They love him because he's so sensitive!

This week Boehner had quite the jolt when former high ranking Ohio Republican Bob Ney's tell-all book, Sideswiped: Lessons Learned Courtesy of the Hit Men of Capitol Hill, was published. It paints Boehner as a drunken, womanizing, bribe-taking golfing fanatic with little interest in policy and lots of interests in how to extract cash from lobbyists-- exactly how Down With Tyranny has been painting him for the last six years. Ney retells the story of Boehner handing out Tobacco Industry bribery checks on the floor of the House and suggests that if the FBI were to examine who paid for Boehner's golfing addiction, the Speaker could be headed for the same prison Ney had served time in.

Perhaps worse, Boehner broke his word to Ney, the same way he just broke his word to Illinois teabagger Joe Walsh. He promised both Ney and Walsh that if they stepped aside-- if Ney would resign and, more recently, if Walsh would give up an easy win for a much tougher race-- he would take care of them. He's taken care of neither, which makes members of the GOP caucus wonder if he'll stand behind them when their own time of need calls for it.

And that's not the only reason Boehner is hitting the bottle extra hard this week. More than a few extremists in his caucus are out for his blood. Teabaggers like Paul Broun, Louie Gohmert, Steve Stockman, Trey Radel, who believe they were elected to shut down the government and who embrace anarchy, chaos, race war, revolution, pain, suffering and whatever other nonsense they hear being touted on Hate Talk Radio-- and who count for their careers on human refuse like this in their safely gerrymandered blood-red districts-- are hopping mad because Boehner has let legislation come to the floor that passes with votes from all the Democrats plus a few dozen mainstream (non-Confederate) Republicans.

The Women Against Violence Act, which most Republicans opposed, passed with 87 GOP votes and makes the rest of them look bad in front of the lady voters back home. Last week, one of the most extreme and deranged teabaggers in Congress, Wisconsin senatorial wingnut Ron Johnson,threatened Boehner that if he keeps it up, he's out on his ass. Most of the House teabaggers, who could actualize Johnson's ranting, have reached the boiling point.

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Oh, my. So much fear in 120 seconds, delivered with that sugar-sweet "bless your heart, honey" tone pouring out of her painted mouth. Honeybunches, she wants you to be very afraid.

Right Wing Watch:

Social conservative commentators have leveled harsh attacks against Common Core and now are working to convince lawmakers in the forty-five states which have adopted the standards to blocks its implementation. Republican legislators in the Alabama State Senate and House have proposed bills to repeal the board of education’s decision to approve Common Core, which State Sen. Dick Brebaker warnedwould “give the federal government a way to drive the education agenda here in Alabama.”

During a speech at the Wetumpka Tea Party, Elois Zeanah of the Alabama Federation of Republican Women compared the adoption of Common Core to the indoctrination of children in Nazi Germany, with President Obama teaching children and imposing an “anti-Christian, anti-capitalism, anti-America…pro-homosexuality, illegal immigration, unions, environmentalism, gun control, feminism and social justice” curriculum.

The attack on Common Core standards is one of Americans for Prosperity's projects this year. They're just terrified that it might cost money to educate our kids. Even though 45 governors have endorsed the need for such standards and are ready to implement them, the teabirchers have decided this is where they're going to stake their claim for liberty and free enterprise and lower government spending. On the education of the next generation. Alrighty, then.

It might come as a shock to them if they were to find out that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, along with the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation and several others have put up the majority of the money to develop Common Core standards and curriculum in tandem with state education officials across the country. What could possibly be more representative of free enterprise than billionaires paying with their charitable dollars to give an assist for setting some basic standards for learning benchmarks across the nation?

They might not have been able to understand the many, many written transmissions of that information because, you know, Alabama.

There are many who disagree with the whole idea of Common Core standards, but in general their arguments are less like wingnut bumper stickers than Ms. Zeanah's was. They're worried about how standardized curriculum, instruction and evaluation will work inside real-life classrooms where children don't have enough to eat or heat or their parents are in jail.

Even Diane Ravitch opposes them because she believes they've been developed as a "tool of the political elite and the private sector." I can respect sincere concerns, but someone who actually believes it's just a big plot for Barack Obama to indoctrinate our children with terrible ideas like "feminism and social justice"? Not so much.

Would Ms. Zeanah would be as hateful if she had gone to a school that taught students about social justice? Maybe. Maybe she's afraid to let go of the hate, for fear of losing her identity.

There are good reasons to debate whether it makes sense to set national curriculum standards and learning benchmarks, but claiming they've been created to indoctrinate children on how to be kind, understanding and sensitive to others is not one of them.

I don't know how to break it to Rand Paul, but the fact that he's even giving a competing response to Marco Rubio's State of the Union rebuttal for Republicans is a clear indication of the division within the Republican party between the Birch faction and the pretend-moderate faction. This interview with Candy Crowley is almost comical, particularly with regard to Paul's insistence that he won't be divisive simply because he's giving a separate response.

"I see it as an extra response. I don't see it as necessarily divisive," Paul told chief political correspondent Candy Crowley on the CNN program "State of the Union."

"I won't say anything on there that necessarily is like, 'Marco Rubio is wrong,'" Paul continued. "He and I don't always agree, but this isn't about he and I. This is about the Tea Party, which is a grass-roots movement, a real movement, with millions of Americans that still are concerned about some of the deal-making that goes on in Washington."

Baby Paul has been asked to give his response by the Tea Party Express. The Tea Party Express is just as mainstream Republican as the RNC is, except that it caters to the Birch Society side of the GOP. There's nothing independent about them. Sal Russo, who has long-standing ties back to the Howard Jarvis anti-tax, anti-immigrant, pro-corporate Ross Perot contingent, is their lobbyist/leader. Other than a deeper hate toward brown people than mainstream Republicans, there's just not that much daylight between them.

Either Baby Paul has been asked to give his response in the hope of reigniting some of the 2010 fire now for 2014, or else he's been chosen to give the point of view of those who want to deport every undocumented immigrant and send prison inmates out to pick the crops.

Whichever it is, it highlights a division in the party simply by virtue of the desire to put him out there as the spokesman for the tainted Tea Party brand. I'm sure Paul's pals at Stormfront.org will cheer him on, at least.

Go for it, Rand. You and 8 percent of the country are simpatico. That should be a great runup to 2014, pal.

Gosh, the Republican Party is succeeding so much with their "rebranding effort" that they can't seem to find anyone to run against Ed Markey for John Kerry's Senate seat. Well, I take that back. There's this guy, the Blowhard named Dr. Keith Ablow, who makes a career out of offering bogus, junk-filled Freudian analyses on Fox News.

You might remember him from other posts here on C&L, like the one where he offers ridiculous explanations for President Obama's normal, even mainstream policy choices by suggesting the president is working out his frustrations at being abandoned by his father. Or this one, where he profiled Media Matters' David Brock, calling him a self-hating narcissist. There's this one, too, where he calls for Vice President Biden to be examined for dementia. Or, you might make a judgment just on the basis of one single fact:

He actually co-wrote a self-help book with Glenn Beck.

Yes, this is the guy who has expressed an interest in running for John Kerry's seat.

But wait! There's more!

In Georgia, Rep. Paul Broun is widely expected to announce his candidacy to replace Senator Saxby Chambliss. Yes, THAT Paul Broun. The one who laughed off a constituent's comment about who would shoot the president. The same Paul Broun who boycotted and trolled the president's State of the Union address in 2011 after saying he wouldn't attend because President Obama would "spew venom," who compared progressives to Al Qaeda, who wanted to lower, not raise the debt ceiling in 2011, who wanted a "Year of the Bible" in order to school the nation on President Obama's sins, and the very same one who gets star billing on Jon Perr's Republican Confederacy of Dunces.

Listen to Paul Broun for ten minutes or so and the only point of confusion will be whether he is a Bircher or a Klansman. It's possible he's both. Yes, he is preparing to run for Saxby Chambliss' Senate seat.

In Iowa, wingnut Steve King is gearing up for a run at Tom Harkin's Senate seat. Yes, once again, THAT Steve King. The same guy who thinks workers are commodities, who empathized with the guy who flew his plane into the Austin, Texas IRS office, who considered the Hate Crimes Act a "pedophile protection act", who had no problem with the idea of a revolution similar to the one in Czechoslovakia in 1989 here in the United States, and who defends his racist remarks by admitting he just wants to see "if the pot comes to a boil."

Yes, these three are leading off the parade of wingnuts for open Senate seats in 2014. They do seem to have one thing in common: they're all spewing the Birch Society nonsense theories and mixing it with some serious race-baiting and hate.

On the wingnut but not a complete hater side, Geraldo Rivera is snuffling around a run for the Senate in New Jersey. Gee, Rivera and The Wingnuts would make for some interesting times on the Senate floor, but the country would be a shambles by the closing act.

However, Rachel Maddow has one thing wrong in her report above, where she maintains that Karl Rove wants to push these people out. As Jed Lewison points out, the Rove organization poured $400,000 into Steve King's race against Christie Vilsack in 2012 and bragged about it, not that they had much to brag about overall in 2012. Rove doesn't reject these candidates; he embraces them.

It looks like Eric Cantor and the TeaBirchers just got a fresh supply of lipstick, and they're smearing it all over that same old pig.

Because of wingnuts like Rick Santorum, the Senate behaved in a shameful manner Tuesday. It was painful to watch Lawrence O'Donnell's pain in this segment. Clearly he is proud of his work in the Senate and regards it as a distinguished body, which is why it was so difficult for him to do this segment.

His pain stems from the idiotic vote in Tuesday's Senate proceedings to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). This should have been a simple ratification, because there is nothing in it that is in any way pre-emptive of United States law. In fact, it was modeled on the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Yet because of the teaBirchers' paranoia and petty nonsense, they couldn't get 67 Senators to ratify it, even after they brought Bob Dole in his wheelchair to try and shame some of those old-timers into doing the right thing. What a joke today's teaBirchers are.

Here's an example of the legacy retiring Senator Jon Kyl will leave:

“It is not something which the United States needs to sign on to, but there is a great emotional case being made that we need to do this. I think it’s a great opportunity to talk about trans-national law, and how there is an insidious and dedicated movement to attack U.S. sovereignty.”

Yes, that's right. Signing onto a convention that would actually expand the rights of the disabled around the world is definitely a movement to attack the sovereignty of the United States. Because people having access to health care and buildings is somehow evil?

Worse yet, the architects of the opposition were homeschool associations, which proves that we should actually reconsider how we allow our kids to be educated. Sometimes parents just don't know best. If they're too stupid to know a paranoid, idiotic idea when they hear it, they're too stupid to be teaching their kids.

Where is the courageous conservative who will renounce these teaBirchers and send them back to exile? Answer? There isn't one. So we'd better be sure we all do it in 2014.

Vera Coking, an elderly widow from Atlantic City, knows firsthand the power of unaccountable government agencies. The Institute for Justice successfully defended Vera against the condemnation of her home by a State agency that sought to take her property and transfer it—at a bargain-basement price—to another private individual: Donald Trump. Trump convinced the State agency to use its “eminent domain” power to take Vera’s home so he could construct a limousine parking lot for his customers—hardly a public purpose. And unfortunately, cases in which government agencies act not as protectors of constitutionally guaranteed rights, but instead as agents for powerful, private interests, have become all too common.

The Institute for Justice is funded heavily by the cabal of right-wing foundations like Koch, Bradley, Roe and others. It bills itself as the only true "libertarian law firm" and fights for the rights of any one finding themselves on the wrong end of a government action.

It is, simply put, aligned with the same faux populi who are now being wooed by Trump in his fake bid for the Presidency (which he will not actually ever undertake).

Other examples of Trump hypocrisy coming to light: He was for universal health care before he was against it.

I’m a conservative on most issues but a liberal on health. It is an unacceptable but accurate fact that the number of uninsured Americans has risen to 42 million. Working out detailed plans will take time. But the goal should be clear: Our people are our greatest asset. We must take care of our own. We must have universal healthcare.

Our objective [should be] to make reforms for the moment and, longer term, to find an equivalent of the single-payer plan that is affordable, well-administered, and provides freedom of choice. Possible? The good news is, yes. There is already a system in place-the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program-that can act as a guide for all healthcare reform. It operates through a centralized agency that offers considerable range of choice. While this is a government program, it is also very much market-based. It allows 620 private insurance companies to compete for this market. Once a year participants can choose from plans which vary in benefits and costs.

And there's more in the book ghost-written by Dave Shiflett, right-wing ghost writer and opinion writer for various beltway publications.

[begin rant] This is why it drives me up the wall and back down again that Donald Trump is getting any play, much less any serious play. He's not serious. He's never serious. He's a publicity whore and an egomaniac who is leveraged to the hilt, but he's nothing more than a distraction. While the media and pollsters play with their new shiny thing, the real damage is being done in states and behind the scenes.

Trump isn't rounding up funds. Pawlenty, on the other hand, already has statewide networks ready, willing and able to get the big bucks. But hey, Pawlenty is boring and Trump is always press-ready, thanks to his NBC handlers.

Let this be a warning: Donald Trump is nothing more than a smokescreen while the jockeying behind the scenes goes on out of view. TeaBirchers are lining up their troops, guns and ammo while using Trump as a decoy.

Bonus: Grifters gotta grift.

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Before I could get the bad taste out of my mouth over seeing John Boehner and the TeaBirchers playing chicken with women's health, this segment came up with David Gergen, who has the ability to say the most odious things at the worst possible time.

The panel on AC360 was predictably hard-core Villager. Earlier, Gergen had worried over the fact that Harry Reid didn't thank the President on the Senate floor, but remembered to thank Boehner's staff. Um, really, I think it's just fine not to thank the President or give him a helluva lot of credit for this round, to be honest. He came in at the 11th hour, and worked behind the scenes, but ultimately it came to what Boehner and Reid could put together and keep their respective caucuses happy. Oh, and the US Chamber of Commerce, who Reid was quick to thank at the top of his speech with a special hat tip to Tom Donohue. No, really. He did.

Then we get to the segment at the top, where Anderson Cooper asks David Gergen about Paul Ryan's not-so-serious budget proposal for 2012. This is where I started shouting something like "Jeebus, are you really defending that Paul Ryan thing? REALLY?"

This is why we can't have nice things. When the opinionators -- not reporters, but opinionators -- go on cable TV on a night where people who don't usually watch cable TV probably will be watching (especially if their job hinges on the budget deal), and extol an insane proposal like Ryan's, they legitimize it. And Gergen goes beyond even legitimizing it. He extols it. Not only does he extol the 'seriousness', he scolds Ryan for not "addressing other entitlements" like Social Security.

He actually says it's a "serious proposal" and is more than the Democrats have offered to deal with the very serious crisis that will befall our very serious country. Says that Ryan has "showed their hand" and now it's the President's turn. Oh, really? Ok, let's have some fun with that, David.

Let's start by taking back our tax cuts early. For entitlement reform, we'll end the payroll tax holiday six months early and get that money back into the Social Security trust fund. And just for more fun, let's put a proposal on the table to allow every person in the country to be covered by Medicare. Also, we're going to demand an end to the wars. Bring the troops home or else we'll make Republican Rabbit scream. What else can we do? Oh yes. Oil and farm subsidies, bye-bye. Betcha our budget can cut SIX trillion off the deficit to Paul Ryan's puny four trillion or whatever it is.

Now what, Republican Rabbit Ryan? When Republicans start squealing like piggy boys and crying that Democrats are being unserious, we'll just remind them that we have a damned budget crisis to deal with. A really. big. serious. Crisis. With a capital C, even.

I think that would be a good starting point. Extreme? Radical? How is it any more extreme or radical than saying Medicare should be abolished in favor of vouchers?

We're not going to get any attention by the Villagers for maintaining the status quo. Ryan understands that, and don't forget, he's got the force of his money guys behind him. Will it work? Of course it won't work. But it's time for some of OUR proposals to be treated as very-serious-everyone-must-pay-attention proposals.

My only comfort in the whole hour was Paul Begala's smackdown of Gergen. Here it is, for your viewing pleasure. Try not to inhale the silly smoke during Gergen's first segment.

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I know the beltway weenies don't want us saying mean things about the John Birch Tea Party crowd so it's nice to see some truth coming out of a former GOPer instead. Especially about race relations.

Former Florida GOP Chair Jim Greer sez:

One year ago, when President Barack Obama gave his first back-to-school speech to the nation's schoolchildren, then-chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, Jim Greer, accused him of using "taxpayer dollars to indoctrinate America's children to his socialist agenda."

Now, Greer is facing fraud and money laundering charges and has been thrown under the bus by the state GOP, which has accused him of living the high life on party money. And so he's had a change of heart.

"In the year since I issued a prepared statement regarding President Obama speaking to the nation's schoolchildren, I have learned a great deal about the party I so deeply loved and served,'' Greer said in a written statement. "Unfortunately, I found that many within the GOP have racist views and I apologize to the President for my opposition to his speech last year and my efforts to placate the extremists who dominate our party today. My children and I look forward to the presiden't speech."

The TeaBirchers will say that he's a corrupt man and shouldn't be listened to and I agree that corrupt people aren't afforded much leeway, but since I've seen the same things that he observes I have to agree with the man. The TeaBirchers are trying to neutralize the word "racism" itself by constantly bringing it up and putting a phony spin on it like the Breitbarts and Dr. Laura's have been doing. Schlessinger repeated the N-word over and over again for a few reasons, one of them being the idea that if she repeats it enough the word will lose the racist meaning that it brings.

That obviously backfired and she was forced to quit her job. but as we've watched incident after racist incident including the FOX News New Black Panther fetishism occur---there is no denying what our eyes tell us we see. I'm sure we'll see some pushback against Greer by the TeaBirchers soon enough even though he's already been disgraced.

(You can follow me on Twitter@ http://twitter.com/JohnAmato) I don't post a lot there. I know some people think you need to know when they are grabbing a cup of coffee.