The FreedomWorks Implosion: Big Money Beats Handguns

I’m cueing up the Warren Zevon for this story on FreedomWorks:

[On the day after Labor Day, 2012] Richard K. Armey, the group’s chairman and a former House majority leader, walked into the group’s Capitol Hill offices with his wife, Susan, and an aide holstering a handgun at his waist. The aim was to seize control of the group and expel Armey’s enemies: The gun-wielding assistant escorted FreedomWorks’ top two employees off the premises, while Armey suspended several others who broke down in sobs at the news.

The coup lasted all of six days. By Sept. 10, Armey was gone — with a promise of $8 million — and the five ousted employees were back. The force behind their return was Richard J. Stephenson, a reclusive Illinois millionaire who has exerted increasing control over one of Washington’s most influential conservative grass-roots organizations.

Stephenson, the founder of the for-profit Cancer Treatment Centers of America and a director on the FreedomWorks board, agreed to commit $400,000 per year over 20 years in exchange for Armey’s agreement to leave the group.

Dick Armey is a legend in conservative circles. He was one of the leaders of the 1994 GOP effort that saw them taking both houses of Congress. Yet he’s now done, probably for good.

If you wanted any further confirmation that the Tea Party movement is not now a ‘grass roots’ phenomenon but total rich man’s Astroturf, here it is.

Do As I Say, Not As I Do: Republican Voter Fraud Edition

Always remember — when Republicans accuse others of doing something naughty, it’s very likely because they’re doing it themselves:

More than a year since a state district judge ruled 10 Montgomery County residents voted fraudulently in a Woodlands election, a grand jury last week indicted seven of those individuals for illegal voting.

The indictments stem from the May 8, 2010, election of The Woodlands Road Utility District No. 1. Ten individuals listed their voter registration address as that of a hotel in order to take control of the RUD board.

Former Montgomery County Judge candidate Adrian Heath heads the list of people charged with the third-degree felony. Heath declined comment, saying he was looking into hiring an attorney. [...]

According to indictments released by the Texas Attorney General’s Office, the defendants voted in an election they knew they were not eligible to vote.

Hat tip to Joan McCarter.

Racist Tea Party Figure RS McCain Freaking Out Over Palin-Rice Sex Story

We all were wondering how the Totally Not Racist members of the GOP’s Tea Party/Koch Bircher wing were going to react to the report — confirmed by Rice himself — that Sarah Palin and the very black former callege and pro basketball player Glen Rice had been going at it like minks almost right up to the point she married Todd Palin.

Now we know, thanks to TBogg, who reads Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest Robert Stacy McCain so we don’t have to:

Stacy gets all het up about this possibly because it occurred in the late eighties which means it probably was accompanied by a bow-chicka-wow-wow soundtrack (…as did all sex in those days, kids. Ask your parents. Over diner.):

What a pathetic travesty to see Joe McGinniss, who gained national fame for The Selling of the President, reduced to such a lurid and digusting (sic) excuse for “journalism.” What possible purpose could his claims serve, except as a vile personal smear on a Republican politician who is also a wife, mother and grandmother?

But wait…. What is wrong about a young single healthy white woman wanting to get her badunkadunk bonked?

Oh, I get it.

Stacy is afraid that Sarah’s commonsense conservative heartland, perfectly reasonable, don’t-have-a-racist-bone-in-their-bodies, nosiree bob, fan base might be put off their feed a touch by the image in their heads of  a lithe young Sarah Palin grunting and heaving, her breasts swaying to an almost hypnotic jungle rhythm, as her  white body is ravished while mounted reverse cowgirl style upon the massive black member of an almost Kenyan.

Hell, I’ll bet that Nathan’s — erm, Stacy’s — fantasy life has been immeasurably enriched thereby. To the point where he’s likely buying hand lotion (or Astroglide) by the truckload right now.

By the way: FDL’s invited Joe McGinniss, the author of the book wherein this and other revelations about Palin may be found, to a FDL Book Salon on September 25. Be there as he’ll be in the comments thread ready to take any and all questions.

Chip Cravaack Versus The Public Good

Sally Jo Sorensen and a few other sharp-eyed folk have noticed that freshman congresscritter Chip Cravaack thinks Calvin Coolidge is like the Best President Evarrrr. This despite (or because of?) Coolidge’s staunch opposition to anything that might risk inconveniencing the rich for the public good: Flood control, aid for farmers (as opposed to the corporate entities that drove them off their land), that sort of thing.

Then again, we’re talking about Chip Cravaack, the young ‘un who managed to tick off his biggest boosters, the Republicans running the Duluth News Tribune, when he came out against Federal spending on improvements for Duluth’s airport.

Kochtopus Coming To Hosni Scott Walker’s Rescue

Scott Walker, the newly-installed and Koch-purchased governor of Wisconsin, is pulling yet another Hosni Mubarak move. First he threatened to sic the national guard on protesters; now he’s calling on the astroturf wing of the Republican Kochtopus, the Tea Partiers, to go after the peaceful protesters in Tahrir Square the State Capitol:

In response to the growing protests in Madison, Koch fronts are busing in Tea Party protesters to support Walker and his union-busting campaign. Last night, MSNBC’s Ed Schultz reported on the involvement of Club for Growth and the Koch-financed Americans for Prosperity in the pro-Walker protest scheduled tomorrow.

[...]

Koch Industries is a major player in Wisconsin: Koch owns a coal company subsidiary with facilities in Green Bay, Manitowoc, Ashland and Sheboygan; six timber plants throughout the state; and a large network of pipelines in Wisconsin. While Koch controls much of the infrastructure in the state, they have laid off workers to boost profits. At a time when Koch Industries owners David and Charles Koch awarded themselves an extra $11 billion of income from the company, Koch slashed jobs at their Green Bay plant…

Koch front group ALEC — the American Legislative Exchange Council — helped Walker and the Wisconsin Republicans get elected, and also Republicans in other states, and is the driving force behind the anti-union legislation being readied in several states.

And now the Koch front group Americans for Prosperity is behind the “Stand with Walker” astroturf website: http://www.standwithwalker.com. Hosni Mubarak is green with envy.

Ayn Rand, Paul Ryan: Social Security Recipients Against Social Security

This is hilarious (courtesy Blue Texan):

Critics of Social Security and Medicare frequently invoke the words and ideals of author and philosopher Ayn Rand, one of the fiercest critics of federal insurance programs. But a little-known fact is that Ayn Rand herself collected Social Security. She may also have received Medicare benefits.

An interview recently surfaced that was conducted in 1998 by the Ayn Rand Institute with a social worker who says she helped Rand and her husband, Frank O’Connor, sign up for Social Security and Medicare in 1974.

Federal records obtained through a Freedom of Information act request confirm the Social Security benefits.

As Blue Texan points out, what makes this extra-special is this: The Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights has an article on its website right now titled, “Social Security is Immoral.”

But wait! There’s more! Ayn Rand’s most powerful representative in government, a teabagger doofus named Paul Ryan (R-WI), not only also collected Social Security after his father died, it’s what put him through college:

One day as a 16 year old, Ryan came upon the lifeless body of his father. Paul Ryan, Sr. had died of a heart attack at age 55, leaving the Janesville Craig High School 10th grader, his three older brothers and sisters and his mother alone. It was Paul who told the family of his father’s death.

With his father’s passing, young Paul collected Social Security benefits until age 18, which he put away for college. To make ends meet, Paul’s mother returned to school to study interior design. His siblings were off at college. Ryan remembers this difficult time bringing him and his mother closer.

Now Ryan, like his heroine Rand, wants to deny to others what he benefitted from himself. Typical.

What They Didn’t Tell You About Eric Fuller

The news media all dutifully reported that Eric Fuller, a former campaign worker for Gabrielle Giffords who was of the last persons to actually speak to her before she was shot in the head and he took bullets in the knee and back, yelled and screamed “You’re dead!” at Tucson Tea Party leader Trent Humphries, which action caused Fuller to be hauled off and involuntarily committed to a mental hospital pending a medical evaluation.

What these stories didn’t mention is what might have led Fuller to confront Humphries in the first place.

Humphries has been caught on YouTube saying things like this:

“It’s political gamesmanship. The real case is that she [Giffords] had no security whatsoever at this event. So if she lived under a constant fear of being targeted, if she lived under this constant fear of this rhetoric and hatred that was seething, why would she attend an event in full view of the public with no security whatsoever?” he said. “For all the stuff they accuse her [Palin] of, that gun poster has not done a tenth of the damage to the political discourse as what we’re hearing right now.”

As Raw Story points out, Giffords herself, prior to being shot, pointed out the poisonous effects of the sleazy and violence-baiting campaign Humphries and the rest of the Arizona Republicans were running with her opponent Jesse Kelly. And now Humphries is trying to dodge the blame for this.

If you were a disabled combat veteran who had just been through working during a grueling campaign where for over a year Tea Partiers and their Queen Bee Palin had done the whole Radio Rwanda bit, all but ordering their followers to shoot your boss, then be forced to watch your boss be shot in the head before your eyes and get shot yourself along nearly twenty others, six of whom would die, by a David-Wynn-Miller-worshiping, right-wing-theory-spouting, Gold and Silver Bug (Beck being the most notable current promoter of metallic currency) named Jared Loughner, and THEN, with your physical and emotional wounds still raw, have to listen to the guy who you hold responsible for all of this try to weasel out of it like the sleazy creep he is, I expect you might have a tough time not yelling a few intemperate remarks, too.