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Wacky Wingnut Open Thread

Posted: January 15, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: open thread, Republican politics, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , |32 Comments

Ed meese

Octogenarian wingnut and former Reagan Attorney General Ed Meese (who even knew he was still alive?) has weighed in on Tea Party nutball threats to impeach President Obama if he uses executive orders to regulate gun sales. TPM reports:

Former Reagan Attorney General Edwin Meese, now a prominent emeritus official at the Heritage Foundation, became the latest conservative to warn that President Obama could risk impeachment if he takes executive action on reducing gun violence in an interview Monday night.

Speaking with Newsmax, Meese said Congress may have to consider impeaching Obama if he were “to try to override the Second Amendment in any way” with an executive order. He did allow that there are some executive actions related to guns that Obama could take wouldn’t be impeachable.

“It would be up to the Congress to take action, such as looking in to it to see if, in fact, he has really tried to override the Constitution itself,” Meese told Newsmax. “In which case, it would be up to them to determine what action they should take — and perhaps even to the point of impeachment.”

In Texas, state rep. Steve Toth is preparing a bill that would make it a felony for any federal official to attempt to enforce gun restrictions in the Lone Star State.

TX Rep. Steve Toth

A Texas lawmaker says he plans to file the Firearms Protection Act, which would make any federal laws that may be passed by Congress or imposed by Presidential order which would ban or restrict ownership of semi-automatic firearms or limit the size of gun magazines illegal in the state, 1200 WOAI news reports.

Republican Rep. Steve Toth says his measure also calls for felony criminal charges to be filed against any federal official who tries to enforce the rule in the state.

“If a federal official comes into the state of Texas to enforce the federal executive order, that person is subject to criminal prosecution,” Toth told 1200 WOAI’s Joe Pags Tuesday. He says his bill would make attempting to enforce a federal gun ban in Texas punishable by a $50,000 fine and up to five years in prison.

Toth “would welcome” legal challenges to the proposed new law.

“At some point there needs to be a showdown between the states and the federal government over the Supremacy Clause,” he said.

The Supremacy Clause is the portion of the Constitution which declares that federal laws and statutes are ‘the supreme law of the land.’

“It is our responsibility to push back when those laws are infringed by King Obama,” Toth said.

Let me get this straight. The Supremacy Clause, which is part of the U.S. Constitution, should be challenged if any branch of the Federal Government tries to limit Texans’ access to artillery of any kind? WTF?!

What’s your favorite wacky wingnut story of the day? This is an open thread!

32 Comments on “Wacky Wingnut Open Thread”

  1. bostonboomer says:
    January 15, 2013 at 5:55 pm

    And then there are the blatantly racist wingnuts:

    Ann Coulter is insisting that guns don’t kill people, non-white people kill people.

    The conservative columnist on Monday told Fox News host Sean Hannity that the country had a “demographic problem” because “white populations” in the U.S. and Belgium had the same low murder rate.

    “As you know, I just got back from England,” Coulter explained. “On the gun crimes, we keep hearing how low they are in Europe and, ‘Oh, they’re so low and they have no guns.’ If you compare white populations, we have the same murder rate as Belgium.”

    “So, perhaps, it’s not a gun problem, it is a demographic problem, which liberals are the one are pushing, pushing, pushing, ‘Let’s add more [African-American mass murderer] Colin Fergusons and more whoever the [Muslim] guy was who shot up Fort Hood.’ Why are they coming in to begin with?”

  2. bostonboomer says:
    January 15, 2013 at 6:44 pm

    House passes Sandy relief bill over wingnut objections.

    • RalphB says:
      January 15, 2013 at 7:26 pm

      At least they passed it. Wingnuts be damned.

    • RalphB says:
      January 15, 2013 at 7:29 pm

      They can pass the debt ceiling the same way, if Boehner lets it come to a vote. His excuse for not doing that is a promise to not break the Hastert thing again but he just did it here.

      The full $51 billion relief bill passed the House 241-180, with 179 Republicans opposed.

  3. SophieCT says:
    January 15, 2013 at 7:12 pm

    former Reagan Attorney General Ed Meese (who even knew he was still alive?)

    ROFLMAO!!! Best line of the day.

  4. RalphB says:
    January 15, 2013 at 7:18 pm

    Apparently The Atlantic can be embarrassed … Updated

    http://tbogg.firedoglake.com/2013/01/14/we-are-thetans-in-the-material-world/

  5. dakinikat says:
    January 15, 2013 at 7:57 pm

    Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (R) recently rolled out a plan to replace his state’s personal income and corporate taxes with an increased sales tax. Such a move would shift taxes from the rich to the poor, who are disproportionately hit by the sales tax.

    According to an analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, Jindal’s plan will raise taxes on the bottom 80 percent of Louisianians, while cutting them for the richest 1 percent:

    – The bottom 80 percent of Louisianans in the income distribution would see a tax increase from repealing the personal and corporate income taxes and replacing them with a higher sales tax.

    – The poorest 20 percent of taxpayers, those with an average income of $12,000, would see an average tax
    increase of $395, or 3.4 percent of their income, if no low income tax relief mechanism is offered.

    – The middle 20 percent, those with an average income of $43,000, would see an average tax increase of $534, or 1.2 percent of their income.

    – The largest beneficiaries of the tax proposal would be the top 1 percent—a group with an average income
    of well over $1 million. Louisianans in the top 1 percent would see an average tax cut of $25,423, or 2.3 percent of their income under the plan described above.

    http://www.itep.org/pdf/LATaxSwapAnalysis.pdf

    • bostonboomer says:
      January 15, 2013 at 8:18 pm

      There needs to be a commission formed to figure out how to defuse Bobby Jindal.

      • HT says:
        January 15, 2013 at 8:23 pm

        Has anyone looked into his private life? While I deplore that sort of thing, sometimes it does come in handy – oh wait Vitter still gets elected. Forget I mentioned it.

      • bostonboomer says:
        January 15, 2013 at 8:51 pm

        Well, we know that he performed an exorcism on an unwilling young woman. That should be enough to disqualify him, but so far it hasn’t.

      • dakinikat says:
        January 15, 2013 at 9:30 pm

        I’m voting for large gators in the back of an obscure bayou … we can see how well he does with his own kind

      • HT says:
        January 15, 2013 at 10:17 pm

        Actually I think Gators probably have more integrity than your governor. They would probably joyfully ingest him, then suffer terminal indigestion. As an animal rights supporter, I object.

  6. bostonboomer says:
    January 15, 2013 at 8:20 pm

    I’ve made an executive decision. The wingnut of the day is Village idiot Dana Millbank.

    “I’m a pretty friendly guy,” President Obama said near the end of his White House news conference Monday afternoon.

    The claim might have been a touch more plausible if he hadn’t spent the bulk of the previous hour demonstrating just how adversarial he could be. Indeed, there was no precipitating event that led him to schedule the last-minute session in the East Room — lending credibility to the theory that he summoned reporters so he could bait Republicans.

    “If congressional Republicans refuse to pay America’s bills on time, Social Security checks and veterans benefits will be delayed,” the friendly president said, explaining his refusal to negotiate over increasing the debt limit.

    Calling the opposition’s stance “absurd,” Obama advised Republicans that they “have two choices here: They can act responsibly and pay America’s bills, or they can act irresponsibly and put America through another economic crisis. But they will not collect a ransom in exchange for not crashing the American economy. . . . And they better choose quickly, because time is running short.”

    And that was just the opening statement. The hectoring continued through the Q&A. Exactly one month after the massacre at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., Obama said of debt-reduction talks: “What I will not do is to have that negotiation with a gun at the head of the American people.”

    The Republicans’ view, President Congeniality added, “was rejected by the American people when it was debated during the presidential campaign. . . . But if the House Republicans disagree with that and they want to shut down the government to see if they can get their way on it, that’s their prerogative.”

    • HT says:
      January 15, 2013 at 8:25 pm

      But does he really mean what he is saying? We’ve seen him cave multiple times before. Will he stay the course?

      • HT says:
        January 15, 2013 at 8:28 pm

        BTW Dana Millbank should suck eggs. The condecension in that article is deplorable. Whether one agrees or not, he is the President and should be afforded a modicum of respect. JMHO of course, but that article is deplorable.

  7. bostonboomer says:
    January 15, 2013 at 8:43 pm

    If you missed Lawrence O’Donnell’s show last night, please be sure to watch his explanation (in a Southie accent) of why Scott Brown may decide not to run for the Senate again.

  8. bostonboomer says:
    January 15, 2013 at 8:51 pm

    Pierce on David Brooks’ “Humility” course at Yale.

  9. Fannie says:
    January 15, 2013 at 9:40 pm

    I am gonna go with Steve Stockman, the biggest wingnut rag of the day. I am reminded of Molly Ivins who said “paranoia is a national disease.” She understood Texas back then, as we understand it today. And to go with, the movie “Cool Hand Luke,”

    WHAT WE GOT HERE IS A FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE

  10. dakinikat says:
    January 15, 2013 at 10:20 pm

    GOP Congressman Warns That Library Books About Muslim Culture Will Undermine Christianity

    http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2013/01/15/1452861/walter-jones-muslim-books/

  11. List of X says:
    January 15, 2013 at 10:39 pm

    “What’s your favorite wacky wingnut story of the day?”
    As another wingnut would say, I like all of ’em.

  12. RalphB says:
    January 15, 2013 at 11:00 pm

    States Rights, Sheriffs Rights. All Good.

    Oregon Sheriff decides he’ll decide what new national gun regulations do and don’t violate the constitution and won’t permit them to be enforced in his Sheriffdom.

    Apparently if you’re a gun nut you can just spout off whatever bullshit pops into your head and people are supposed to think you’re standing up for FREEDUMB!

  13. RalphB says:
    January 15, 2013 at 11:24 pm

    Jon Chait is really on in this piece.

    NYMag: Bush Speechwriter Michael Gerson Exposes Obama’s Sinister Being-Reasonable Ploy

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