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He just can't help it. This is what a guy who is concerned with bottom lines thinks. Mitt Romney has no empathy for the very poor because in his mind the scaled-back food stamp, Medicaid and welfare programs will take care of them. No, no. He's concerned with the middle class. Of course he's concerned about the middle class! They're the biggest block of potential voters.

This is how Romney rolls. He is always looking for the bottom line, the way to get from point A to point B, whether or not he steamrolls people along the way. Since the 'very poor' are unlikely to be Romney voters, he's not concerned about them.

It's a classic gaffe on his part, nearly as bad as John McCain's remark that the "fundamentals of the economy are sound" in 2008, made at a time when the fundamentals were very, very badly broken.

Here's what he said:

This is a time people are worried. They're frightened. They want someone who they have confidence in. And I believe I will be able to instill that confidence in the American people. And, by the way, I'm in this race because I care about Americans. I'm not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I'll fix it.

If I were to stop there, it would make a wonderful ad. But Soledad O'Brien gave him a chance to fix what he just said. Here's the rest:

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A few days ago, GOP Presidential candidate Rick Santorum put his foot in his mouth by saying “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money.”

Santorum allegedly made the controversial comments when discussing welfare in an interview Wednesday night with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, but he maintained that people misheard the word "black" when he stumbled on a word.

“I looked at that, and I didn't say that. If you look at it, what I started to say is a word and then sort of changed and it sort of - blah - came out. And people said I said ‘black.’ I didn't," Santorum said while smiling away.

“And I can tell you, I don't use - I don't - first off, I don't use the term ‘black’ very often. I use the term ‘African-American’ more than I use ‘black' ... I think sometimes you want to give someone the benefit of the doubt if it's a little bit of a blurred word."

I'm not certain even O'Reilly believed him by the time that he was finished babbling.

Yes, he really said that. He really, truly did, and it's a BFD. digby writes:

Although it sounds ridiculous, Rush is in the process of making his followers believe that the pre-existing condition provision in the health care reforms is something bad and shameful. The reason he's doing this, of course, is because this is the most popular piece of the bill and the one on which the rest of it hinges. If they can divide people on that, the repeal of the plan will be much easier.

Absolutely 100% on the money. The rest of the Affordable Care Act, along with any other proposal for reform like single payer or a public option hinges on one single provision: No exclusion for pre-existing conditions. So the Corpulent One knows that the only way to marshall support for complete repeal is to erode support for covering people with pre-existing conditions.

It drives me crazy now just as it did during the whole debate that there wasn't more focus on effective dates. Waiting until January 1, 2014 for the requirement to cover pre-existing conditions was risky and opens a window for a long, sustained attack. Whether they had passed Medicare for All, a robust public option as part of the overall bill, none of that, or all of that, the heart of the debate is over people who have pre-existing conditions, which are defined by insurers and have been broadened more and more over time. This is only one of many salvos which will be thrown over and over and over again.

digby, again:

People thought it was insane for Rush to say that he wanted the president to fail. But he held the line and made the GOP come crawling for even suggesting that he was wrong. And the party just became more and more radical. They don't see health care reform as sacred and they will feel absolutely no remorse about destroying it.

Here's what concerns me, no matter what side of the Medicare-for-All/SinglePayer/Public Option debate you are on: If they succeed at repealing the requirement to cover people with pre-existing conditions, there will be no possibility of modifying, adding, expanding, or creating a better health care program for this nation. It will all be privatized and Medicare will become a memory we had of our grandparents' day instead of our own.

This is a line they cannot cross.

In his race to the very bottom, media hack Tucker Carlson goes lower, sending a college student undercover to see what he can buy with food stamps:

For creative college students planning a party, the possibilities are endless. Here are some things you can buy with food stamps without breaking the law or the bank:

• Limes for Coronas or other Mexican beers
• Soda water or tonic water for mixed drinks
• Coke for Jack and Cokes
• Drink mixers, as long they have an FDA nutrition label on them and don’t have alcohol in them
• Appetizers from the frozen food section
• Chips, salsa, cheese, and crackers
• Red Bull for Jager-bombs
• Jell-O to make Jell-O shots
• Any other snack product
• Gatorade for nursing the next day’s hangover
• Egg Nog (for Egg Nog and Brandy mixed drinks during the holidays)

What Bob Cesca and John Cole said. Can't imagine saying it any better.

Oh noes! We sure hope they can't quit you, Michael Steele, the gift that keeps on giving. But just in case, is there a 99 percenter plan on wingnut welfare?

Open Thread below...

World Net Daily has done it! They've finally proven that President Obama was, in fact, born in Kenya:

The document lists Obama's parents as Barack Hussein Obama and Stanley Ann Obama, formerly Stanley Ann Dunham, the birth date as Aug. 4, 1961, and the hospital of birth as Coast General Hospital in Mombasa, Kenya. Read on...

There's just one teensy little problem here -- The Republic of Kenya didn't exist until 1964 -- three years after Obama's birth. Right wing blog Little Green Footballs is calling this a hoax, but leave it to the nutbags at Free Republic to take the debunked myth to a whole new level. See, the whole thing ties into the divorce of President Obama's parents!

Judge Samuel P. King who granted the divorce – last I heard was retired and alive (for now) in his 90s in Hawaii -- MAY or MAY NOT have asked to see the Marriage Certificate. BUT, I bet Judge King asked to see Obama JR's Birth Certificate to confirm Ann's claims that Obama SR was in fact the father. That is “standard” policy to have a Birth Certificate in case the mother asks for child support from the father (or Welfare) later after the divorce. Judge King probably told Ann to produce a birth certificate before or at trial, which would have been sometime in mid- to late-February 1964 HAD Obama SR answered his notice that was sent to Cambridge.

When Judge King wrote the order on Jan. 23, he had his clerk notify Obama SR via what's referred to as a "knock and nail". That is, the postman leaves the notification on the door for (generally) 10 days and retrieves it after that time passes -- signed or unsigned. That order was sent on Jan. 23 via airmail from Hawaii and was probably posted on Obama SR's door Jan. 27-28. Read on...

Nevermind the fact that Barack Obama's birth announcement appeared in two Hawaiian newspapers in 1961. Hell, even Karl Rove says it's likely a forgery. You can be sure the Fox News gang will be running with this story, but will CNN's Lou Dobbs continue to go down the Birther path that's killing his ratings and embarrassing the entire network?

Wait, isn't President Obama the Antichrist? My brain hurts. If I could speak directly to every Birther face to face, this is what I would say.

I started this series using Doughy Pantload as the first example of how the conservative movement supports their authors. They make sure that even if they write pure fantasy accounts devoid of reality that it sells as non-fiction, the better to persuade the less-engaged out there of their warped point of view.

Is there a bigger recipient of wingnut welfare out there than Dinesh D'Souza? He's been at the trough of wingnut welfare his entire life, writing book after book for Regnery Publications blaming everything under the sun on liberals, secularism or godlessness, and gays. At least Beck isn't trying to make believe his new book is covering historical events. Okay....maybe HE is. Bad example.

Dinesh wrote a book that blames Liberals for 9/11 and claims that Bin Laden and I have the same agenda.

Timothy Noah makes Dinesh look like fool in Slate, if you need more. Dinesh D'Souza's Mullah Envy: A leading conservative thinker blames 9/11 on liberalism.

David Neiwert and I have written a book that isn't guided by the arrogance that we are part of a superior religion guiding us into the grace of Heaven and all you non-believing gays are destroying the culture of the world. Unlike Dinesh, we prefer to write a book based on facts.

Just a few other reasons out of a gazillion to support real authors...

And buy this book.

Richard Trumka's not making an idle threat here. Union supporters don't have much to cheer about in this healthcare bill, and I don't think he's exaggerating the impact on the midterm elections. It's just that, for whatever reason, Obama's a lot more interested in the welfare of bankers than he is in workers:

President Obama sought on Monday evening to assuage organized labor's misgivings about the health-care overhaul, even as several key union leaders warned that the bill's final outlines could severely dampen their enthusiasm for the Democratic ticket in this year's elections.

Obama invited 10 labor leaders to the White House to discuss the negotiations aimed at reconciling the Senate and House bills, which are not heading in organized labor's direction in the three areas that it had identified as priorities. The final bill will not include the House's government-run insurance plan, or "public option"; it will probably include the Senate's new tax on high-cost health plans that could affect many union members; and its penalties for employers who do not provide insurance coverage will probably be closer to the more lenient terms in the Senate bill.

Three hours earlier, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in a hard-edged speech at the National Press Club that discontent with the final bill, when combined with a general perception that Obama and Congress have been insufficiently populist in responding to the recession and financial crisis, could demoralize his members. The risk, he said, was a replay of the Democratic blowout in the 1994 elections, when, after the passage of NAFTA and other disappointments to unions, "there was no way to persuade enough working Americans to go to the polls when they couldn't tell the difference between the two parties."

"Now, more than ever, we need the boldness and the clarity we saw in our president during the campaign in 2008," he said.

Trumka stopped short of his September threat that the AFL-CIO might not support the final bill -- after all, he said, labor has been seeking health-care reform for decades. But individual members could sit on their hands. "A bad bill could have that kind of effect," he told reporters. "People could stay home. It could suppress votes."

Very good news, I think, on the climate change front. This is an excellent way to sidestep the political process and keep the necessary changes from getting bogged down in the politics:

The Obama administration will formally declare Monday that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions pose a danger to the public's health and welfare, a move that lays the groundwork for an economy-wide carbon cap even if Congress fails to enact climate legislation, sources familiar with the process said.

The move, which Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa P. Jackson will announce at an afternoon press conference, comes as the largest climate change conference in history gets underway in Copenhagen. It will finalize an initial "endangerment finding" by the government in April.

While an EPA spokeswoman declined to comment on the matter, the agency sent out a press advisory that Jackson will make "a significant climate announcement at a press briefing" at 1:15 p.m. at EPA headquarters. Jackson will also speak at the U.N.-sponsored climate conference Wednesday; her address is titled "Taking Action at Home." Obama, who will attend the end of the U.N. talks Dec. 18, has sent a series of recent signals to the international community that the United States will curb its carbon output as part of a new global climate deal.

The endangerment finding stems from a 2007 Supreme Court decision in which the court ordered the EPA to determine whether greenhouse gases qualify as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. It could trigger a series of federal regulations affecting polluters, from vehicles to coal-fired power plants.

Businesses argue that such a finding would mean even emitters as small as a mom-and-pop grocery store would be forced to comply with onerous greenhouse gas regulations. The administration has crafted rules that would exempt facilities that emit less than 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide or its equivalent annually. But it remains unclear if that exemption would hold up in court.

"An endangerment finding from the EPA could result in a top-down command-and-control regime that will choke off growth by adding new mandates to virtually every major construction and renovation project," Thomas Donohue, president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said in a statement. "The devil will be in the details, and we look forward to working with the government to ensure we don't stifle our economic recovery."

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[H/t Heather]

Nutbag wingnuts never ever go away even when they lose their tiny radio shows. They just come back again and again and again. Big money republicans always keep their wingnuts around in one form or another.

Anyway, Conservatives are crying a little more than usual lately because their racism has been so prominently displayed in their teabagger meetings and protests. And what do you know, my old pal Mark Williams is leading a teabagger party and his racism gets exposed by Anderson Cooper last night quite easily. He lies with the best of them and got caught by Anderson. Check it out.

COOPER: But I mean, Mark, what you're saying makes sense to me here when I'm hearing what you're saying. But then I read on your blog, you say -- you call the president an Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug and a racist in chief.

WILLIAMS: Yes.

COOPER: Is that the kind of...

WILLIAMS: That's the way he's behaving.

COOPER: But I mean...

WILLIAMS: I mean, if he cares to be...

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: Do you believe he's Indonesian? Do you believe he's a Muslim? Do you really believe he's a welfare thug?

WILLIAMS: He's certainly acting like it.

GERGEN: You think he's a racist in chief? Racist in chief? Is that what you called him? That's unbelievable. It's unbelievable,

WILLIAMS: Until he embraces the whole country -- what else can I conclude? He and guys like James are totally, totally isolating the rest of this country; if you're a working-class American, then you know, that's it.

CARVILLE: I tell you, if you're an American, and you like what you're hearing from this guy, if you like celebrating a man's death, go over there with these people.

Mark Williams found his new calling by joining up with the teabaggers which seems like a good fit to me since there was no where for him to go after he lost his radio show in Sacramento. In the segment he tries to downplay the psychos that make up a large part of the teabaggers and says there is no racism and then is exposed as a racist. You can't make this up.

Here's some context on this guy. His behavior was so outlandish that I've posted several clips of him over the years and he doesn't like me so much. I remember when I called Williams "Puke" in a post for his obnoxious comments he made on Hardball about Cindy Sheehan's son during Cindy's stand at Crawford ranch back in August of 2005.

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O'Donnell: "Mark, if you don't mind, you're making the case that Cindy Sheehan is hurting the morale of our troops?"

Williams: "She is aiding and abetting the enemies of this country and the people who killed her son. And right now Casey Sheehan is spinning in his grave!"

And the best response he could make to me was that I was trying to have his dog assassinated.

After Katrina hit, he acted like the lowest of the low when he attacked Katrina victims by saying they were too dumb and lazy to get out of NOLA.

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Williams: ..they didn't have the necessary brains and common sense to get out of the way of a Cat 5 Hurricane and then when it hit them- stood on the side of the convention Center expiring while reporters were coming and going..

Morris:...that's just sickening---that is atrocious what you are saying...

He calls Kanye West a racist while he spews racism.

Williams: The only role race plays in this is that the American black population has been the prototype for an entire race of people being, being turned into a group of dependents of the government--trapped there, I'm using that word very loosely are screaming we want help, we want help..

This is a man who is leading the teabagger brigade and is lapping up the attention. I hope the media sees these clips so they know who they are dealing with.