanta, when he brought in a live feed from the Rick and Bubba Tea Tantrum in Alabama:

Hannity: And I'm going to tell you one other thing: When did we ever get to a point in America where, we're nearly at the point where fifty percent of Americans don't pay anything in taxes! Nothing!

[Crowd boos]

Rick: The numbers out are just astounding that, that, how much that the very top taxpayers actually pay. I feel like these taxpayers are disenfranchised. I want them to have a share of the burden just like they have a share of the vote.

That's right -- it's the wealthy top percentage of the country that needs a tax break. After all, they are the one Obama's targeting, right? So at least they're being upfront about just who "the taxpayers" are whose interests they're out marching to defend...read on

Don't you feel sorry for these poor rich bastards? If this is their argument, then I say President Obama should impose immediate tax increases like a war tax, a health-insurance tax and a jobs creation tax on the top tier of Americans. Make it a payroll tax and take it right out of their checks every pay period. That would immediately satisfy the deficit scolds.

After all, who will care if it's only the Fox Noise demographic? In the end all conservative policies do is destroy the least of us. They treat the American worker like trained seals, whose only function in life is to fuel their wealth.

Digby has more:

I think they tend to make their judgments about the upper and lower classes based as much on tribalism as anything else. (Recall that the populist hero Ross Perot was a billionaire who made his fortune from government contracts -- but he sounded like a good old boy.) These things never play themselves out exactly the same ways but the fundamental appeals remain the same. The upper levels of society usually find a way to pull the strings and control these people, but the more vulnerable often suffer quite a bit at their hands. Neiwert's piece is a very important primer for those of us who are trying to understand where this Palin-Beck teabag phenomenon comes from and how it relates to other right0wing philosophies like Randism and militias. At the end of the day it all translates into ugly know-nothingism that lashes out at everyone but the adherents themselves, who see themselves as the defenders of the Real America.

I get the impulse and I feel the same frustrations. But their solutions are always worse than the problems they seek to solve.

(h/t Jamie)

Founder of the blog Little Green Footballs, Charles Johnson has seen the light and decided he can no longer support the right wing of his party and makes no bones about why:

1. Support for fascists, both in America (see: Pat Buchanan, Robert Stacy McCain, etc.) and in Europe (see: Vlaams Belang, BNP, SIOE, Pat Buchanan, etc.)

2. Support for bigotry, hatred, and white supremacism (see: Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter, Robert Stacy McCain, Lew Rockwell, etc.)

3. Support for throwing women back into the Dark Ages, and general religious fanaticism (see: Operation Rescue, anti-abortion groups, James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Tony Perkins, the entire religious right, etc.)

4. Support for anti-science bad craziness (see: creationism, climate change denialism, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, James Inhofe, etc.) Read on...

Conservatives like Kathleen Parker and Christopher Buckley found out that leaving the GOP fight club isn't easy -- and Johnson will undoubtedly suffer the same fate. Johnson is taking major heat for his defection, which comes as no surprise, and comments like these at Politico merely prove his point.

I don't expect to see Charles Johnson showing up with Code Pink at any war protests any time soon, but this post covers much of what C&L and other progressive blogs have been saying about the GOP for some time now. It is a dying party that has been taken over by religious extremists, bigots, conspiracy theorists and worse.

Johnson's observations about his party mirror those of my conservative friends and family...well, most of them. They wonder what happened to their party and where they belong in the political spectrum.

I agree with Nicole Belle who wrote backstage - "I don't want him on the left. But it's nice to see someone on the right injecting a little sanity into the discussion."

Violence is contagious.

This Kentucky weirdo should be checked out very carefully.

A Kentucky woman has threatened a Michigan newspaper with a bloodbath similar to the massacre at Ft. Hood if they don't lay off criticism of the District 6 congresswoman.

Weird. We always thought Michele was a pro-life kinda gal. But on with the story, which begins with an editorial in the Port Huron Times Herald. It lambastes Bachmann as a "a hate-spewing, right-wing legislator from Minnesota."

Rally participants carried a variety of disturbing signs. One placard had a health care message superimposed over dead bodies from Holocaust concentration camps. One referred to President Barack Obama as "Sambo." One depicted the president as the evil "Joker" from Batman movies. One referred to "Obama and his Marxist buddies."At one point, the crowd chanted "Nazi, Nazi."

The unidentified Kentucky woman was having none of that, and according to Editor and Publisher, she put in a call to the Gannett customer service center in Louisville, Ky., threatening to arm herself and "do what they did at Fort Hood." (Gannett owns the Times Herald.)

Gannett gave a copy of the recording to Kentucky authorities, who paid the woman a visit last week. No charges have yet been filed in the case.

It's at the point where threats of bloodbaths and sicko murder fantasies like this should be a crime already. Oh, I forgot, the FRC will say it's denying their preachers the right to express themselves. My bad.

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Looks like Jon Stewart got the attention of Fox News with his segment criticizing Sean Hannity for showing footage of Glenn Beck's 9-12 rally and pretending it was crazy-eyes Michele Bachmann's teabagger health care protest. Hannity 'apologized,' if you want to call it that. It was a mistake...honest.

Hannity: He was correct. We screwed up. We aired some video of a rally in September, along with video from the actual event. It was an inadvertent mistake. But a mistake nonetheless.

Sure it was, Sean.

As Media Matters reports, his apology might be taken seriously if Fox News didn't have a record of doing this sort of thing--Hannity video switch-up is only the tip of Fox News' video-doctoring iceberg.

Dave N.: Cable-network producers know exactly what they're doing when they make these edits -- what their sources are, what they're representing. Inadvertent my tookus.

Busted! Jon Stewart notices that Sean Hannity, in "reporting" on Michele Bachmann's teabagger anti-health-care rally last week, showed his audience footage from Glenn Beck's "912 Project" project of the month before, in order to make it look like there were big crowds out for it.

My question: Why aren't any journalists actually discussing the complete and utter travesty of "journalistic standards" as practiced by Fox News?

And why don't those Villagers who tut-tut the White House for standing up to the nonstop onslaught from Fox ever talk about this kind of crap? It's a constant, everyday occurrence at Fox.

Don't journalists care about their reputations anymore? Because Fox sullies the name of everyone who calls him- or herself a journalist.

From The Daily Show:

Sean Hannity uses footage of Glenn Beck's bigger protest to make the GOP's health care rally appear more heavily attended.

Gee, Fox News and Sean Hannity lying again. Who'd a thunk it?