Is The Left Wing Of The Republican Party Trying To Keep Sharron Angle Out Of Congress? The Republican Party Has a Left Wing??

One of the GOP's most deranged high-profile perennial candidates, Nevada sociopath Sharron Angle, is running for office again, this time for the House seat being given up by Dean Heller so he can accept appointment to the Senate seat being given up by disgraced John Ensign. The Nevada Republican Party, would like to keep the second congressional district in their column-- and that shouldn't be a big task. It's basically all of the state except the Las Vegas metropolitan area and it is overwhelmingly red. There is one way the GOP could lose the seat: nominating a whackjob like Angle could give the Democrats a shot.

The way around that was to have Ensign resign, appoint Heller and then avoid a primary and just have the hierarchal Nevada GOP appoint the Republican nominee, namely Anyone-But-Sharron. She's figured that out and is fighting back in true take-no-prisoners form. She seems to be accusing Nevada's Republican Governor Brian Sandoval and the rest of the Republican Party Establishment of being "leftists." Of course, compared to Sharron Angle, even Mussolini and Franco would be leftists.

Over the weekend she sent out a fundraising e-mail warning her demented followers that "the left wing of the Republican Party" is trying to keep her out of Congress.

"Instead of more than a year to prepare, I must now raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in just weeks," Angle wrote Friday. "I must do this so we can set the agenda, not our opponents."

In the case of a special election, the nominees of both major parties either will be selected by the state party committees or there would be an open election. The state's GOP establishment prefers the former, which would likely freeze out Angle.

"Instead of an open process-- already they are behind closed doors, choosing one of their own to be the preferred candidate in the race," Angle said of Nevada's GOP establishment. "This is exactly why I am running and why I need your help-- to put an end to special interest politics!"

Angle also told supporters that she was unprepared to challenge Reid because he had more campaign cash and that that won't happen again. That's just another of her typical lies. Not only did fascist-oriented outside groups flood Nevada with advertising on her behalf, she actually outspent Reid!


Nevada Democrats are hoping that despite her ability to raise money, she manages to get into the race since her candidacy is probably the best chance they have for winning the seat.

Angle seems to be considering an independent run in the special election, potentially splitting the ticket, and giving a Democrat a chance to win the seat for the rural, sprawling district for the first time.

“She might. Angle could certainly do it,” Kirk Lippold, a Republican candidate for Heller’s seat in the upcoming 2012 contest and a former Navy commander, told the Huffington Post.

“Sharron Angle has run and run and run, and lost and lost and lost,” Lippold said, arguing that Angle’s prime motivation is self-promotion. Lippoled said Angle has both the means in her national donor base and the will to buck the state GOP.

That would pit a party-sanctioned candidate and Angle against one Democratic candidate in the special election sometime during the summer.

Insider Republicans do not like that scenario.

“Democrats see this as a potential pick-up opportunity if the Republicans are divided,” said University of Nevada-Las Vegas political scientist David Damore. He explained that while Democrats have never won the district, they have been doing better around Reno in recent years, and in the portion of the district near Las Vegas. “It’s still a tough haul, though,” Damore said.

There’s another scenario Republicans like even less: the Democratic Secretary of State and Attorney General interpret the never-before-used special election law to mean there must be a contest open to all comers-- a free-for-all that could favor Angle.

In addition to Lippold and Angle, other Republicans eyeing the race include Amoedi himself, Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki, and Reno state Sen. Gary Brower.

“She’s the worst thing for the Republicans,” said Damore. “She’s got money, she’s got name recognition, she’s got a following."

Damore added that a likely low turnout in the summer election would be another boost for Angle.

“Her people are going to come out,” he said.

UPDATE: Looks Like The Republican Leftists Are Scared Of Ole Sharron

Yesterday, Nevada's Governor Brian Sandoval and Secretary of State, Ross Miller, announced that there won't be any backroom picking of primary candidates and instead there will be a wide-open, single-round, free-for-all special election to choose a replacement for Ensign (September 13). There's a chance, albeit a slim one, enough Republicans (besides Angle, state Sen. Greg Brower, Kirk Lippold, Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki, Nevada GOP chair Mark Amodei) will jump in that it will lead to a Democratic win, unless the Dems blow it by running as many candidates. Already state Treasurer Kate Marshall and two former failed Ensign challengers, Jill Derby and Nancy Price, are saying they'll run.

Saying the decision on who to elect should rest with the people and not “politically elite powerbrokers,” Secretary of State Ross Miller announced today that the special election ballot for the 2nd Congressional District will be open to all candidates and not just nominees selected by the state’s political party.

“There’s only one critical question: how are those candidates picked? By the people of the state of Nevada or by a small group of powerful party officials,” Miller said. “We are announcing the ballot will be open to all qualified candidates.”

Wacko of the Year: Sharron Angle -- A Lesson in the Outer Limits of Republican Lunacy

Candidate Angle doesn't see why she shouldn't be allowed to take only the questions she wants to answer.

“The Federal Department Of Education should be eliminated. The Department of Education is unconstitutional and should not be involved in education, at any level.”

-- Nevada Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle

by Noah

"Mommy, why do so many people think Republicans are wackos?

Well, sweetie, take the case of the 2010 Nevada Senate race. You see, Republikooks decided that one candidate, who thought we could pay for medical services with chickens, just wasn’t crazy enough. So they checked every asylum in the state and came up with Sharron Angle! This new face of the Repug Party is a goonie from the endless conveyor belt of Republican goonies. Cuckoo is as cuckoo does!

Sounding not unlike some Koran-twisting Islamic extremist nutball, Angle claimed that her opposition to both Social Security and Medicare isn’t rooted in her view of the Constitution. Instead, she offers that her view of the Ten Commandments tells her to oppose such programs. I musta missed something in Sunday school. Thou shalt not have Medicare? Thou shalt not have Social Security?

Here’s Angle explaing her “thoughts” about phasing out Social Security in favor of a privatized system put in place by Chile’s right-wing dictator Augusto Pinochet:

When I said privatize, that’s what I meant. That I thought we would just have to go to the private sector for a template on how this is supposed to be done. However, I’ve since been studying, and Chile has done this.

Angle also sees no reason why the press shouldn’t ask only the questions she wants to be asked, so she can give only the answers she wants to give. When that doesn’t happen, it’s run, Sharon, run! (See the clip above.) Run from those mics and nasty, nasty cameras!


“People ask me, ‘What are you going to do to develop jobs in your state?’ Well, that’s not my job as a U.S. senator.”

Even Angle’s communications directors seem to have had a problem with Sharron’s take on how her relationship should be with the press. In the first week of August, she went through two of them and hired a third in -- just in that one week! Just doing her bit to fight unemployment, I guess. One has to wonder why the third one took the job. Well, jobs are very scarce.

Here’s what greeted Contestant No. 3 on the Angle Loon Show:

We needed to have the press be our friend. . . . We wanted them to ask the questions we wanted them to ask so that they report the news the way want the news reported and when I get on a show and say send money to SharronAngle.com so that your listeners --

Gee, Sharron, sometimes life just isn’t fair. You may be a spoiled Republican Teabag princess, but sometimes things just don’t go the way you want. Even the Fox bozo interviewing her was incredulous. At one point you can see that he’s trying very hard not to laugh.

Angle is utterly clueless about the world -- and she wanted to be a U.S. senator. I wonder if she knew that she’d have to leave her room with the padded walls and go to Washington, DC. She’s really stretching the boundaries. One is almost moved to having sympathy for her. Maybe the people in Nevada could just give her some sort of honorary title like "senator from Area 51." They could trot her out for holiday parades,e on a float with some Teabaggers dressed up as little aliens cruising down the Extraterrestrial Highway.

Call me a compassionate, sensitive lefty. I also have to wonder how she finds her way home at night without having left a trail of bread crumbs or tied a very long string to her doorknob. Maybe one of her ex-communications directors can move in with her and be her minder when she returns to whatever nuthouse she came from. No doubt she’ll always blame the press. I wonder if she’s even heard of the concept of freedom of the press. Perhaps she could borrow a copy of the Constitution from one of her Teabagger buddies, or maybe she and her promoters, like her fans on Fox, would rather our country be like Iran or China, where a reporter can be arrested or worse just for asking “the wrong question.”

Sharron Angle is the kind of thing we get, and the kind of thing we deserve, when we tolerate the likes of Sarah Palin, John Kyl, James Inhofe or any one of a number of other of our typically deranged Republicans. The Republican Party will always push the envelope deeper into Crazyville. We, as a society, did not send Sarah Palin packing. We rewarded her with book deals, TV shows, and endless promotion. So next up was Sharron Angle.

“I hope that’s not where we’re going, but you know if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying my goodness, what can we do to turn this country around? I’ll tell you the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out.”

Mentally normally-adjusted people don’t turn into Sharron Angle. She was so bad that Harry Reid beat her. Note that the Secret Service didn’t pay her a call when she threatened the Senate Majority Leader. They let it slide, and for now she's just a profile in Republican lunacy, vintage 2010. Hopefully, she will be locked away and forgotten, but if we tolerate her and make excuses for her, there will be more, and there will be worse.

Warning: If Angle gets more than the 15 minutes of fame she got this year, in no time someone even more bizarre will be pushed to the fore by the Republican Party. What that is, I can’t imagine. Put on the Twilight Zone theme music, and stay tuned!


NOAH'S YEAR 2010 IN REVIEW

10 Random Musings (1)
2010, Looking Back: To Republicans, It Was So Much More Than Just a Speech to Kids
Random Musings on 2010 (2)
Random Musings on 2010 (3)
Random Musings on 2010 (4)
Random Musings on 2010 (5)

Quotations of a Party on Crack, 2010 Version --
Republicans in Their Own Words:
Part 1, The Unemployed
Part 2, When Cousins Marry
Part 3, It's a Party!

AND THE YEAR 2009 IN REVIEW:
12 Days of Christmas Scorn

#

There Seems To Be A Trump Wing Of The GOP Starting To Field Its Own Senate Candidates-- Like Sharron Angle

Thank God I didn't throw out the Sharron Angle art

As if the Republicans didn't have enough bad luck countering their advantages over the lame and incompetent Democrats-- between the crackup in Congress and the crackup in the presidential race-- now they're facing the hideous prospect of another Sharron Angle race. Yes, she's back (maybe). This PS on a letter from two psychotic Nevada teabaggers, Republican state Senator Don Gustavson and Assemblyman Brent Jones:

We can do this. I support Don and Brent sending this letter to you asking for your support to run for U.S. Senate. Many of you have asked if I’m going to run in 2016, when in reality, you have the answer to this question. YOU are the one who will decide the future of our country. Your financial support for this effort will make the decision much, much easier. I’m praying for your continued support so we stop the radical transformation that is happening to our country today.

Sharron Angle

Not what the national or the state party want to hear. They have their safe Establishment candidate already, Rep. Joe Heck, who has worked hard to come across as a relatively mainstream conservative. That isn't what Angle's supporters are looking for though and there's every chance in the world she can beat him in the June 14th primary-- and then go on to lose to former Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto in the November general election.

In extolling Angle's virtues Senator Don Gustavson and Assemblyman Brent Jones immediately started talking about Trump and attacking other Republicans ("Republicans for Reid" and "blatant tax raising Republicans"). "The fact is Sharron Angle’s record is now the most conservative in Nevada in actual votes at the Nevada Legislature and as a leader in Nevada on the most important issues of our time," they bragged. "Like us, Sharron Angle is fighting each day to protect and defend the country we love, from being transformed into something we will not even recognize. We need you to join this fight to protect America from a very uncertain future. One important difference between Sharron and all the other candidates in the race for the U.S. Senate is her vocal opposition to the Commerce Tax, Nevada’s new income tax on businesses and the creation of the Nevada IRS in the 2015 Nevada Legislature. We both fought hard to defeat this new tax and Sharron publicly took a stance at the Nevada Legislature to oppose it. If we had more leaders like Sharron as elected officials opposing the Commerce Tax, it would not have passed earlier this year. You will remember, it was Sharron’s and Senator Don Gustavson’s leadership in 2003, along with thirteen other fearless legislators that defeated this type tax that session. We need a clear voice in Washington D.C. to stop government-gone-wild. Everyone agrees, including Sharron, that government does good things that we support. Unfortunately, some politicians use government to do things that hurt all of us and benefit themselves. That has to be stopped before it’s too late! We Need Sharron’s Clear Voice On These Issues!" And then they list the 6 issues that are appealing to the Trumpish base:

• The State of the Economy-- In 2010 Sharron said, “Government is waterboarding the economy.” Nevada is now #1 in home foreclosures, again. Politicians in both parties have been saying how much better things are, raising taxes, and handing out money to their friends (crony capitalism) instead of actually doing something to improve the economy.

• Reversing Government Healthcare-- The Affordable Care Act and the expansion of Medicare into the government run health care system known as Obamacare has been a failure based on the benchmarks of the people who created it. You can’t keep your doctor and it’s more expensive. Once again, Sharron is on the cutting edge helping us repeal the Nevada Obamacare Exchange.

• Common Core-- Sharron is leading on the issue of Student Data Privacy, testifying on the bills we introduced in the Nevada Legislature, and introducing the petition that is currently being circulated to amend the Nevada Constitution. Parents and their children are the owners of the data collected on them, not the government and the corporations they are selling it to.

• Securing the Border-- It’s still not done, and the United States is very vulnerable in many ways. Sharron has a consistent record of demanding border security first. When we in the state of Nevada discuss securing the border, we are concerned about two distinct issues. First the issue of foreign policy and national security. We have good existing laws that because they are not enforced allow a breach in government’s first Constitutional mandate which is to provide for the common defense. Second, border violators from other countries are committing violent crimes against Americans, dealing in drugs and human trafficking as well as undercutting our economy in the workplace. Our “domestic tranquility” is threatened on every side by this nonchalant attitude of elected officials at every level.

• Taxes And The Federal Reserve-- Sadly, over the past six years even with Republicans in the majority, we are no longer hearing about an audit of the Federal Reserve or simplifying our income tax structure to make it fairer and flatter for the middle class. No wonder this Presidential year voters are eager for “real change” candidates. Politicians on both sides of the aisle and at all levels of government, from the state to the federal, have failed to keep the conversation going, let alone deliver any meaningful change on the financial issues that impact us every day. Instead, incumbent politicians have not only maintained the status quo but they are now dealing with scandals, like the IRS targeting conservatives, the NSA collecting data on every American, and the VA neglecting our patriots wait under mountains of paperwork for earned and deserved medical treatment. We should be hearing daily from those in government advocating on these issues, but there is a deafening silence. No wonder the American voter is saying, “You’ve had your turn. It’s time for courageous voices to take over the reins of government.” It’s Sharron’s turn.

• Environmental Protection Agency-- The EPA is doing everything they can to make your electricity bills go up and declare federal ownership of any body of open water. The EPA is one of many unconstitutional out of control, over-reaching and expensive federal agencies. These agencies are like dinosaurs, destined for extinction under the right leadership.

The rest is mostly all the "send money" stuff you'd expect. This isn't going to be the only primary that features a relatively mainstream conservative against a crackpot wing-nut-- and in every single race the crackpot wing-nut is forcing the guy who desperately wanted to run in the general as a mainstream candidate far over to the right. David Jolly, for example, is running against Tea Party lunatic Ron DeSantis, announced, along with nearly a dozen crazed extremists from the so-called Freedom Caucus, that he will be voting for deranged crackpot Daniel Webster.

In Illinois, where Mark Kirk is sometimes the only Republican crossing the aisle to vote with the Democrats he has one Tea Party challenger already, Ron Wallace (not a real threat) and one rumbling about running, Hate Talk Radio host and neo-fascist former congressman, Joe Walsh. Walsh's line is that "Mark Kirk can't win and everyone knows it. He isn't capable of campaigning and he's forever lost grassroots conservatives. Governor Rauner and the Party establishment know he can't win, but have given up on keeping that seat. That's wrong. Having Kirk near the top of the ticket will hurt all Republican candidates on the ballot below him."

And, of course, in Arizona wing-nut circle there is endless rumbling about a challenge to John McCain. An over the top state senator, Kelli Ward, is already in, but not viewed as a real threat. A delusional Tea Party freak, Joanne Lopez-Cervantez, is running as an independent, which could conceivably help right-of-center faux-Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick beat McCain in the general. But the McCain-hating rightists' fondest hopes are to get either of two extremist congressmen, David Schweikert or Matt Salmon (who keeps saying "thanks but no thanks") but both seem too busy making the House ungovernable to stray into a tough election campaign).

In Ohio Melissa Strzala is running a low-key Know Nothing campaign on Facebook against Rob Portman, but isn't expected to get more than a handful of protest votes. Her platform seems to revolve around little more than primitive racism and deporting immigrants. She does have 2 Youtube videos though:

Why Did Ensign Really Resign?

No doubt you've heard by now that Nevada Republican John Ensign, formerly the 3rd highest ranking Republican in their caucus leadership has decided to stop clinging to his political career. After vowing he would stand for reelection next November, Ensign announced this week that he's not just not running but that he's actually resigning from his seat (effective May 3). The ranking Republican on the Senate Ethics Committee, Johnny Isakson (GA), who has been part of the devastating investigation into Ensign's serial corruption, said Ensign "made the appropriate decision."

It's ironic that earlier this year Ensign introduced a bill that would require all white collar criminals-- so presumably this will cover him-- to work 50 hours a week. Creating a national prison labor force has been a goal since he went to Congress in 1995, but it makes even more sense in this economy, he said. “Think about how much it costs to incarcerate someone,” Mr. Ensign said. “Do we want them just sitting in prison, lifting weights, becoming violent and thinking about the next crime? Or do we want them having a little purpose in life and learning a skill?”

The Nevada Republican Party is certainly trying to use all the skills they've learned to take advantage of this development. Even though it might not be such a smart move in Senate seat retention, Gov. Sandoval is reportedly about to replace Ensign with his protégé, Rep. Dean Heller, who had already announced he would run for the seat.

[S]enators appointed to fill midterm vacancies have fared rather poorly when it came time for the voters to give them a verdict. Over the past 25 Congresses, there have been, by my count, 49 senators who selected by gubernatorial appointment in midterm (this excludes cases where a senator-elect acceded to office a few days early to gain seniority on his colleagues, a once-common courtesy that is becoming less so.) Of those 49 senators, only 19-- fewer than 40 percent-- won their subsequent special election.

Perhaps a bigger fear for the Nevada GOP was that deranged Teabag Queen Sharron Angle could easily win a primary to replace Heller in the House-- and then lose a general election to almost any Democrat. Aside from having Sandoval appoint Heller to the Senate, the party also gets to select a primary-free nominee for the special election to replace Heller. That way they get the teabaggers out of their hair... they hope. Angle, retired Navy Commander Kirk Lippold have already declared for the seat and both Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki and state GOP Mark Amodei have been reported to be on the verge on jumping in. Republican Party thought in Nevada is that any of the males would be preferable to Angle, even though she actually won Ensign's district in her Senate race.

Angle lost the Senate race because she got slaughter in Clark County, 253,617 to 192,516. Clark County, essentially Las Vegas, is barely part of Heller's district and, although she under-performed Heller, she still beat Reid in most of the counties that make up the vast, sprawling 2nd CD. In fact, other than Washoe County (Reno) and tiny Mineral County (which saw a 855 to 822 split favoring Reid), she beat Reid in every other county in the state. It's worth mentioning that Heller won both Mineral and, more important Washoe, by big margins. Here are the county totals (not counting the parts of Clark in the 2nd CD) comparing Heller and Angle:

Carson City- Angle- 9,362; Heller- 12,470
Churchill- Angle- 5,639; Heller- 6,592
Douglas- Angle- 12,858; Heller- 14,872
Elko- Angle- 8,173; Heller- 9,443
Esmeralda- Angle- 268; Heller- 285
Eureka- Angle- 524; Heller- 599
Humboldt- Angle- 2,836; Heller- 3,627
Lander- Angle- 1,201; Heller- 1,429
Lincoln- Angle- 1,311; Heller- 1,396
Lyon- Angle- 10,473; Heller- 12,046
Mineral- Angle- 822; Heller- 1,190
Nye- Angle- 7,822; Heller- 8,817
Pershing- Angle- 915; Heller- 1,216
Storey- Angle- 1,124; Heller- 1,383
Washoe- Angle- 63,316; Heller- 80,216
White Pine- Angle- 2,201; Heller- 2,290

Thousands and thousands of voters who pulled the lever for Heller either then voted for Reid or another candidate or just didn't vote in the Senate race rather than pull the lever for Angle. And that was true in every single county, from giant Washoe, where the disparity between Heller and Angle was a whopping 17,000 votes to tiny Esmeraldo, where 17 of Heller's 285 voters just could not force themselves to vote for Angle. That's what the Nevada state party was seeking to avoid by nudging Ensign into resigning now.

From Sharron Angle, Rush Limbaugh And Sarah Palin, Right Down The Food Chain To Allen West Republicans Embrace The Violent, Divisive Rhetoric

When Nevada state Senator Bill Raggio (R), age 84, announced his retirement from politics a couple weeks ago, he held the all time record for the longest membership in the Nevada Senate in history, having been first elected in 1972. He was the minority leader 4 times and the majority leader twice, including a hefty stint from 1993-2007. It came as a great shock to many-- outside of Nevada-- when, revolted by his party's nomination of radical right sociopath Sharron Angle, Raggio endorsed longtime political nemesis Harry Reid last year. At the time he referred to Angle as "ineffective" and pointed out that as a state legislator she had a demonstrable "inability or unwillingness" to work with others. But in Nevada, it wasn't quite as shocking.

Angle, a Tea Party favorite this year, tried and failed to oust Raggio in a rough-and-tumble GOP primary in 2008. In his statement, the state senator from Reno made it clear he hasn't forgotten the bad blood between them two years ago.

"After losing to me in a primary, during which she ran a very negative campaign and distorted my record, referred to me as a liar and a RINO, I never heard one word from her, or a concession, or an offer of support," Raggio said. "Instead, she lent aid and comfort to an effort to recall me as State Senator."

In 1959 Raggio, then Washoe County district attorney, had the Triangle River Ranch brothel burned down as a public nuisance and had legendary brothel boss Joe Conforte arrested again and again. But it was his reputation as a mainstream conservative willing to work with Democrats that turned radical right Republicans like Angle against him. His endorsement of Reid cost him his Senate GOP caucus leader position and he announced his retirement on January 5.

It was widely assumed Angle would insist on appointment to the 2 years left in Raggio's term from the Washoe County Board of Commissioners. Then the massacre in Tucson and, wisely, Angle understood she wasn't about to be appointed to anything, not any time soon. She withdrew from consideration, citing previous commitments to give speeches to tea party meetings around the state and country. I think this video from Rachel Maddow on Monday gives a far better explanation of why Angle isn't going to be seeking any public office for a good long time:



Yesterday the Reno Gazette Journal addressed charges that Angle's purposefully "incendiary" and "irresponsible" political rhetoric had helped create an atmosphere that gave permission to mentally deranged people like Jared Loughner to grab a gun and going looking for a Second Amendment solution to some kind of imaginary problem.

National criticism focused on comments by Angle, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and others during last year's election cycle, when anti-incumbent sentiments created a volatile political environment. Some critics said the comments could've spurred someone mentally unstable to respond with violence.

Among Angle's critics was Pima County, Ariz., Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, who said in a television interview from Tucson that Angle's campaign comments about "Second Amendment remedies" were "totally irresponsible and are not without consequences, and I think we may be seeing the fruit of it here."

U.S. Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., and the assistant Democratic leader in the House, agreed, saying the "connection" between the fiery words and the violence was clear.

"We've got to understand that what we say, our words have consequences," Clyburn said in a telephone interview. "Those of us in public office need to be careful about what we say."

Last year during the campaign, Angle said on conservative Lars Larson's talk show that "if Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying 'My goodness, what can we do to turn this country around?'"

Messages left Monday with Angle's spokesmen were not returned.

It looks like Angle has been flushed down the toilet of Nevada politics

Even before the massacre, 68% of Nevadans agreed that it had been a mistake for the Republican Party to have nominated Angle to run for the U.S. Senate. (21% said it was the right thing to do; that's how many people in Nevada are just a step or two away from Loughner.) Meanwhile, Palin is hiding under her bed and refusing to comment on her own role in this tragedy. Less high profile Republicans-- local congressmen, like Florida sociopath Allen West, for example-- are doubling down on the insanity and hate-filled rhetoric.

Talking about the shooting of her close friend, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), Wasserman Schultz pointed to remarks that conservative radio host Joyce Kaufman, one of West's most ardent supporters who nearly became his chief of staff, had made at a July Tea Party rally, saying that "if ballots don't work, bullets will."

"The shock jocks and the political movement leaders that are out there on both sides of the aisle need to have some pause as well," said Wasserman Schultz, pointing to Kaufman's remarks as an example of rhetoric that should be "toned down."

On Monday, West responded in-kind, calling in to Kaufman's radio show and saying Wasserman Schultz's criticism showed "how low people will go for political opportunism."

"I was standing there when you said that," West told Kaufman. "And guess what, we did it by the ballot box."

West went on to point fingers at his in-state colleague, saying "if you want to talk about toning down the political rhetoric, you need to look at yourself, first and foremost, you Congressman Wasserman Schultz," and accused her of "incit[ing] a political riot and protest outside my campaign headquarters."

"I'm just glad I have more class, more character than she has exhibited," said West.

During the 2010 election, the Iraq War veteran and Sarah Palin-endorsed candidate quickly became known as one of the more incendiary Tea Party candidates. West frequently used gun metaphors and war rhetoric to fire up his supporters, telling his supporters "get your musket, to fix your bayonet and to charge into the ranks; you are my brother and sister in this fight."

On Tuesday, the freshman's hometown paper called him out for his comments, especially after his immediate reaction to the Saturday's shooting, where he said the violent incident should be a time for the "country to consider the safety of members of Congress."

The Palm Beach Post's Frank Cerabino writes West "ought to know" that "there are lots of crazy people out there," because "he's been one of South Florida's prime feeders of violent fantasies."

West said earlier this month that he "didn't learn anything" from the controversy that erupted after he chose Kaufman as his chief of staff. But Cerebino says, "I'm hoping that after last weekend's shooting of one of his colleagues, West will begin learning. It's about time."

Happy 45th Anniversary, Medicare

Who you gonna believe, Rand Paul, David Vitter and Sharron Angle... or Andy Griffith?

Actually, the 45th anniversary of Medicare was yesterday... but we can still celebrate today. Like all social progress-- from the Declaration of Independence, to public education, to freeing the slaves, women's emancipation, child labor laws, weekends, the right of workers to bargain collectively, to Social Security-- Medicare was violently opposed by conservatives. And they're still opposing it-- and still trying to turn back the clock, still letting their selfishness and greed run rampant and declaring that the poorest among us should go die in the streets rather than the wealthiest pay their fair share-- or even any-- taxes.

When Medicare, H.R. 6675, passed the House on April 7, 1965, 313-115, 48 conservative (mostly Southern) Democrats joined 68 right-wing Republicans to oppose it. On July 9th of that year it passed the Senate 68-21, 13 mostly moderate Republicans voting with 57 Democrats for it while 7 arch-conservative Democrats voted with the GOP majority against it. Today there are slightly fewer conservative Democrats-- most of the worst of the Southern racists have found a new home in the GOP-- but there are virtually no moderate Republicans left any longer. Passing any kind of sweeping progressive change legislation is nearly impossible to do in a bipartisan manner. In fact one of the most fringy of the GOP candidates, Russ Feingold's opponent, Ron Johnson, is campaigning on privatizing Medicare. And as Tula at the AFL-CIO pointed out yesterday, "nine Republican candidates would end Medicare, think it’s a mistake or believe it is Soviet socialism. They are: Sharron Angle in Nevada; Rand Paul in Kentucky; Dan Coats in Indiana; David Vitter in Louisiana; Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, John Boozman in Arkansas, Roy Blunt in Missouri and Jane Norton and Ken Buck in Colorado." Is that really possible? Well, let's let these Republicans speak for themselves about why-- aside from wealthy campaign contributors' demands-- they want to do away with Medicare.

The Las Vegas Review Journal is basically a Republican newspaper. Last October after an interview with Sharron Angle they reported that she believes in phasing Medicare out. “As for Medicare, she (Angle) said the entitlement program popular with seniors will eventually grow too costly to maintain… ‘We need to phase it out,’ she said.” Rand Paul went even further. A Courier-Journal review of Paul’s prior statements found he had compared Medicare to Soviet socialism. “Advancing his belief that health care prices should be set by the marketplace, Paul also has attacked having government set Medicare reimbursements for doctors. The fundamental reason why Medicare is failing is why the Soviet Union failed-- socialism doesn't work," Paul said on Kentucky Tonight on June 16, 1998. "You have ... no price fluctuation.” (Interestingly more than half of Rand Paul's income-- he's an uncertified eye doctor-- comes from Medicare.)

There are nearly a million Hoosiers getting Medicare but Dan Coats, the likely next senator from Indiana, who isn't generally thought of as insane as Angle or Paul, is taking his lead on this from Ayn Rand extremist, Paul Ryan, a blithering imbecile from Wisconsin who the morons in the mass media keep repeating is the smartest Republican out there-- although admitting privately that they can't make heads or tails out of his nonsensical arguments. In July 2010, Coats praised Ryan’s ideas for "entitlement reform" and vowed to work with him on passing them if elected. He said, “Paul Ryan has come up with some very sensible ideas, I have talked personally with Paul I have read his materials and there are many many things in there that I agree with and want to work with him on. Uhhh it basically says we are out of money and we are deeply in debt. And if we are going to have a future in this country for our children and our grandchildren and going to have jobs available and be the country of opportunity and be the country that can lead the world and the economy we have to come up with some reforms. And Paul has come up with some very constructive ideas and so have other Republicans.” Fact of the matter is, Ryan's ill-conceived and sketchy "roadmap," put together by a gaggle of K Street lobbyists for him, would eliminate traditional Medicare, most of Medicaid, and all of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), converting these health programs largely to vouchers that low-income households, seniors, and people with disabilities could use to help buy insurance in the private health insurance market.

David Vitter is already in the U.S. Senate-- when he's not chasing prostitutes-- and he believes his route to re-election is to take the most negative, extreme and hysterical positions on every issue. That kind of approach seems to have a lot of resonance in Louisiana for some reason probably relating to the state of the state's dramatically failed education system. Last September Vitter endorsed a report from the conservative Pelican Institute that promoted ending the employer-based health insurance system. According to the Times-Picayune, “Vitter has endorsed a new study from a conservative think tank that calls for scrapping the nation’s employer-based health insurance system in favor of individually owned policies and converting the Medicaid program into vouchers for private insurance.” Although he's a backbencher with virtually no influence and commands less respect from his colleagues than any other member of the Senate, Vitter managed to make himself the recipient of $311,718 in thinly veiled bribes from Big Insurance. His pronouncements may ill-serve the working families of Louisiana but they are exactly what the insurance industry expects from the whores they dole out their cash to.

And the aforementioned Ron Johnson, the clown who wants to replace Feingold, is even more radical than Vitter. In May Johnson praised Ryan’s privatization plan. He said, “You know, in his 'Roadmap for America,' [Paul Ryan] starts laying out some possibilities, I think some common-sense approaches, on you know, recognizing the fact that, I mean, when these programs were implemented, life expectancy was far shorter. You know, so, life expectancy has gone on. So I mean, you have to recognize that reality and start making adjustments to the program to figure out how you can keep these things sustainable so they’re around for people.”

As you know, Blue America hasn't exactly been a bastion of support for conservative Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln-- and if I were living in that state I would be voting for Mayor John Gray of Greenland, the Green Party candidate-- but Rep. John Boozman is even worse than Lincoln. He's another clod who goes along with whatever Wall Street dictates to Ryan and, of course, not only followed Ryan into voting for Bush's 2008 no-strings-attached Wall Street bailout, but also voted for Ryan's 2009 alternative budget that called for scrapping Medicare and replacing it with a privatized voucher system. And so did Congress' most corrupt member, Roy Blunt (R-MO), currently running for the open Missouri Senate seat. Blunt, who failed as Boehner's healthcare spokesperson before the portfolio was given over to Ryan, thinks the government should never have gotten involved with healthcare-- basically the GOP approach-- and Big Business'-- to everything. During a radio appearance on Eagle 93.9 in St Louis (July 10, 2009), he cited Medicare and Medicaid as examples of government intervening in the health care business “in a big way,” proof in the dystopian Hobbesian world he lives in that government should never have gotten in the health care business.

HOST MIKE FERGUSON: What is the proper role of government, and what are the potential impacts of the direction that we're going right now?

BLUNT: Well, you could certainly argue that government should have never have gotten in the health care business, and that might have been the best argument of all, to figure out how people could have had more access to a competitive marketplace. Government did get into the health care business in a big way in 1965 with Medicare, and later with Medicaid, and government already distorts the marketplace.

During a July 2009 campaign event in Hannibal, Blunt said Medicare had never done anything to make people healthier. "We've had Medicare since 1965, and Medicare has never done anything to make people more healthy. If there's any opportunity for more healthy activity, it's going to be, again, a private, competitive industry..." Blunt has taken $2,051,921 from the Medical Industrial Complex and another $695,332 from Big Insurance. He has nearly 3 million reasons to claim Medicare hasn't done anything to make anyone healthier, although I suspect that the 992,968 who currently use Medicare would disagree.

And in Colorado the Republican Party is running dueling freaks, Jane Norton and Ken Buck, eagerly trying to outdo each other in their anti-Medicare approach. In January Norton was already stirring up anti-Medicare fever in the GOP base: “Health care needs real, common-sense reforms. A government mandated, and government controlled, health care system is not the solution… If you agree that the government shouldn't be in the health care business, show your opposition by signing this petition today.” Buck, whose whole approach to winning the primary is to claim the Tea Party mantle-- despite calling them a bunch of assholes when he thought no one was listening-- decided to tack to the right of Norton. At a GOP campaign event in March, he posited that "The idea that the federal government should be running health care or retirement or any of those programs is fundamentally against what I believe. And that is that the private sector runs programs like that far better.”

Yesterday Stephanie Cutter, an assistant to the President, went on the record about GOP attempts to distort Medicare.

As we worked to pass the Affordable Care Act, seniors were the target of a major misinformation campaign that was designed to scare and confuse older Americans about the real impact of reform. False rumors about death panels and cuts in benefits made the rounds. We are committed to correcting the record and ensuring seniors have the information they need  and get the high-quality care they have earned and deserve... We know seniors will see tremendous benefits from the new law. Under the Affordable Care Act:

• Seniors guaranteed Medicare benefits will remain the same.

• Medicare beneficiaries who hit the prescription drug “donut hole” will receive a one-time, $250 rebate check. Hundreds of thousands of seniors have already received their check. And the donut hole will be closed completely by 2020.

• Preventive care services like colorectal cancer screenings and mammograms and an annual physical will be provided free of charge.

• Medicare pays Medicare Advantage insurance companies over $1,000 more per person on average than Original Medicare. These additional payments are paid for in part by increased premiums by all Medicare beneficiaries-- including the 77% of seniors not enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan. The new law eliminates these overpayments and starting in 2014, Medicare Advantage plans will be required to spend 85% of every dollar they receive on health care, not profits, overhead or administrative costs.

• By 2018, seniors will save an average of $200 per year and $200 in co-insurace compared to what they would have paid without reform.

• The new law extends the life of the Medicare Trust Fund by more than a decade.

Is There Room In Congress For A Tea Party Caucus... Filled With Supporters Of Bush's No-Strings-Attached Wall Street Bailout?

Last week, two of the most extremist crackpots on the American political landscape, Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and non-Board certified Rand Paul (R-KY), each promised to start a Tea Party Caucus in Congress. “I think I will be part of a nucleus with [Sens.] Jim DeMint (R-SC) and Tom Coburn (R-OK), who are unafraid to stand up,” Paul said. “If we get another loud voice in there, like Mike Lee from Utah or Sharron Angle from Nevada, there will be a new nucleus.” Two more pathetic panderers would be hard to find anywhere-- and the fact that this comes during the same week that the NAACP has asked the tea partiers to ostracize the racists among them, makes one wonder about the racism that is always hovering above the heads of these two far right politicians. One has to wonder, outside the Old Confederacy, what mainstream politicians would join such a caucus. In fact, Shailagh Murray did just that in yesterday's Washington Post. Senator Bob Corker, a mainstream conservative from Tennessee, ran for the hills when Murray managed to ask him. "I don't know about that," he replied with a nervous laugh. "I'm not sure I should be participating in this story."

Republican lawmakers see plenty of good in the tea party, but they also see reasons to worry. The movement, which has ignited passion among conservative voters and pushed big government to the forefront of the 2010 election debate, has also stirred quite a bit of controversy. Voters who don't want to privatize Social Security or withdraw from the United Nations could begin to see the tea party and the Republican Party as one and the same.

NRSC head, John Cornyn, worried that Rand Paul's and Sharron Angle's fanatic views-- which he politely calls "provocative"-- will tar the whole party with their destructive apocalyptic nihilism, is very cautious. He wants wins in Kentucky and Nevada, but he's petrified that if lunatic fringe teabaggers like Paul and Angle become the face of the GOP, the party will be doomed outside of the Deep South.

Former Senate majority leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), now a D.C. lobbyist, warned that a robust bloc of rabble-rousers spells further Senate dysfunction. "We don't need a lot of Jim DeMint disciples," Lott said in an interview. "As soon as they get here, we need to co-opt them."

But Lott said he's not expecting a tea-party sweep. "I still have faith in the visceral judgment of the American people," he said.

Sen. Robert F. Bennett (R-Utah), who failed to survive his party's nominating process after running afoul of local tea-party activists, told a local Associated Press reporter last week that the GOP had jeopardized its chance to win Senate seats in Republican-leaning states such as Nevada and Kentucky and potentially in Colorado, where tea-party favorite Ken Buck has surged ahead of Lt. Gov. Jane Norton in their primary battle.

Bennett warned that such candidates are stealing attention from top GOP recruits such as Mike Castle in Delaware and John Hoeven in North Dakota, both of whom are favored to win seats held by Democrats. Nor are they helping the Republican Party to resolve its deeper identity problems, he said.

"That's my concern, that at the moment there is not a cohesive Republican strategy of this is what we're going to do," Bennett told the AP. "And certainly among the tea-party types there's clearly no strategy of this is what we're going to do."

Democrats are hopeful that voters will focus on the potential consequences of tea-party proposals as they decide whether to hand over control of Congress to Republicans. Democratic Party officials said their easiest target, given the recent economic meltdown, is the push to privatize Social Security. A recent NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll found that 48 percent of voters were "very uncomfortable" with the idea of private retirement accounts, while another 18 percent had reservations.

In Nevada, when state Sen. Joe Heck told a local reporter that he was open to a limited and voluntary version of Social Security privatization, his Democratic opponent, Rep. Dina Titus, declared he had endorsed "Sharron Angle and her radical agenda." The Senate candidate has said she wants to phase out Social Security and Medicare as government programs.

Democrats also are trying to tarnish Ron Johnson, a DeMint-endorsed businessman who is backed by tea-party groups and establishment Republicans in his bid take on Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.). When Paul raised his caucus idea, Democrats put the question to Johnson.

"The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is asking Tea Partier Ron Johnson to tell Wisconsin voters if he would join Rand Paul's 'tea party caucus,' " read a DSCC statement released Thursday. Johnson's campaign did not respond to The Post's request for comment.

The teabaggers claim their main motivation is not racism-- although if you've spent time at a teabagger rally you know that for most of the participants it's almost entirely about angry, primitive, barely disguised racism-- but about how Congress voted for the Wall Street bailouts. Yet few of them seem to recall that the big no-strings-attached Wall Street bailout happened before the 2008 election, was proposed by Bush and pushed through both Houses of Congress by... Republicans! In the Senate 34 Republican followed Bush and McCain to help the bill pass 74-25. GOP stalwarts like Mitch McConnell (R-KY), John Thune (R-SD), John Ensign (R-NV), Richard Burr (R-NC), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Tom Coburn (R-OK, yes the same guy who Rand Paul expects to help him for the Senate Teabagger Caucus), John Cornyn (R-TX), Jon Kyl (R-AZ), and Orrin Hatch (R-UT), to name a few, all voted for the bailout. Today teabaggers are campaigning for Burr, even though his Democratic opponent, North Carolina Secretary of State Elaine Marshall, is on the record as having said she would never have voted for the bailout without real protections for consumers and small businesses. Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold did vote NO, but his state's crazed teabaggers are getting behind some corrupt multimillionaire who knows how to pander to them, though few doubt he would have voted in favor of the bailout-- which would have served his personal financial interests, the same way he supports and has defended BP without disclosing that he owns hundreds of thousands of dollars in BP stock.

In the House, the bill was defeated-- and then Wall Street shills and bailout advocates John Boehner (R-OH), Paul Ryan (R-WI), Roy Blunt (R-MO), John Boozman (R-AR), Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), Mark Kirk (R-IL), Zach Wamp (R-TN), Mike Castle (R-DE), and Mary Fallin (R-OK) went to work twisting the arms of reluctant Republicans to vote for it-- after Bush made it even worse the following week. And it passed with 91 Republican votes. And the teabaggers, who claim this is their #1 issue, are trying to make the bill's architect, John Boehner, Speaker of the House, and pushing for it's biggest GOP cheer-leader, Paul Ryan, to be in contention for the presidency and support bailout voters Blunt, Kirk, Boozman, and Castle for Senate openings and Hoekstra, Wamp and Fallin for governorships.

Another bailout champion, Joe Wilson (R-SC), is deemed by his boorish behavior at the State of the Union racist enough to become a teabagger demi-god even though he voted for the bailout and his Democratic opponent, Rob Miller, opposed it. Similarly teabaggers are supporting re-election bids by Ken Calvert (R-CA), Dan Lungren (R-CA), Wally Herger (R-CA), David Dreier (R-CA), John Campbell (R-CA), Pat Tiberi (R-OH), and Charlie Dent (R-PA), even though each was a no-strings-attached bailout supporter-- each with campaign coffers stuffed with Wall Street bribes-- and each has a Democratic opponent who opposed the bailout!

"Unprecedented Ecological Catastrophe" On The Danube... Although We Could Possibly Still Avoid One In Nevada

See all that red stuff? It can kill you... fast or slow

Hungary seems so very far away, and after all only four people are dead in this flooding, not nearly as bad as the thousands who died in Pakistan on CNN. And look, the Danube is only Europe's second-longest river. Now the Volga... that's a river! But it does flow through a bunch of countries, even if most Americans couldn't find them on a map if their lives depended on it: Germany (where it starts), Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Moldova, Ukraine and Romania (where it empties into the Black Sea).

You might not want to eat too much of that yummy Black Sea turbot, or even the mackerel or mullet. That's because this week a toxic red sludge that burst out of a Hungarian aluminum factory's reservoir flooded into the Danube, killing fish, threatening an ecological disaster and heading towards the Black Sea (and the six other countries between Hungary and the Black Sea). The chemical spill was the biggest ever in Hungary and pumped at least 35 million cubic feet of toxic, carcinogenic sludge (arsenic, cadmium and lead) into the river. Every single fish in a Danube tributary, the Marcal, has died.

As Danube nations such as Serbia and Bulgaria brace for contamination, Hungary is still struggling to deal with the devastation of the initial spill that flooded the villages of Devecsar, Kolontar, and Somlovasarhely in northwest Hungary. Emergency response teams, including the Hungarian armed forces, began to evacuate residents within hours of the spill, and staved off the contamination of a fourth village by treating and removing the sludge. Despite that good work, authorities say up to 7,000 people in these and four other villages have been directly affected. And leaders are struggling to measure the spill's human and environmental cost. "Nothing like this has happened in Hungary before," Tamas Toldi, mayor of Devecsar, told Time. "Right now the most important thing is to save people from the [flood]."

Toldi admitted that even those people who have been saved and evacuated face an uncertain future. Authorities reported on Oct. 6 that up to 2,000 acres of farmland and 8.6 acres of populated areas have been poisoned. "The [chemical] sludge has gone into houses and has destroyed and corroded everything," he says. "It's also going into the soil and we don't know how we'll produce healthy food in our fields."

Sounds disastrous, doesn't it? And it is... but the Hungarians and the regional authorities in central and eastern Europe are, by all reports, handling it extremely well. They're mobilizing whatever resources they can to battle the effects of the catastrophe, and I've been hearing on the radio that the deadly pH level is being dealt with efficiently-- hundreds of tons of alkaline-neutralizing plaster and acetic acid being dumped into the river system-- and is steadily declining. Reports are that the pH is now below 10 and expected to fall to 8, where it won't be as damaging. But Europeans can work together; they know social cooperation is how man moves forward.

Here, on the other hand...

We have a whole grab bag of freaks and loons who have taken over the poor old Republican Party with the latest and greatest ideas of the (early) 17th century. Joe Miller wants to abolish the EPA. Most of the extremists in what can generally be referred to as the "DeMint Caucus," or which will be the DeMint Caucus if enough of them get elected-- Pat Toomey, Sharron Angle, Rand Paul, Mike Lee, Ron Johnson, Christine O'Donnell, Ken Buck, Ken Buck, Joe Miller-- are convinced that government is a force for evil; not a force to protect society in general, but one that hampers the ability of the strongest and most aggressive to reach their full potential. It's a dark, Hobbesian view of the world, and most of them got it either directly or secondhand from Ayn Rand's cultish followers and her bitter, albeit silly and sophomoric, opus Atlas Shrugged.

How bad are they in the cooperation department? Yesterday Bill Raggio, the Nevada state Senate Republican Minority Leader, explained why he endorsed Harry Reid over his party's own nominee, Sharron Angle. Listen carefully. He knows her well, and this isn't something he did lightly. It will cost him. But what he says portends ill for America should Angle and the freaks like her wind up in public office:

"Only one of these candidates has sought my endorsement, Senator Harry Reid. I haven't heard from Sharron Angle or talked with her since long before she decided to run against me for State Senate two years ago. After losing to me in a primary, during which she ran a very negative campaign and distorted my record, referred to me as a liar and a RINO, I never heard one word from her, or a concession, or an offer of support. Instead, she lent aid and comfort to an effort to recall me as State Senator.

"Those are personal issues which I was willing to put behind me.

"What is difficult to overlook is her record of being totally ineffective as a four-term assemblywoman, her inability or unwillingness to work with others, even within her own party, and her extreme positions on issues such as Medicare, Social Security, education, veterans affairs and many others.

What Happens When Republicans Let Their Hair Down? Meet Sharron Angle

The title above was in a Harry Reid commercial but the quote doesn't come from Harry Reid. It comes from Bill Ames, President of the Peace Officers Research Association of Nevada, a 17 year long peace officer, an NRA member and... a Republican. Judging by what he thinks of Sharron Angle's antics, which is pretty much what most voters in Nevada are thinking about Sharron Angle's bizarre behavior, he'll be voting for a Democrat this November.

Has The GOP Lost Its Collective Mind? And What The Hell Is Going On In Delaware?

You may think Sharron Angle, Joe Miller, Rand Paul, Ron Johnson, Marco Rubio and Pat Toomey are the biggest crackpots running for the Senate this year? (Please don't get me started on the batch of drooling miscreants they have running for the House and other positions, like the Ohio meth freak in the video above). Well, who could argue? At least today... but let's revisit this after Tuesday's GOP primary in Delaware. There's a chance-- a small one-- that the Tea Bag Express could take out mainstream conservative corporate shill Mike Castle (a major Wall Street darling) and replace him with someone on a Sharron Angle/Rand Paul level, Christine O'Donnell. In fact, a friend of mine described her as "like a less polished Sharron Angle." Chew on that!

Short version: O'Donnell is another extremist and radical far removed from the American mainstream, almost like Joe Miller. Her latest tactic is to question Mike Castle's sexuality and imply that he's a closet case-- a possible Lindsey Graham, Larry Craig or Mitch McConnell type of character. That's the rumor... ha, ha, ha. Any proof? Conservatives usually attack Democrats with the smears and they're used to not bothering with proof. Now they're turning it on their own. (Not that Castle hasn't fought back-- with a website painting O'Donnell as a crook and a kook, who plays fast and loose with her campaign contributions.)

O'Donnell's got Castle so scared that he's spending money hand over fist in a primary he never thought he would have to spend a nickel on. And the Tea Party Express is putting their money into the race. Both sides are being financed by shady financiers of right-wing causes, Wall Street in Castle's case, power-mad and dangerous plutocratic families in O'Donnell's case, the same families that just replaced mainstream conservative Lisa Murkowski with lunatic fringe Joe Miller in Alaska. In fact, Sarah Palin has weighed in on O'Donnell's side against Castle, who voted-- twice-- for Bush's no-strings-attached Wall Street bailout (TARP) and for all the horrible trade policies that have sent U.S. jobs overseas. Yesterday the NRA also endorsed her. And yesterday evening:



The Delaware Republican Party is panicking that there one chance for a Senate seat in years is in jeopardy because of the perception most people in the state-- including many Republicans-- is that O'Donnell is out of her mind. Now-- not unlike the Tallahassee GOP bosses down in Florida and that state's Tea Party, the Delaware GOP Establishment and the teabaggers are taking each other to court.

The Republican Party of Delaware has filed a formal complaint with the Federal Election Commission, accusing one of its own Senate candidates of illegally collaborating with the Tea Party Express.

Attorneys for the state party asked the FEC to launch an immediate and thorough investigation into conservative GOP candidate Christine O'Donnell "to remedy the alleged violations and to ensure that these violations immediately cease and do not reoccur," according to the complaint filed Thursday.

O'Donnell, who faces Rep. Mike Castle in Tuesday's primary, came under fire from the state party shortly after tea-party backed candidate Joe Miller upset Sen. Lisa Murkowski in the Alaska GOP primary.

Following the Alaska race, the Tea Party Express redirected its efforts to Delaware. The organization's chairwoman Amy Kremer noted that 10 staffers are on site and vowed to spend $250,000 to help O'Donnell before the primary.

The complaint alleges that the O'Donnell campaign is "knowingly accepting illegal campaign contributions from the Tea Party Express PAC." It cites two "alarming" instances:

-- O'Donnell has knowingly accepted excessive contributions from the Tea Party Express that were directly solicited on behalf of the O'Donnell campaign, according to the filing.

-- O'Donnell has accepted illegal excessive contributions from the Tea Party Express by engaging in a statewide coordinated communications effort in support of her campaign. This means, according to the complaint, that every advertisement that is being run by the Tea Party Express in support of Ms. O'Donnell is a violation of Federal law.

The issue won't be resolved before Tuesday.

An FEC spokeswoman said it was "highly unlikely that the case could be expedited before the primary."

Delaware State GOP Chairman Tom Ross offered this statement:

"Christine O'Donnell needs to immediately call upon her third party supporters to cease and desist this illegal behavior," he said. "This type of behavior has no place in our political process, and O'Donnell should denounce these illegal ads. Donors deserve to know whether they made an illegal donation so they can demand a refund and get their money back."

This sets up the grounds in advance to challenge O'Donnell's victory on Tuesday if enough crazed Fox viewers and Limbaugh listeners turn out for the vote-- it's a closed primary; only Republicans can vote-- and get her nominated. Few know that she's adamantly opposed to extramarital sex and masturbation or that she's a "movement conservative." Polling shows that Castle and O'Donnell are in a statistical dead heat among likely voters-- and that conservative Democrat Chris Coons would beat O'Donnell by double digits.

Is Sharron Angle A Zombie?

Hearing Rand Paul and Dino Rossi "debate" on the same night is a little too much for me. Even braving a Maureen Dowd NY Times column on the "Republican Mean Girls" seemed like it might work as a palliative. 

We are in the era of Republican Mean Girls, grown-up versions of those teenage tormentors who would steal your boyfriend, spray-paint your locker and, just for good measure, spread rumors that you were pregnant.

These women-- Jan, Meg, Carly, Sharron, Linda, Michele, Queen Bee Sarah and sweet wannabe Christine-- have co-opted and ratcheted up the disgust with the status quo that originally buoyed Barack Obama. Whether they’re mistreating the help or belittling the president’s manhood, making snide comments about a rival’s hair or ripping an opponent for spending money on a men’s fashion show, the Mean Girls have replaced Hope with Spite and Cool with Cold. They are the ideal nihilistic cheerleaders for an angry electorate.

Seated next to Brewer at the bridge dedication was Harry Reid, the slight, mild-mannered, 70-year-old Senate majority leader who has wandered into the surprise fight of his career-- a race where the fur is flying.

“Man up, Harry Reid,” Sharron Angle taunted him at their Las Vegas debate here Thursday night. That’s not an idle insult, coming from a woman who campaigns at times with a .44 Magnum revolver in her 1989 GMC pickup.

With casino red suit and lipstick, Angle played the Red Queen of the Mad Hatter tea party, denouncing career politicians and ordering “Off with your head!” and “Down with government benefits!” Even sober and smiling beneath her girlish bangs, the 61-year-old Angle had the slightly threatening air of the inebriated lady in a country club bar, tossing off outrageous statements and daring anyone to call her on them.

The debate between the former boxer and the former competitive weight lifter, the soft-spoken Mormon and the outspoken Christian, was a source of fascination because the rivals perfectly represent the two caricatures of the midterms: The Washington incumbent and master of back-room deals who’s been around forever and lost touch with people versus the wacky new-breed Tea Party challenger who’s hiding from and hating on the press, spouting a lot of weird stuff and vowing to do what Barack Obama didn’t: Shake up Washington.

It didn't work as a palliative. So I made the little Roky Erickson video above. That worked. Do you have a favorite zombie? I can't believe Maureen left out Virginia Foxx. I didn't.

Is Joe Miller More Of A Crackpot Than Palin, Angle & Aqua Buddah?

As you know, Sitka Mayor/Democratic Senate nominee Scott McAdams will be the Blue America guest at Crooks and Liars this coming Saturday. You can contribute directly to his campaign here. And with the Alaska Libertarians having withdrawn their offer to allow corporate shill Lisa Murkowski to run on their line, this is looking like a head-to-head race between a populist Democrat and a... well... I can't think of a word that works better to describe Joe Miller than "crackpot," although I guess "extreme right-wing ideologue" works too.

As TPM pointed out, Miller washes up better than kooks like Sharron Angle, Rand Paul, Kent Buck, Pat Toomey, Marco Rubio and Ron Johnson, but he's at least as far off the mainstream as they-- or any of the Jim DeMint candidates-- are.

Among Miller's views: He wants to eliminate the Department of Education, believes the government shouldn't pay for unemployment insurance and says of climate change on his campaign site that it "may not even exist." Among the more mainstream GOP positions he's taken: Miller would cut welfare; eliminate health care for the poor by scrapping Medicaid; and the Anchorage Daily News reported that he has called for sweeping cuts to Medicare and Social Security with a goal of phasing them out entirely in favor of total privatization... Miller is backed by the Family Research Council and opposes abortion even in the cases of rape and incest, a view far to the right of the mainstream of the GOP.

... Miller told ABC's TopLine in July that he wants to look at the constitutionality of the government paying for unemployment benefits. He's also said he would repeal health care reform entirely, a view differing from most GOP leaders who want to just repeal the unpopular parts and keep the rest.

"I don't think Alaskans are that crazy, and Miller is very fringe," an Alaska Democrat backing Democratic nominee Sitka Mayor Scott McAdams told TPM in an interview. The source added that McAdams is "not a flaming liberal" and can appeal to sensible members of both parties, adding a predication that because Murkowski supporters are mainstream, they will flock to McAdams in November.

Another source who has worked in Alaska Democratic politics said Miller is "radically outside of the mainstream" and "makes Sharron Angle and Rand Paul look normal."

That may be stretching the point since it would take a lot more than a picture of Joe Miller crawling around on all fours on a dark Alaska night scraping up the permafrost to bury guns in his backyard to make Angle or Mr. Aqua Buddah ever look "normal." Nonetheless, yesterday's Anchorage Daily News carried a very damaging report on Miller's calls for Alaskans to ween themselves off federal subsidies. I suspect a lot more Alaskans like the theory of no government handouts and no pork than who actually want to see America's biggest welfare recipient and pork state go without. His call for actual "belt tightening" might not have the same ring when Alaskans start thinking about what he's talking about.

Miller holds that position, articulated throughout his campaign against incumbent GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski, despite Alaska's historic reliance on federal resources, needed to develop the vast territory of the young state.

"The government is going bankrupt. I don't think anybody can deny it," he said in an interview on CBS' Face the Nation on Sunday. "I think the answer to this is to basically transfer the responsibilities and power of government back to the states and the people. That is really the only answer, I think, out of this crisis."

Meanwhile, Miller is showing himself to be delusional and paranoid by running around insisting that John Cornyn of the NRSC is trying to steal the election for Murkowski. He's come pretty close to saying that if Murkowski is declared the winner-- an unlikely event in any case-- it will only be because of fraud and he'll go dig up the guns he buried in his yard. This guy is really... well, like I said, a crackpot.

Do Conservatives Like Ken Buck Want To Destroy America? Who Knows, But The Sick Policies They Espouse Will Do Just That

After Amato bet me that Obama would fire McCrystal-- I took the position Obama didn't have the intestinal stamina to do it-- I'm a little wary of these pool sharks taking advantage of me. So when one of my friends wanted to bet that he could name someone running for the Senate even more bizarre, extreme and perhaps even more psychotic than Sharron Angle or even Rand Paul, I hesitated. A case could certainly be made about that creepy bribery and coercion guy in Wisconsin. And Vitter's up for re-election. Of course, there's the former Wall Street derivatives trader, Pat Toomey, who's stark raving mad, and that pasty, pudgy guy who hasn't been able to stop eating cane-glazed pork chops with apple chutney since being caught embezzling Republican Party funds with his magic credit card. But then I remembered-- just in time... Ken Buck, the nutroots candidate, straight from Teabaggerville in Colorado.

What I remembered about Buck, another fringy DeMint candidate, wasn't just the ordinary far right claptrap he's been screeching about getting rid of Social Security and ending the whole separation of church and state thing. (These super Constitutionalists actually hate everything about the Constitution except the their interpretation of the Second Amendment.) It's his despicable comments about student loans and the mindset behind that.

Yammering on to a bunch of selfish wingnuts about the evils of Social Security, he recited usually carefully disguised GOP dogma: “I don’t know whether it’s constitutional or not; it is certainly a horrible policy. The idea that the federal government should be running health care or retirement or any of those programs is fundamentally against what I believe. And that is that the private sector runs programs like that far better.” And he threw in government backed student loans in to boot, adding, "over time, we have to wean the American public off those." Like Rand Paul and Sharron Angle, he would like to abolish the Department of Education (but then so would the Republican Party hack he's running against in the primary, Jane Norton).

I want to say something about these Republican greed-mongers, many of whom-- like both Buck and Norton-- have been sucking at the government teat all their lives. Basically they're nihilists and law-of-the jungle, anti-social suck-ups to the ruling elite. Before I retired I was paying nearly a million dollars a year in taxes. I didn't love writing those big checks but I love my country and when you pay that kind of money in taxes, it means you're doing pretty damn well. America did a great deal for me and I was proud I could give back. I couldn't have gone to college at all if not for the state university system-- opposed by conservatives, as too costly from the day they were proposed-- and I still wouldn't have been able to go without grants and loans. And then there was a time in my life when I couldn't quite make the ends meet and I don't know what would have happened to me with food stamps. I don't quite know what the government investment in me was. But I bet it worked out really well, considering I started a business, employed people, paid taxes and eventually generated many millions of dollars in income for American companies. And my taxes in any single month more than paid back the year of food stamps. And the student loans Buck and shortsighted conservatives like him want to do away with! What a bleak vision for our country these blinkered, greed-obsessed conservatives have!

Sunday you may have read Paul Krugman's harrowing column, The Third Depression, something the economics Nobel laureate thinks is descending on us because of a repeat of adopting as policy the same kind of conservative ideology that have caused past depressions.

Neither the Long Depression of the 19th century nor the Great Depression of the 20th was an era of nonstop decline-- on the contrary, both included periods when the economy grew. But these episodes of improvement were never enough to undo the damage from the initial slump, and were followed by relapses.

We are now, I fear, in the early stages of a third depression. It will probably look more like the Long Depression than the much more severe Great Depression. But the cost-- to the world economy and, above all, to the millions of lives blighted by the absence of jobs-- will nonetheless be immense.

And this third depression will be primarily a failure of policy. Around the world-- most recently at last weekend’s deeply discouraging G-20 meeting-- governments are obsessing about inflation when the real threat is deflation, preaching the need for belt-tightening when the real problem is inadequate spending.

In 2008 and 2009, it seemed as if we might have learned from history. Unlike their predecessors, who raised interest rates in the face of financial crisis, the current leaders of the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank slashed rates and moved to support credit markets. Unlike governments of the past, which tried to balance budgets in the face of a plunging economy, today’s governments allowed deficits to rise. And better policies helped the world avoid complete collapse: the recession brought on by the financial crisis arguably ended last summer.

But future historians will tell us that this wasn’t the end of the third depression, just as the business upturn that began in 1933 wasn’t the end of the Great Depression. After all, unemployment-- especially long-term unemployment-- remains at levels that would have been considered catastrophic not long ago, and shows no sign of coming down rapidly. And both the United States and Europe are well on their way toward Japan-style deflationary traps.

In the face of this grim picture, you might have expected policy makers to realize that they haven’t yet done enough to promote recovery. But no: over the last few months there has been a stunning resurgence of hard-money and balanced-budget orthodoxy.

And his conclusion as to why the ruling elites are headed down this road again? Even more chilling: "the victory of an orthodoxy that has little to do with rational analysis, whose main tenet is that imposing suffering on other people is how you show leadership in tough times. And who will pay the price for this triumph of orthodoxy? The answer is, tens of millions of unemployed workers, many of whom will go jobless for years, and some of whom will never work again." If you're a regular DWT reader you're certainly aware that we don't want to single out Ken Buck-- or even a raving sociopath like Sharron Angle-- as if the real toxicity were coming from anyplace else other than the very nature of conservatism itself. And since the fish rots from the head, let's take a look at the most recent random sociopathic utterances of the little orange man who would be Speaker, John Boehner. There's a wealth of information about the conservative mindset in those videos but the two most astonishing takeaways is that Boehner thinks she should cut back on Social Security-- in fact, keep Americans from retiring until they're 70 so that we can afford to pay for the foolish wars the ruling elites want to fight-- and that Financial Regulation is an overreaction, like killing an ant with a nuclear weapon.

The actual Speaker didn't seem especially amused by Boehner's boneheaded remarks. "An ant, Mr. Boehner? It was the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression-- Americans lost 8 million jobs and $17 trillion in retirement savings and net worth. The irresponsible fiscal policies of George W. Bush and Congressional Republicans were much bigger than an ant to American workers, their families and small businesses."

Justin Coussoule is the Democrat running for the seat Boehner is occupying. Earlier today he told us that this kind of shameless grandstanding is par for the course for Boehner. "While protecting bankers and careless polluters he blocks desperate unemployed workers from receiving essential compensation and now suggests that to pay for corporate giveaways and endless war that we balance the books by doing a bait and switch on Social Security recipients. Once again Boehner defends the powerful and tells the most needy in our society that it is time for them to suffer so that his benefactors can continue to wade in shallow water while those who have suffered from his trickle on economics gasp and drown in the deep and treacherous economic waters." Contributing to Coussoule's campaign seems like an exceptionally good idea-- unless you approve of Boehnerism.

Meanwhile, my friend Jill Richardson, author of Recipe For America: Why Our Food System Is Broken And What We Can Do To Fix It, put a very human face on this looming macro-economic crisis, asking a simple question about how, as a society, we treat our own children: Tate Tots Aren't Vegetables: Why Do We Feed Our Kids Crap?

Those who say the deficit must be addressed now via PAYGO ignore the basic principles of Keynesian economics. John Maynard Keynes, the economist most credited with bringing the U.S. out of the Great Depression, encouraged increased government spending-- even deficit spending-- during economic downturns. Recall that GDP is calculated as consumer spending plus investment by businesses plus government spending plus net exports. When consumers and businesses tighten their belts and spend less, the government can increase spending to jumpstart the economy once again. That was the very idea behind last year's stimulus package, which provided for targeted spending on infrastructure, food stamps and other programs that would most create jobs and result in immediate spending to help the economy recover.

Keynes knew that in a downturn, people are earning less so they also pay less in taxes. Simultaneously, more people qualify for entitlements (like food stamps or Medicaid), pushing up government spending. An austerity budget to fix the deficit now will prevent the government from spending what is necessary to bring back our economy. Once the economy recovers, the opposite will be true, and we will be more able to fix the deficit then.

In the specific case of school lunches, an austerity budget (and unhealthy food) now will result in massive increases in spending in the future when a generation of children raised on unhealthy food becomes a generation of unhealthy adults with costly, chronic illnesses. Some say they don't want to pass the deficit onto their children. But what child, when they are diagnosed with diabetes at age 25, would say "Thank you for balancing the budget by saving money on my school meals"?

I don't mean to single out John Boehner but his scary little world, is the conservative mind: