Tag: Jim DeMint

Meet Tim Scott, the Newest Senator

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Shortly after the election, South Carolina’s junior senator and Tea Party hero, Jim DeMint announced his resignation to become the head of the right wing Washington based think tank, The Heritage Foundation. That left it to the Tea Party governor, Nikki Haley, to appoint someone to fill the remaining two years of DeMint’s senate term. Gov. Haley stated that she would not appoint a “place holder” but would look for a person who would be a viable candidate for a full term in 2014. Today the governor announced her decision, overlooking polling favorite and native son Stephen Colbert, appointing the African American freshman US Representative Tim Scott to the seat.

David Dayen at FDL News reports:

Scott becomes the first African-American Senator since Roland Burris left in 2010, and the first African-American representing the South in the Senate since Reconstruction (there have only been six other African-American Senators total in the history of the country). Gov. Haley made the announcement at the State House in Columbia a short while ago:

Mr. Scott, 47, offers a unique story and background, one that is in scant supply in the Republican Party right now. Raised by a single mother, he was, by his account, a lost child who struggled with school and with life until a Chick-fil-A franchise owner took him on as a protégé and schooled him in conservative principles.

“Coming from a single-parent household and almost flunking out of high school,” Mr. Scott said in 2010, during his bid for the House, “my hope is I will take that experience and help people bring out the best that they can be.”

As David notes, don’t let Mr. Scott’s background fool you and links to this article at Think Progress:

By Scott Keyes on Dec 17, 2012 at 9:46 am

Tim Scott is America’s newest senator today after getting tapped by South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) to fill the vacancy left by former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC). DeMint announced this month that he was leaving the Senate to head up the Heritage Foundation, an arch-conservative think tank in Washington DC.

Though DeMint left big, controversial shoes to fill for Republicans, few conservatives will be disappointed with Scott’s record. Elected to Congress just two years ago in the Tea Party wave, Scott has already garnered headlines for his plan to impeach President Obama, his legislation to cut off union members’ children from food stamps, and his defense of Big Oil.

Here’s a quick look at Scott’s record:

  • Floated impeaching Obama over the debt ceiling. As the debt ceiling debate raged in the summer of 2011 because of the intransigence of Tea Party freshmen like Scott, the nation inched perilously close to defaulting on its obligations. One option discussed by some officials to avoid that scenario was for the president to assert that the debt ceiling itself was an unconstitutional infringement on the 14th Amendment. However, Tim Scott told a South Carolina Tea Party group that if Obama were to go this route, it would be an “impeachable act.”
  • Proposed a bill to cut off food stamps for entire families if one member went on strike. One of the most anti-union members of Congress, Scott proposed a bill two months after entering Congress in 2011 to kick families off food stamps if one adult were participating in a strike. Scott’s legislation made no exception for children or other dependents.
  • Wanted to spend an unlimited amount of money to display Ten Commandments outside county building. When Scott was on the Charleston County Council, one of his primary issues was displaying the Ten Commandments outside the Council building. According to the Augusta Chronicle, Scott said the display “would remind council members and speakers the moral absolutes they should follow.” When he was sued for violating the Constitution and a Circuit Judge’s orders, Scott was nonplussed: “Whatever it costs in the pursuit of this goal (of displaying the Commandments) is worth it.”
  • Defended fairness of giving billions in subsidies to Big Oil. Scott and his Republican allies in Congress voted repeatedly last year to protect more than $50 billion in taxpayer subsidies for Big Oil corporations. When ThinkProgress asked Scott whether it was fair to do that, especially at a time when oil companies are earning tens of billions in profit every quarter, the Tea Party freshman defended the industry: “fair is a relative word,” said Scott.
  • Helped slash South Carolina’s HIV/AIDS budget. As a state representative, Scott backed a proposal to cut the state’s entire HIV/AIDS budget, despite the fact that South Carolina ranks in the top-third of reported AIDS cases. The cuts were ultimately included in the state’s budget, impacting more than 2,000 HIV-positive South Carolinians who needed help paying for their medication.

If you thought that the Senate couldn’t possibly be any worse, oh my, were you wrong. Now more that ever, the Senate needs to reform filibuster.

DeMint’s GOP would install Morality Police in Public Education …

Ed Schultz covers the latest DeMint Plan

Ed then interviews “openly gay” Rep. Jared Polis (CO);

and then “openly blunt” Rep. Alan Grayson (FL), to get their takes on this new DeMint Lunacy.

This is Democracy? Meet the GOP’s one man Toll Gate

“It is my understanding Jim DeMint has had a standing hold on everything throughout this two year process,” Senator Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) told the Huffington Post on Tuesday. “When I have had amendments on a couple of occasions, I have been told: ‘Absolutely, we in the Republican leadership are fine but you are going to have to clear it with Jim DeMint because he has a standing hold on everything.’

DeMint Has Had ‘A Standing Hold’ On All Legislation For Past Two Years

Sam Stein, HuffingtonPost — 09-28-10

“… but you are going to have to clear it with Jim …”

This is Democracy?

Sounds instead like the GOP’s own version of American Idol — where Gopher DeMint is the lone ‘Simon Cowell’ on the Jury.

Is Voinovich just the first brick to Fall from GOP’s Stonewalling Rhetoric?

There is a crack daylight, that may topple the Republican’s Wall of Inaction.

Voinovich breaks with GOP to push for small-business incentives

Lori Montgomery, Washington Post Staff — Sept 10, 2010

Retiring Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) said he plans to help push a package of small-business incentives through the Senate next week, a move that would give President Obama and congressional Democrats a key victory on the economy in the final weeks before the November midterm elections.

In an interview, Voinovich said he could no longer support Republican efforts to delay the measure in hopes of winning the right to offer additional amendments. Most of the proposed GOP amendments “didn’t have anything to do with the bill” anyway, Voinovich said, and amounted merely to partisan “messaging.”

“We don’t have time for messaging,” Voinovich said. “We don’t have time anymore. This country is really hurting.”

Finally a Republican Senator with some Integrity, who is willing work for the folks, that Voted him into Office  (instead of working against their interests, for his own gain …)

Screw rent! Ask Stupak if we should KILL our gays now or wait till later

    Crossposted at Daily Kos

Brought to you by PeanutButterPAC

I wonder if Fox News will pick up this diary?

   While I am very interested in the question of “Who paid Bart Stupak’s rent? ” I would also like to know who was paying the rent of his roommates. Some of those roommates were . . .

Gov. Mark Sanford (R-SC)

Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC)

Senator John Ensign (R-NV)

Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK)

Rep Zach Wamp (R-TN)

Rep Mike Doyle (D-PA)

    Who wants to bet Fox asks Doyle about this but not DeMint, who is the front man for their Tea Party astroturfed Corporatist movement.

    But that is not the BIG QUESTION I want to ask Stupak and his Christian Mafia cult members. No, my question to them is . . .

    “Should we kill our gays now, or wait until later?”

More below the fold . . .  

Sen. Graham vs Screaming Beckerheads! RINO hunt in a shrinking party = EPIC DISASTER for GOP

Crossposted at Daily Kos

A few months ago our fellow blogger at DKos KingOneEye (or NewsCorpse as he is known at Docudharma) wrote a diary titled FOX NEWS is Killing the Republican Party which posited that the far right media and their meat puppets like Beck, O’Reilly and Hannity, along with Rush and other assorted assknuckles, were pushing a shrinking party into a purity purge that they can not win elections with.

    Well, now we need wait no longer. That massive implosion of knuckle dragging wingnut vs Republican moderate wingnut enabler has gone critical mass. Grab some popcorn and enjoy.

Transcript and more below the fold

DeMint violates Logan Act, BETRAYS American interests to a Foreign Power. Will he pay for it?

Crossposted at Daily Kos

    With all the uproar over Republican gloating over American failures, this bit of news has been almost totally overlooked, but it trumps any posturing over the Olympics by a long shot.

    Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) has announced that he will be visiting Honduras today to meet with the de facto regime of acting Honduran President Roberto Micheletti in sheer defiance of the position taken by the US government and (the) international community . . .

 Bold added by diarist

thinkprogress.org

      Senator DeMint (R-SC) has been revealed as a member of the C-Street Family, a fundamentalist Christian group that admires Hitler and believes in the Supremacy of a Free Market supporting Jesus, and has just violated the Logan Act, a law that states that ONLY unauthorized citizens are forbidden from negotiating with foreign Governments. As of now, DeMint is acting against American interests.

      And that makes him a traitor.

      More below the fold

Krugman: “Populism that makes Bankers Angry is Exactly what the Economy Needs”

Crossposted at Daily Kos

   Yesterday, in a NYTimes Op-Ed titled “Reform or Bust”, Nobel Economist Paul Krugman gave some well needed advice on good economics and good politics that President Obama and Democratic members of Congress should listen to.

    It’s not just that taking a populist stance on bankers’ pay is good politics – although it is: the administration has suffered more than it seems to realize from the perception that it’s giving taxpayers’ hard-earned money away to Wall Street, and it should welcome the chance to portray the G.O.P. as the party of obscene bonuses.

    Equally important, in this case populism is good economics. Indeed, you can make the case that reforming bankers’ compensation is the single best thing we can do to prevent another financial crisis a few years down the road.

   One obvious point is the need, politically, to make the GOP the party that defends huge Wall St salaries and bonuses, which they will do anyway and gladly. Politically, the GOP can not be for the bonuses. They just can’t. Even more so, they can not be against the regulations AND against the bailouts. It just won’t work. Like Saruman in Lord of The Rings when confronted by Gandalf and the Riders of Rohan at the foot of Orthanc, the GOP can not be all things to all people, or against all things either. When too many eyes are watching at once the illusion is broken. The GOP can not be against all cures and still appear in the populist corner, as their teabagging antics try to portray, badly. The GOP must stand for something, and they do, they stand for the Super Rich and Corporate Wealth. Proving this is very important.

    Recently wingnutty teabagging Republican Senator Jim DeMint (C Street-SC) offered his answer to all that economically ails Wall St. Guess what? His answer; More Tax Cuts!

    Instead of looking at more regulation, we could do a lot by fixing our tax system here in this country, to make us globally competitive. The President needs to focus on what really has caused problems and look at what has really made America so prosperous, and I’m afraid that’s not the lens he’s looking through right now.

ThinkProgress.org

    Because who would think that cutting taxes for Wall St would be kind of rewarding for them, or a serious attempt at real reform.

    The GOP has NO new ideas, and the only ones they do have are Failed, totally and utterly Failed. Bipartisanship with these guys is a sort of cheating off of the dumb kid in class at ths point. It WILL NOT WORK. I understand why Obama has made the effort, but no it is time to play hardball, it is NO LONGER the time to keep trying to make the GOP feel good about themselves, especially when their ideas suck and they hope you fail.

    More and my own analysis below the fold.

     

We WILL get a Public Option! Co-Op Kabuki Exposed! But it only works if you YELL LOUDER!

Crossposted at Daily kos

    I am beginning to believe that President Obama has this figured out, and that we WILL get HCR and a Public Option.

    Why do I believe this? Let me explain.

    But first you have got to FIGHT, DAMMIT ROCKY!

    So here is some inspirational music to inspire Hope, and while you get riled up let me take you below the fold and reveal the genius of 9-sided chinese chess, exposed.

Cult Street Christofascists like Sen. Jim Demint must be exposed

Crossposted at Daily Kos

h/t to Ek for the FP

NEW RULE:     Cults are NOT allowed to caucus  

    GAME OVER for Democracy if one of these fucks gets to be President. We already saw what it was like under Bush when a POTUS thinks he was appointed by God, and not the Supreme Court.

    It’s as if they remade Jesus into a free market capitalist!

   


   Because the minority occupying the high places are stronger than a majority that are irrelevant.

~snip~

    “How do we take back the gates of commerce which the enemy guards so closely?”

“The barnacles of unionism wrapped around their necks”

“What I want to do is make sure we have jobs for these workers and we have first-class American automobile companies — and we’re not going to do it with the barnacles of unionism wrapped around their necks.”

                                         – Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), All Things Considered, Dec. 10, 2008

In case anyone has any question what the fight over the bailout (I reject any euphemisms for it) of the Big 3 American automobile companies is about, Sen. Jim DeMint has done us the favor of explaining it to us precisely.  It is not about supporting or refusing to support the Big 3;  DeMint’s solution, to send them into bankruptcy court, might well save the companies and their management.  This would release the companies from their existing obligations — including union contracts.

That’s all this is about now: union busting.  Which side are you on?