“There’s no longer any room for moderates in the Arizona Republican Party, and that has contributed greatly to the growth of independents, ” says Chris Herstam, a Phoenix attorney and moderate Republican who once served in the Arizona House. “Archconservatives,” he says, control the Arizona Republican Party and the Arizona Republican Party controls the Arizona Senate and House.

Leading from behind — a phrase first used by a White House adviser in a New Yorker article by Ryan Lizza — was smart policy in Libya. The United States, short on cash, bruised by Iraq and Afghanistan, did not want to head the charge into a third Muslim country, even if the Arab League had backed intervention. Discreet U.S. military assistance with France and Britain doing the trumpeting was sensible.

Discreet does not mean desultory. The United States took out Libya’s air defense system. It provided more than 70 percent of the surveillance, intelligence and reconnaissance capabilities. It flew 70 percent of refueling missions. What it did not do was wade into Libya with the army it had in the vanguard of a motley coalition of the willing.

"Arizona is a key state that will play a pivotal role in helping Republicans choose their presidential nominee," said Sam Feist, CNN Washington bureau chief and senior vice president. "CNN is honored to provide voters in Arizona and around the country an opportunity to hear the GOP candidates present their vision for the future."

This is a video on why The Black Caucus is racist and why President Obamas should resign.

So there are policies we could be pursuing to bring unemployment down. These policies would be unorthodox — but so are the economic problems we face. And those who warn about the risks of action must explain why these risks should worry us more than the certainty of continued mass suffering if we do nothing.

She's become the P.T. Barnum of politics. She's the ringmaster of a political media circus who commands attention wherever she goes. Next week Palinpalooza kicks off another round of frenzy and speculation.

What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object? That is the Palin paradox.

Spencer's founding of American Border Patrol in 2002 pre-dated the first Minuteman "civilian border patrols" by three years. Before his ranchland became a Tea Party rallying point it served as both meeting grounds and temporary housing for high-ranking members of various border vigilante factions. Minuteman American Defense leader Shawna Forde lived on the property in an RV owned by Spencer in the summer of 2008.

But now that the debt ceiling is in play, there's no end to what the radical right will demand. John Boehner is already using the classic "they're making me" move, seemingly helpless in the face of Tea Party storm troopers who refuse to raise the ceiling unless they get their way. Their way is reactionary and regressive – eviscerating Medicare, cutting Medicaid and programs for the poor, slashing education and infrastructure, and using most of the savings to reduce taxes on the rich.

It seems incongruous for him to pose half-naked – not just because of his office, but because of his track record as an outspoken opponent of gay rights and an enemy of sexual liberation who voted to defund Planned Parenthood. Schock is constantly beating back Beltway rumours that he's gay ...

What do you do when your state is burning? ~~~ Texas' Republican Gov. Rick Perry, wanting to avoid any comparisons to Nero, took decisive action: He declared a three-day period, from Friday to Sunday, as Days of Prayer for Rain. ~~~ And they call Jerry Brown Gov. Moonbeam?

Like Survivor, the alliances are beginning to form in advance of the first round of primary purges. And like leeches on a willing host, Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann are aligning around front-runner Donald Trump. ~~~ It really is pathetic. Donald Trump, the unserious candidate of the century, needs his Big Buddy Hannity to save him from that mean ole George Stephanopoulis, after a particularly awkward interview on ABC's Good Morning America yesterday morning.

in 2009 during the health care debate when the Tea Party/AFP contingents were hand-wringing over death panels. Remember that? Sarah Palin was sure Grandma was going to have her plug pulled, and Chuck Grassley et al joined in the fun. Oh yes, that was a summer never to forget. Hot, humid, and stupid. ~~~ But. It was 2 years ago, after all, and so everything old is new again in reverse.

Rep. Chip Cravaack (R-MN), a freshman Republican who won a very surprising upset victory over longtime Democratic Rep. Jim Oberstar in the 2010 GOP wave, is now tapping a potentially lucrative source of cash in his effort to hold on to his historically Democratic district

This battle between the conservative pragmatists and hardliners was on full display Saturday as anti-Sharia activist Frank Gaffney and anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist hurled charges against one another at a conservative conference in Lynchburg, Virginia.

America's recession would have produced a good deal more misery if not for the social safety net, no matter how much Ryan and his comrades bemoan its existence. ~~~ The Republican Party has been chasing a ghost for more than 20 years, ever since Ronald Reagan doubled the deficit and seared simple words into the simple American mind.

The budget proposal released last week by Rep. Paul Ryan (R.-Wisc.) includes tax cuts for the wealthy, tax hikes for the middle class, drastic cuts in spending and a radical restructuring of Medicare that would shift most of the cost of healthcare to seniors. Its dubious claims of deficit reduction rely on fatally flawed assumptions and inexplicable projections (Center for Budget & Policy Priorities, 4/7/11; CEPR, 4/11

Praised by the Wall Street Journal and the republican raptor, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who calls Andrew Cuomo "my soul mate," the son of moral vision orator, former Governor Mario Cuomo, is on a roll unchallenged by his fellow Democrats and the media. Using the deficit—which is far less per capita than Connecticut's deficit—he revels in being "Cuomo the cutter": "I am a realist… Forget the philosophy. Here are the numbers."

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), the national Tea Party star who is considering a run for president, appeared Monday night on Sean Hannity's TV show to clarify something: If elected, she is not ruling out a second term.

In a party-line vote, the House slaughtered dozens of sacred cows. The budget bill makes huge cuts to public education, nursing homes and health care for the poor. It slashes financing for highways, prisons and state parks. It eliminates full-day preschool, cuts teacher incentive pay and reduces scholarships for college students by two-thirds.

Glenn Beck is pulling the plug on his popular daily show for Fox News. ~~~ In a release his production company says he will "transition" away from his Fox News show later this year. ~~~ According to the release Beck won't jump ship entirely. He'll develop a variety of programs for Fox News and its digital properties.

Now I was totally outraged — outraged! — when I saw this but then I realized, what's tomorrow? April Fools Day. Hey guys, you got me! Congratulations. Happy April Fools Day. What are we really going to be doing tomorrow?

A small but vocal group of Tea Party activists gathered outside the Capitol on Thursday to urge House Republican leaders to hold the line and push for deeper spending cuts in the federal budget. ~~~ Chanting, "Cut it or shut it" and "We want less," the activists directed their ire at Senate Democrats, arguing that the cuts they have demanded are not "extreme," but necessary to right the nation's fiscal ship.

The percentage of Americans who hold an unfavorable opinion of the Tea Party movement rose to an all-time in a new CNN poll released today. CNN found the Tea Party ranked nearly as unpopular as both the Republican and Democratic parties.

Previous Congresses would have noticed that millions of people are still struggling in an economic downturn and tried to help, but Republicans have succeeded in shutting off that conversation. ~~~ They have won the philosophical war, compelling Democrats to agree to tens of billions in spending cuts. Yet that does not seem to be enough for the Republicans who now control the federal steering wheel.

The latest: Saturday's Conservative Principles Political Action Committee Conference in Des Moines, Iowa (not to be confused with the Conservative Political Action Conference, nor the Conservative Party Political Action Conference). It's the brainchild of Rep. Steve King, the Hawkeye State Republican known for his extremely hawkish views on illegal immigration and his outlandish statements.

The Governor's spokesman explains that the mural and the conference-room names were "not in keeping with the department's pro-business goals."

Are we still in America?

President Obama may not be willing to endure the ideological battle that would result from nominating Elizabeth Warren to head the new consumer protection agency, a top Democrat said Monday.

Rep. Barney Frank (Mass.), who co-authored the law creating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, said that if she were nominated, Warren might not be confirmed to head the agency. While Frank argued that's a fight worth having, he cautioned that the president might disagree.

"There is simply no rationale for continuing American involvement with no end in sight, rising deaths for civilians and our brave soldiers, declining public sentiment, and serious economic pain at home," Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich explained to his fellow House members during Thursday's debate on ending the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan. "Continuing our involvement in Afghanistan is not affordable, it's not just, and it hurts American foreign policy interests. It's time to go."

We've heard "laboratory" and we've imagined staid scientists in white coats rigorously testing forward-thinking theories of societal advancement. It's certainly a reassuring picture - but there is a darker side of the metaphor. States are indeed laboratories. The problem is that today, those laboratories are increasingly run by mad scientists.

Question One: How ignorant is Michele Bachmann and how did she get that way, and remember, this is a graduate of Winona State University and Oral Roberts University's Coburn School of Law. Law school graduate. So do not overlook her academic achievement in trying to explain this. Doesn't make it any easier to explain.

And two, where does Michele Bachmann find her shockingly ignorant staff?

And three, perhaps most important of all, what explains the rank ignorance of the 52% of the voters in Minnesota's 6th Congressional District?

When ... NMS contract was inked with Koch, an NMS employee began editing the Wikipedia page for "Charles Koch," "David Koch," "Political activities of the Koch family," and "The Science of Success" (a book written by Charles). Under the moniker of "MBMAdmirer," NMS employees edited Wikipedia articles to distance the Koch family {from whatever and all]

Are we finally seeing average Americans stand up and demand a fair shake in an economy now grotesquely tilted toward the wealthy and the privileged? Are Americans beginning to awake to the fact that our economy now delivers a larger share of total income to the very top than at any time in living memory? That big corporations are making more money and creating more jobs abroad than in the United States?

The event marked the start of a backlash by wealthy industry owners and conservative activists against Barack Obama's green agenda. Now it has snowballed into what green campaigners say is the greatest assault on environmental protection that America has ever seen.

TRAVIS: She's an anti-abortion rights, pro-environment vegetarian, with two bad hips, cared for Medicare. She may have been the first to publicly protest the stimulus in early February, 2009. It was outside an event in Fort Myers, Florida, where President Barack Obama was promoting his plan.

"One of the strategies for the pro-union people is to attack Fox News because FNC is one of the few media outlets not sympathizing with the protesters. Rather, we are trying to play it straight. That is not sitting well with some on the union side ..."

... raise the marginal tax to 70 percent on incomes over $15 million, to 60 percent on incomes between $5 million and $15 million, and to 50 percent on incomes between $500,000 and $5 million, has generated considerable debate. Some progressives think it's pie-in-the-sky.

SOROS: Well, look, FOX News makes a habit -- it has imported the methods of George Orwell, you know, newspeak, where you can tell the people falsehoods and deceive them. And you wouldn't believe that at an open society and a democracy these methods can succeed.

[But they can.]

Hours after Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) announced his campaign for the seat being vacated by Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), tea party umbrella group FreedomWorks, best known as the arm of the movement led by former House Republican leader Dick Armey, endorsed Flake in an email blast sent by its PAC.

Now, 19 months out from Election Day 2012, the GOP presidential field remains unformed. There's a lot we don't know, but what we do know is that two potential candidates flutter lots of hearts in the Republican base: Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann. And they're tying their own party in knots.

Just as Rep. Ryan (R-Wis.), House Budget Committee chairman, introduced his plan for the largest discretionary cuts in the history of the Congress, Sen. Paul (R-Ky.) — a freshman conservative as pure as the Tea Party could brew — has introduced his own bill, which cuts more than five times as much in the opening salvo of an ongoing battle that is likely to dog and define the GOP through the year, the presidential nominating contest, the 2012 election and beyond.

Additionally, Liberty Consulting offers advice on optimizing political investments for charitable giving in the non-profit world or political causes.

"One point on my discussion list was a $4.5 billion proposal that would affect payments made to our veterans. That discussion point has received a lot of attention and I have decided to remove it from consideration.

The small group of science-enlightened conservatives were blasted by Republican operatives as "cap and traitors," "Republican turncoats," and "libtards," but easily won re-election against Tea Party candidates.

However, at a time when the Koch brothers were enjoying spectacular financial gains, Koch Industries laid off well over 2,000 people.

Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) was one of the financial industry's biggest apologists during November's campaign, opposing the Dodd-Frank financial reform law while claiming that derivative deals were "non-risky," even as they cost schools and cities all across the country (including many in Pennsylvania) millions of dollars. And Toomey has been totally unrepentant about his personal role in deregulating the financial industry.

In another sign that he's gunning for a run for president in 2012, Santorum announced that he's bringing on veteran Republican strategists Nick Ryan and Jill Latham, both currently with the Des Moines based Concordia Group. Ryan founded and is now President of the group.

Poor Sal Russo. The Tea Party Express leader had a rough day. Booked on MSNBC's "Hardball" to discuss Michele Bachmann's upcoming State of the Union rebuttal, instead he found himself confronted by Bachmann's idiotic whitewash of American history in a speech in Iowa over the weekend.

... Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) offered a critique of the President and his policies, and said she believes "we are in the very early days of a history-making turn."

She also threw in a debunked myth about the health care law for good measure.

It's a near-certainty that Bachmann's speech will get more attention than Ryan's; how does the GOP establishment respond to that reality (if at all)?

When Cillizza says Bachmann's speech will get more attention than Ryan's is really an indication that many MSMers constantly need chaos and competing narratives in their world. Paul Ryan's speech just isn't juicy enough.

Bachmann, a Minnesota Republican in her third term, has also released her own proposed list of $430 million in budget cuts. She was defended by another Tea Party favorite: Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky. Click on her budget cuts.

Sens. Mark Warner (D-VA) and Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) are expected to release legislation soon that would involve raising the retirement age to 69. Yet a new poll from Public Policy Polling (PPP) finds that one group that does not support these regressive cuts is the American people themselves.

A Hitler/Marx devotee, the logic went, is someone too idiosyncratic or crazy to be part of any mainstream political movement. Some went further, and cited the information as proof that Loughner was the sort of big-government liberal they had nightmares about.

My question is this. Is this a real political movement or is it the most successful disinformation campaign (financed by America's financial elites) in the history of modern politics?

Now that they've been drummed out of their party by the purity police tea partiers, moderate Republicans are creating their own party, the "No Labels" party, hoping to bring some independents and disaffected Democrats with them. Good luck with that.

Tea Party favorite Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) said he is against the deal because it includes a provision to extend unemployment benefits for 13 months. "We can't just keep paying people to stay at home," he said.

Last night on Fox News, DeMint expounded on his concerns about the deal. "This is a perfect example of how we got 14 trillion in debt as a nation," he said

On Sunday, Maine's Gov.-elect Paul LePage — a Tea Party activist who ran on repealing the Affordable Care Act and infamously told President Obama to "go to hell" — announced that Maine should join the multi-state lawsuit challenging the law because if 35 states joined the suit, it "dies, automatically."

Miller argues that write-in votes must name "Lisa Murkowski," exactly as her name appears on her declaration of candidacy, to be counted.

Murkowski's lawyers, who have intervened in the lawsuit, turned to a dictionary for their argument and say the word "appears" means "seems to be" and therefore allows elections officials to assume voter intent.

The state's attorney, Joanne Grace, agreed and says Miller's "standard of perfection" clearly disenfranchises voters.

WTF?!? Citizens Against Government Waste saddled Rogers with the award for "sponsoring legislation that could give federal funding to his daughter's nonprofit organization, which promotes overseas wildlife protection for cheetahs."

Simcox, who helped found the anti-immigration Minuteman group and incurred a $200,000 debt in a failed bid for John McCain's Arizona Senate seat, has requested that his estranged wife, who has previously alleged that Simcox threatened her and their children at gunpoint, pay him spousal support and take on half of his campaign debt.

"What happens if the SGR reform gets kicked to the middle of January or the next extension is short term?" Rep. Michael Burgess, chair of the Congressional Health Care Caucus, asked reporters Tuesday, on his way out from the American Action Forum's health reform conference. "What if the next doc fix has with it a repeal of the individual mandate?"

Sarah Palin will need to shell out some cash if she wants youbetcha2012.com on yard signs during the next presidential campaign.

Or, for that matter, sarah2012.com, spalin2012.com, or mamabear2012.

Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) is the leading contender, but Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) is seeking a waiver from Republican leadership to retake the gavel, while Reps. John Shimkus (R-IN) and Cliff Stearns (R-FL) are also in the hunt. Although the candidates are lockstep in opposition to the Obama agenda and in their intention to launch witch hunts against climate science, Upton is a relative moderate, having admitted in the past that greenhouse emissions should be reduced. In contrast, Barton — who famously apologized to BP this summer — is fully aligned with the oil and gas industry, with $1,482,630 in lifetime contributions

The Tea Party Nation, via Judson Phillips, has laid down a set of ultimatums for the new Republican Congress, and all I can say to them is "good luck with that." In a very long screed to Senator Mitch McConnell and Speaker-Elect John Boehner, Phillips lays out what they expect this Congress to accomplish in the next two years.

... nearly everyone inside this hall at the Ravalli County Fairground is packing heat. But most of all, it's the copy of Mein Kampf sitting there on the book table, with its black-and-white swastika, ...

West is not yet a member of Congress, and is known mostly for his history of extreme statements targeting Islam, liberals, women — all issues host David Gregory chose not to explore with West, instead asking him somewhat banal questions about things like TSA screenings and a possible Sarah Palin candidacy.

PAUL: But I don't think an American president should be talking about putting the boot heel on the throat of a corporation because it sends the wrong signal that the government is the enemy somehow of business.

Stivers courted local Tea Party groups with a far-reaching plan to tear down the federal government. In a publicly released survey issued by the Union County and Galloway 912 Project, Stivers wrote that "only four departments perform Constitutional roles (State, Defense, Justice, and Treasury) so you could eliminate the departments of Agriculture, Education, Interior, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, Energy, and others and return to a constitutionally pure government."

Ms. Bachmann, the Minnesota Republican and Tea Party heroine often seen exhorting conservative activists at rallies and on cable television, announced that she intended to seek the No. 4 position among House Republicans.

Many leftwingers in America are in deep despair. After all the hope and promise of 2008, they feel President Barack Obama spent the first two years of his term pointlessly reaching out to a Republican party that played him (successfully) for a fool. Obama's healthcare reforms ended up a compromised muddle. He failed to lead on gay rights. He rescued the banks and let them make even more profits than before. The system that took us to the brink of economic catastrophe is back up and running with few changes and less punishment.

"The Senate would be Republican today except for states (in which Palin endorsed candidates) like Christine O'Donnell in Delaware," Bachus said. "Sarah Palin cost us control of the Senate."

He said Tea Party candidates did well in U.S. House races, but in the U.S. Senate races, "They didn't do well at all."

He does also cite Paul Ryan's plan which includes privatizing Social Security and Medicare so Wall Street can get their hands on the Social Security Trust Fund

If supporting politicians with money is a threat to journalistic independence, we should consider the contributions of NBC, and at NBC's parent company General Electric.

Presented with the fact that some of the most profitable American corporations in the world, like ExxonMobil and Bank of America, paid essentially zero corporate income taxes in 2009, we asked Meckler if he believed corporations are indeed "taxed enough already?" Meckler responded that he still believed in a tax-cutting agenda, and suggested that corporations even deserve a tax holiday.

A report at Andrew Breitbart's BigGovernment website indicates that Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) will enter the race for Republican Conference Chairman, the fourth most powerful position in the House.

Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) announced Wednesday that he was stepping down from the position.

Here's Armey projecting his own bad behavior onto Stewart and Colbert. This is the same man who told Joan Walsh "I'm so glad that you could never be my wife because I surely wouldn't have to listen to that prattle from you every day", organized the right wing hooligans to interrupt town hall meetings during the health care debate and called Rachel Maddow "Rachel Maddox"

I found out what it felt like to be the victim of the [...] skinhead version of curbing…right after I left a gathering where I had shared openly how dangerous Sarah Palin is because of her extreme religious world view. I had passed out my card to several who asked which had "TheoPalinism: The Face of Failed Extremism" on it, along with "This is our WAKE UP CALL!"

It's all based on whether you watch NASCAR. No really.

His proof?

With geographical clustering goes cultural clustering. Get into a conversation about television with members of the New Elite, and they can probably talk about a few trendy shows -- "Mad Men" now, "The Sopranos" a few years ago.

A number of recent polls of the Colorado Senate race all suggest the same thing: this is going to be a close one. Four separate pollsters have all shown Republican Ken Buck's lead shrinking -- or disappearing altogether.

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Home » Blogs » karoli's blog
October 24, 2010 11:00 AM
Rick Scott's Fraud Problems Should Disqualify Him for Governor
0 commentsBy karoli

When Rick Scott threw his little Tea Party hat into the Florida Governor's Race, I thought for sure Floridians would remember the Columbia/HCA debacle, which he managed to escape from with a resignation and no criminal charges. Basically, he bailed out and let the company pick up the pieces by paying the heftiest fine for Medicare fraud assessed in history.

President Obama: "If our ancestors had given up, if they had given up to the cynics, we couldn't have gotten through war; we couldn't have gotten through depression; we would not have been able to battle and finally achieve civil rights and women's rights and workers' rights. (Applause.)

That is the spirit we have to summon today. The journey we began together was not just about putting a President in the White House. It was about building a movement for change."

Patriot PAC has unveiled Operation Black Storm, a national coalition effort to unite the nation behind the 15 black conservative congressional candidates running in key districts around the country as Republican nominees for the upcoming November elections.

Stephen Broden, a "constitutionalist pastor" from Texas who won the Republican nomination for Texas' 30th Congressional District, made a vaguely threatening statement at a Tea Party event last year. He described the federal government as "tyrannical" and said that "we have a constitutional remedy. And the Framers say if that don't work, revolution."

OK why are these numbers difficult?
Only two-thirds of Obama voters in 2008 (67 percent) say they'll vote for one of his fellow Democrats in 2010. Eight percent of those voters say they will vote Republican this year, and 21 percent say it depends.
Republicans ?

Wow. This is such a typical deflection of responsibility from a stalwart of the Party of Personal Responsibility. "Don't blame me for creating the tea party...it was that mean ol' George W. Bush that made me do it!"

Former Rep. Dick Armey (R.,Tex.), whose Freedom Works organization has helped the Tea Party grow, said Tuesday in Philadelphia that the movement was conceived the moment President George W. Bush endorsed Sen. Arlen Specter (then-R, now D) over Pat Toomey in the 2004 Republican primary.

In the red corner, wearing the Ayn Rand trunks, is Reid's opponent, Sharron Angle. While Reid was introducing his bill last night, Angle was sitting for an interview in which she explained that that "what we need to do is make that unemployment benefit go down," as right now, "we're making [people] make a choice between unemployment benefits and going back to work and working up through the ranks of that job and actually building up a good wage again."

"There are jobs that do exist," concluded Angle. "That's what we're saying, is that there are jobs."

[TPM SLIDESHOW: Christine O'Donnell: Anti-Masturbation Crusader. Witchcraft Dabbler. Republican Senate Nominee.]

The pollster's analysis confirms the general impression that O'Donnell has successfully mobilized the Tea Party right -- and alienated everyone else. "Coons is winning among independents despite the fact that a quarter of them are Tea Party supporters,"

The new money would push Bachmann's fundraising haul for the 2010 election cycle to almost $10 million, said ABC. That's more than double the $3.5 million she raised in all of the 2008 campaign altogether. It is especially large for a candidate for the House of Representatives, and reflects her status in the Tea Party movement.

SKIP THE FIRST PAGE:
As usual, the Founders were way ahead of us. They thought hard about how to build a country of many different faiths. And to advance that vision to the fullest, they read the Koran, and studied Islam with a calm intelligence that today's over-hyped Americans can only begin to imagine. They knew something that we do not. To a remarkable degree, the Koran is not alien to American history but inside it.

Dues from foreign corporations have flowed into the Chamber's coffers, including from government-run companies like the State Bank of India and the Bahrain Petroleum Company. ThinkProgress has reported at least $300,000 in foreign money to the Chamber from Bahrain and India alone.

Angle's latest racially-tinged ad goes after Reid and his support of undocumented students. The ad includes offensive footage of menacing men with flashlights walking along a fence that was featured in her first ad in addition to a new image featuring three scowling Latino men as the narrator proclaims, "and now Harry Reid is fighting for a program that would give preferred college tuition rates to none other than illegal aliens."

For instance, he supported Rand Paul over Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-KY) preferred candidate and endorsed Joe Miller over his own Senate colleague Lisa Murkowski in Alaska. Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) called this behavior "a new and shocking development." Some new and revealing comments DeMint made over the weekend are likely to cause even more division among Republicans, while also providing yet further evidence of the tea party's hostile takeover of the GOP.

Meanwhile, lobbyist Reed's fledgling Commission on Hope, Growth and Opportunity, a 501 (c) (4) raised over half its $25 million goal to run ads in 20 House districts and a few Senate contests, Reed says. Where's the dough coming from? "The big three stepping into the batter's box are the financial services industry, the energy industry, and the health insurance industry," Reed said.

Reed credits the recent Supreme Court ruling knocking down nearly a century of campaign finance laws with the increased fundraising haul for Republican attack groups.

John Murray, a spokesman for Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the second-ranking Republican in the House, said that if control of the House flips, possible targets for defunding may be the insurance exchanges, the new agency set up under the law to compare different drugs' effectiveness and any added staffing that may be sought to manage coverage expansions.

But the so-called "open-carry" display actually underscores the unusual enthusiasm Miller's candidacy has generated among members of militia and Second Amendment absolutist groups in Alaska who are excited about his hardline stance against the federal government.

"It's safe to say that Joe Miller is a friend of patriots," Norm Olson, commander of the Alaska Citizens Militia, told Salon.

The burgers are free-all day, every day-at the Heart Attack Grill in Chandler, AZ. The only catch is you have to weigh at least 350 lbs. The fake nurse who weighs you is young, hot, and female. All guests, regardless of weight, are called "patients," and are "admitted" by the "nurses," who dress them in bibs that look like hospital gowns. Strategically placed mirrors behind the counter provide patients with heart-stopping views of fake-nurse crotch.