Tag: Tea Baggers

CO Gov: Tancredo Enters Race, Could Toss Election to Democrat John Hickenlooper

Jon Ponder

Tancredo
Tancredo
Ken Rudin:

You should get out of the race for governor, former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R) told Colorado Republicans Scott McInnis and Dan Maes last week, if polls show that you can’t beat Democratic candidate John Hickenlooper in the November election. And if you don’t, I’m going to run as a third-party candidate.

McInnis and Maes, battling each other in the Aug. 10 primary, refused. Today … Tancredo joins the race as a candidate of the American Constitution Party.

Of course, Tancredo — who served in the House as a Republican for five terms and sought his party’s presidential nomination in 2008 on an anti-illegal immigration platform — has to first register with his new party. But that’s just a formality.

McInnis, a former congressman who had been his party’s frontrunner for gov., has been under a barrage of criticism over plagiarism charges… Once upon a time, back when Bill Ritter (D) decided to retire, Republicans were confidently predicting they would take back the governorship. But between the McInnis woes and the increasing negativity in the Senate contest between Jane Norton and Ken Buck … the opportunities for GOP gains in both contests are in jeopardy.

Verbatim

Trish

I’ll have to look into it.

— Response by Florida governor candidate Rick Scott to a questioner on the campaign trail who asked what Scott would do about Pres. Obama’s birth certificate, and whether he feels that Obama’s name can legally be placed on the 2012 ballot. By indulging “birther” fantasies, Scott aligned himself with the most extreme rightwing elements. Scott was CEO of HCA/Columbia Healthcare until he was given a choice to resign or face criminal charges for his role in defrauding the government of millions of Medicare/Medicaid dollars. He now runs the Solantic chain of urgent care clinics, which serve mainly uninsured patients, and is one of the principle funding sources behind the anti-healthcare reform campaign.

Case Closed: Tea Party Ex-Chair Issues Racist Rant in ‘Colored People’ Letter to Abraham Lincoln

Jon Ponder

photo-black-faceOn Wednesday, Mark Williams, the outgoing chairman of Tea Party Express — the astroturf group operated by the Republican Party PR firm Russo Marsh & Rogers that organized the three, secretly corporate-funded nationwide tea party bus tours last year — made headlines by calling the NAACP “professional race baiters” and a “vile racist group.” On Thursday, he upped the ante by posting a satiric letter (available, at least for now, on his blog at marktalk.com) from the “Colored People” of today to Pres. Abraham Lincoln:

Dear Mr. Lincoln

We Colored People have taken a vote and decided that we don’t cotton to that whole emancipation thing. Freedom means having to work for real, think for ourselves, and take consequences along with the rewards. That is just far too much to ask of us Colored People and we demand that it stop!

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Irony on Parade: Tea Party Hotheads Turn on One of the Men Who Invented Them

Trish

RickScott
Rick Scott, the light of crazy ablaze in his eyes
Be careful what you provoke, Tea Party exploiters. Florida governor hopeful Rick Scott recently discovered it’s one thing to gin up the teabagging crowds, and something else to be on the receiving end of all that anger.

Scott made millions as CEO of Columbia/HCA. The hospital chain founded by the Frist family (as in former Senate majority leader Bill Frist) swallowed competitors in the ’90s by dictating terms to suppliers. They’d merge with most of the hospitals in a given area, then tell vendors how much they wanted to pay for products. If a vendor balked, they simply switched to a lower bidder, leaving the first one with nobody to sell to. One of the repercussions of this strategy was the trend toward labor outsourcing by American companies, with medical product suppliers moving facilities to Mexico in order to meet pricing demands.

A “shouting, finger-pointing” crowd demands an explanation

Columbia was found guilty in 2000 of bilking Medicare and Medicaid in a massive, concerted, company-wide fraud effort under Scott. The chain was fined $1.7 billion, the largest penalty ever, and Scott was forced to resign or face criminal charges. He soon bounced back, founding the Solantic chain of urgent care clinics, which mainly serves the uninsured. Scott and several confederates have been the big bucks behind the so-called “astroturf” (meaning it looks like grassroots but it isn’t) opposition to health care reform.

Which brings us to the ironic position in which he recently found himself at a Tea Party gathering on the campaign trail.

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Reagan Raised Taxes At Least 7 Times, Including the Biggest Corporate Tax Hike Ever

Jon Ponder

Republican former Sen. Alan Simpson — who was a friend of Pres. Ronald Reagan and who was conservative enough to be elected to the Senate three times by voters in Wyoming, Dick Cheney’s home state — is fed up by what the called the “myths and misconceptions and the distortions” about Reagan’s record on raising taxes.

Simpson, who serves on the federal commission charged with finding solutions to lowering the national debt, spoke out during a recent public hearing.

Transcript:

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Tea Baggers Call for Sponsor Boycott of ‘Hardball’ – Please Support These MSNBC Sponsors

Jon Ponder

First, speaking on behalf of Chris Matthews — which I do not — thanks to the tea baggers calling for a sponsor boycott for all the free publicity for his documentary. I’m pretty sure the film, “Rise of the New Right,” would have been relegated to the remainder bin had they not raised its profile this way.

If they actually watched the piece then, good golly, are these authoritarian wing nuts ever thin-skinned. There is nothing inflammatory in it. In fact, there’s hardly anything new there that regular watchers of legitimate cable news haven’t seen.

My guess is that the people who are so incensed about it relegate their information consumption to Republican propaganda on Fox News, where tea baggery is treated with respect the anti-establishment mob phenomenon has not earned and does not deserve.

I’m no fan of Matthews, who, like Dick Morris and Ann Coulter, owes his broadcast career to his spittle-spewing Clinton hatred in the 1990s. My only quibble with his documentary is with the title. There’s nothing “new” about these tired old Bush lovers. They’ve been around years.

Please Be Sure to Support These ‘Hardball’ Sponsors

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Tea Party Nation Head Ups Barton’s ‘Shakedown,’ Calls BP’s $20 Bil Gulf Victims’ Fund ‘Extortion’

Jon Ponder

Barton, left, and Judson
Barton, left, and Judson
Judson Phillips, head of Tea Party Nation, hosts of the convention where Palin wrote her crib notes on her hand, showed whose side he’s really on yesterday when he endorsed Rep. Joe Barton’s (R-Texas) apology to BP’s CEO Tony Hayward over the company’s agreement with Pres. Obama to set up a $20 billion escrow account to cover damages from its oil spill disaster in the Gulf.

Barton, who will be chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee if Republicans win control of the House in November, called the escrow account a “shakedown.” But that was too mild for Phillips, who upped the ante.

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On Gulf, Tea Baggers Demand More Spending, Environmental Protections And Even ‘Commandeering’ Private Property

Jon Ponder

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

OLBERMANN: How the oil spill has turned hard-core, right-wing Republicans into socialist, soft-on-crime, anti-military, pro-environmentalist, pro-regulation, anti-small business, pro-big government, pro-big spending party.

Obama Not the Only Recent President to Miss Tomb of the Unknown Soldier Ceremony

Trish

The great thing about having Facebook friends who watch Glenn Beck is that you don’t have to. It’s like having Jon Stewart in your news feed, only not nearly as funny.

Three presidents in recent history missed the Arlington ceremony: Reagan, Bush, and Bush.

That’s how I know that the big tea bagging deal at the moment is the idea that Pres. Obama is betraying the troops by spending Memorial Day weekend in Chicago, and therefore will miss laying a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery. Instead, Vice Pres. Biden will perform the ritual while Obama and the First Lady participate in a service at Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Elwood, Ill.

One immediately wonders if any past president has committed a similar omission without being called a commie, and David Corn, writing for Politics Daily did the research. Turns out three presidents in recent history missed the Arlington ceremony: Reagan, Bush, and Bush.

In 1983, President Reagan was at a summit meeting, and the deputy secretary of defense — not even the veep! — placed the wreath. Nine years later, President George H.W. Bush passed off the wreath to Vice President Dan Quayle (who had used family connections to get a slot in the National Guard during the days of the Vietnam War draft). And in 2007, Vice President Dick Cheney took on the wreath mission, while President George W. Bush was in Texas, perhaps clearing brush.

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Palin’s Note in Support of Haley is All About…Palin

Trish
Left, former Haley speechwriter and alleged lover Will Folks, right, the aggrieved candidate
Left, former Haley speechwriter and alleged lover Will Folks, right, the aggrieved candidate

Only Sarah Palin could take what should have been a note of encouragement and make it all about her. And how she’s been mistreated. And attacked. And lied about. And on and on and on.

Gosh, poor Sarah. I mean, poor Nikki. Whichever.

If you missed it, Rep. Nikki Haley (R-S.C.) is running for governor of her state, which is looking for one, what with the term-limited Gov. Mark Sanford off in Argentina pursuing affairs. So the last thing South Carolina needs is a governor who has affairs, right? Well, one Will Folks, a former Haley speech writer and now a conservative blogger, says he had “an inappropriate physical relationship” with his boss in 2007.

Haley is the tea bagger favorite in the race, and as such, has drawn the endorsement of former partial term Gov. Sarah Palin, who came to South Carolina to campaign for her. Now whoever writes Palin’s Facebook notes has posted an aggrieved statement ostensibly in support of Haley but basically all about Sarah.

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