Tea Party

The two candidates for Secretary of State for Minnesota traded barbs with Democrat Steve Simon calling Republican Dan Severson's plan to revamp the state's voting process as an exercise in "race baiting".

Fifty years ago today, on October 27, 1964, Ronald Reagan delivered his (in)famous "A Time for Choosing Speech" in support of Republican Presidential nominee Barry Goldwater over President Lyndon Johnson. Soon thereafter, LBJ went on to defeat Goldwater in one of the greatest landslides in U.S. history. So, in that respect at least, Reagan's speech wasn't toxic. But in most other respects, the speech — and Reagan himself — were a dangerous mix of dishonesty, demagoguery, delusion, and divisiveness.

Not that sedition laws were ever a good idea, but it's sickening that people think it's okay to talk about armed revolution because they don't like the black man in the white house, and they're not smart enough to know that folks whose politics disagree with their own are not, in fact, criminals.

As expected, the Virginia legislature's debate over Medicaid expansion was simply a farce. Republicans are scared of being 'primaried' in elections by even-further right tea partiers, and expanding health coverage to those who most need it is a non-starter.

“Do you repudiate Richard Fink’s remarks at the Koch retreat this summer?” a reporter asked Mitch McConnell the other day. His chattiness was caught on tape at the now famous Father’s Day fund-raising conclave hosted by Charles and David Koch. But when the scribe aimed a mike at McConnell, mum was the word from the senate majority leader-wannabe. Off the record, McConnell has heaped high praise on the Koch siblings.

Terri Lynn Land's column wrote a column today on how to fix roads. She wants to fund road repairs ... by cutting taxes.

The Denver Post's Op-Ed chief hasn't hid his rightward leanings that well in the past, but after footage surfaced of him speaking at tea party-affiliated event, he's digging himself in even deeper.

Alabama Power's parent company, Southern, will be relying less on coal and more on other resources, including renewables. The reason? Because it's simply cheaper. It hasn't stopped the demagogues from blaming Obama's fictional "War On Coal."

In an exclusive for the Daily Beast, ProPublica writer Kim Barker exposes the “pro-troop” charity Move America Forward for misusing donations collected under the auspices of sending soldiers care packages. After adopting a battalion, the Marines of Geronimo, the group started a fundraising drive claiming the care packages sent to the soldiers in Afghanistan might be “the only mail they will receive all year.” The truth? Those Marines were stationed in Japan and the money was instead funneled to the dark money machine that runs the Tea Party.

You’ve got to wonder how many Kentucky Republicans are like Barbara Knott. She just quit the Daviess County GOP executive committee because she’s not for Sen. Mitch McConnell. Knott heads the Tea Party in Owensboro, seat of Daviess County in conservative western Kentucky, heretofore mostly McConnell country.