– My friend Carolyn’s Facebook post, within minutes of passage of the Health Care Reform bill. She and her friend June also offered to drive Limbaugh to the airport.

Where is Seven of Nine when you need her? Republican representatives voting against legislation that would allow sick people to more easily access medical care proved unable to buck the collective and express their own thoughts about why this was a bad idea. Instead, they fell back on a party line: the bill is “flawed.” As if any bill ever written in the history of the world wasn’t. Republicans, seriously. Is this all you got?

Remember during the 2008 campaign, when Sarah Palin flicked her Bic under the gas-soaked rags wrapped around the clubs held by the mobs at her rallies but then claimed she had no idea how the fires started? The reaction from Republicans to the escalation of teabagger anger exhibited toward health care reform is eerily familiar.

House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, called the incidents “reprehensible” but said on NBC’s Meet the Press “let’s not let a few isolated incidents get in the way of the fact that millions of Americans are scared to death, and millions of Americans want no part of this growing size of government.”

Yes, let’s not let “isolated incidents” (is there any other kind?) keep us from directing our disgust where it belongs: on elected representatives who are trying to help American companies compete with companies from nations that do not tie one arm behind them by expecting them to provide health insurance; or who want to keep people from being vulnerable to the number one cause of bankruptcy in this country, medical bills; or who simply recognize that the Congressional Budget Office and Joint Commission on Taxation are right when their studies predict our government will go broke if the health care and insurance systems are not reformed. Because, you know, Democratic (and the few decent Republican) legislators are real the problem.

Or not.

Unfortunately, Boehner isn’t the only one minimizing the tea bagger belligerence Republicans have stirred up.

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, R – Virginia on ABC’s “This Week” [said] “There were 30,000 people here in Washington yesterday. And, yes, there were some very awful things said.”

Cantor appeared with House Democratic Caucus chairman John Larson, D-Connecticut, who said the incidents show “everybody ought to ratchet back just a little bit.”

But Cantor disagreed.

Cantor said “you know what it is time for? It’s time to listen to the American people, and that is the stunning thing about this.”

No the stunning thing is that Republicans have been yelling and screaming about socialism, tyranny, totalitarianism, illegitimate power, etc. and now they express surprise that the true concerns of their intellectually challenged followers appear to be racism and homophobia. Who’da thunk?

But don’t let that inconvenient fact cause you to dismiss tea bagger views. At least, not if you’re a Republican who needs to keep these folks mobilized for your own cynical ends. Rep. David Nunes (R-Calif.), I’m looking at you.

When was asked about the slurs hurled at Reps. Lewis and Frank, Nunes said, “Yeah, well I think that when you use totalitarian tactics, people, you know, begin to act crazy. I think, you know, there’s people that have every right to say what they want. If they want to smear someone, they can do it. It’s not appropriate. And I think I would stop short of characterizing the 20,000 people protesting, that all of them were doing that –Of course. I think the left loves to play a couple of incidents here or there.”

To recap the Republican response to supporters spitting at and yelling the n-word and the f-word at elected officials: “It’s not that bad, it’s only a few of the 20,000/30,000/1.6 million members of the mob gathered, and it’s all Obama’s fault anyway.”

A staffer for Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) told reporters that Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) had been spat on by a protester. Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), a hero of the civil rights movement, was called a ‘nigger.’ And Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) was called a “faggot,” as protesters shouted at him with deliberately lisp-y screams. Frank, approached in the halls after the president’s speech, shrugged off the incident.

But Clyburn was downright incredulous, saying he had not witnessed such treatment since he was leading civil rights protests in South Carolina in the 1960s.

“It was absolutely shocking to me,” Clyburn said, in response to a question from the Huffington Post. “Last Monday, this past Monday, I stayed home to meet on the campus of Claflin University where fifty years ago as of last Monday… I led the first demonstrations in South Carolina, the sit ins… And quite frankly I heard some things today I have not heard since that day. I heard people saying things that I have not heard since March 15, 1960 when I was marching to try and get off the back of the bus.”

“It doesn’t make me nervous as all,” the congressman said, when asked how the mob-like atmosphere made him feel. “In fact, as I said to one heckler, I am the hardest person in the world to intimidate, so they better go somewhere else.”

Asked if he wanted an apology from the group of Republican lawmakers who had addressed the crowd and, in many ways, played on their worst fears of health care legislation, the Democratic Party, and the president, Clyburn replied:

“A lot of us have been saying for a long time that much of this, much of this is not about health care a all. And I think a lot of those people today demonstrated that this is not about health care… it is about trying to extend a basic fundamental right to people who are less powerful.”

Here’s another take, via Talking Points Memo:

Civil rights hero Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) and fellow Congressional Black Caucus member Andre Carson (D-IN) related a particularly jarring encounter with a large crowd of protesters screaming “kill the bill”… and punctuating their chants with the word “nigger.”

Standing next to Lewis, emerging from a Democratic caucus meeting with President Obama, Carson said people in the crowd yelled, “kill the bill and then the N-word” several times, while he and Lewis were exiting the Cannon House office building.

“People have been just downright mean,” Lewis added.

And that wasn’t an isolated incident. Early this afternoon, standing outside a Democratic whip meeting in the Longworth House office building, I watched Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) make his way out the door, en route to the neighboring Rayburn building. As he rounded the corner toward the exit, wading through a huge crowd of tea partiers and other health care protesters, an elderly white man screamed “Barney, you faggot”–a line that caused dozens of his confederates to erupt in laughter…

Shortly thereafter, the same group of people surrounded Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) as he entered a first-floor elevator. Above the cacophony, I heard one man call Waxman a “crook” and a “liar.”

The spitting incident involved Rep. Cleaver, who is also a Methodist minister and who was active in the civil rights movement. The congressman was escorted to safety by the U.S. Capitol Police, who, according to early reports, also arrested the tea bagger. Later, the New York Times reported that no arrest had been made.

Last night, someone threw a brick through the window of the district office of Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.), chair of the House Rules Committee.

The clip everybody’s talking about. See the full episode here.

Pres. Barack Obama, March 19, 2010

- Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Tx), proving that morons who are only concerned with staying in office for the sake of staying in office aren’t confined to just one party.

When 104 GOP insiders were asked whether their party chairman was an asset or a liability, 71 percent said Steele was a liability, while only 20 percent said he was an asset. Another 9 percent said he was neither or both.

By comparison, 61 percent of 103 Democrat insiders said that DNC Chair Tim Kaine was an asset and only 16 percent said he was a liability. Another 23 percent said he was neither.

GOP insider quotes: “Congressional minorities need some guerrilla-style unpredictability. Steele just brings extra.”

“Steele is unconnected to the fundraising establishment and uninspiring to the rank and file. He is gaffe-prone and lacks gravitas.”

The latest false rumor floated on the right is that, during his interview with Fox News’ right-wing shill Bret Baier this week, Pes. Obama falsely stated that an earthquake hit Hawaii in 2006:

PRES. OBAMA: It was said that there were billions — millions of dollars going to Louisiana, this was a special deal. Well, in fact, that provision, which I think should remain in, said that if a state has been affected by a natural catastrophe, that has created a special health care emergency in that state, they should get help. Louisiana, obviously, went through Katrina, and they’re still trying to deal with the enormous challenges that were faced because of that.

(CROSS TALK)

OBAMA: That also — I’m giving you an example of one that I consider important. It also affects Hawaii, which went through an earthquake. So that’s not just a Louisiana provision. That is a provision that affects every state that is going through a natural catastrophe. [Emphasis added.]

Media Matters traced the genesis of the lie:

Right-wing blogs: “What earthquake in Hawaii?”

Jim Hoft: “Um… What earthquake in Hawaii?” At 6:54 p.m. on March 17, right-wing blogger Jim Hoft wrote a Gateway Pundit post that stated, “Either Obama’s completely making up stuff now or we all missed some horrible devastating earthquake in Hawaii.” He later wrote: “In 1868 there was a major earthquake in Hawaii that killed 77 people. In 1975 an earthquake in Hawaii killed 2 people.”

Breitbart.tv links to Hoft. At 10:18 p.m. on March 17, Andrew Breitbart’s website Breitbart.tv linked to Hoft’s post and displayed the headline, “Puzzling statement: Obama says ‘Louisiana Purchase’ will help with the earthquake in Hawaii.”

Drudge links to Breitbart.tv post. From the Drudge Report: “Puzzling Statement: Obama Says ‘Louisiana Purchase’ Will Help With the Earthquake in Hawaii’…

Hot Air picks up the false story, as does Michelle Malkin, etc.

Finally it winds up on Fox News’ amateur-hour morning show, “Fox and Friends”:

[Steve] Doocy follows talking points from right-wing blogs. During the March 18 edition of Fox & Friends, co-host Steve Doocy played the quote in question from Obama’s interview and responded: “Hold it. What Hawaiian earthquake? There was an earthquake in 1868 that killed 77. There was an earthquake in 1975 that killed two.”

It’s unclear whether these people didn’t bother to check the Google, or whether they did a search and then knowingly lied. Fox News’ coverage of the quake was easy to find. A search on “foxnews.com earthquake Hawaii 2006″ brought up this story from the Fox News website in about two seconds.

Here’s the complete text of the story — and we have preserved screenshots of the article in situ on the Fox News website in case, you know, Fox might lose it or make it disappear:

Powerful 6.6-Magnitude Earthquake, Aftershocks Rattle Hawaii

HONOLULU — A strong earthquake shook Hawaii early Sunday, jolting residents out of bed and causing a landslide that blocked a major highway. Ceilings crashed at a hospital, and aftershocks kept the state on edge.

The state Civil Defense had unconfirmed reports of injuries, but communication problems prevented more definite reports. Gov. Linda Lingle issued a disaster declaration for the entire state, saying there had been damage to buildings and roads. There were no reports of fatalities.

The quake hit at 7:07 a.m. local time, 10 miles north-northwest of Kailua Kona, a town on the west coast of Hawaii Island, also known as the Big Island, said Don Blakeman, a geophysicist at the National Earthquake Information Center, part of the U.S. Geological Survey.

• Monitor the situation in FOXNews.com’s Natural Disasters Center.

Blakeman said there was no risk of a Pacific-wide tsunami, but there was a possibility of significant wave activity in Hawaii.

The Pacific Tsunami Center reported a preliminary magnitude of 6.5, while the U.S. Geological Survey gave a preliminary magnitude of 6.6. The earthquake was followed by several strong aftershocks, including one measuring a magnitude of 5.8, the Geological Survey said.

“We were rocking and rolling,” said Anne LaVasseur, who was on the second floor of a two-story, wood-framed house on the east side of the Big Island when the temblor struck. “I was pretty scared. We were swaying back and forth, like King Kong’s pushing your house back and forth.”

Water pipes exploded at Aston Kona By The Sea, an 86-unit condominium resort, creating a dramatic waterfall down the front of the hotel from the fourth floor, said Kenneth Piper, who runs the front desk.

“We are a concrete building, but we really shook. You could almost see the cars bouncing up and down in the parking garage,” he said.

The quake caused widespread power outages, and phone communication was possible, but difficult. By midday Sunday, power was restored to Hilo on the Big Island and was starting to be restored to Maui, said Chuck Anthony, a spokesman for the Hawaii National Guard. Officials did not have a firm estimate of how many people were without power.

Lingle told radio station KSSK that she toured the Kona area by helicopter to view the damage, including earth falling into Kealakekua Bay.

“You could see the water was turning brown,” said Lingle.

A FEMA computer simulation of the quake estimated that as many as 170 bridges on the Big Island could have suffered damage in the temblor, said Bob Fenton, FEMA director of response for the region. More than 50 federal officials were en route to the Big Island to assess damage and begin recovery work, he said.

On Hawaii Island, there was some damage in Kailua-Kona and a landslide along a major highway, said Gerard Fryer, a geophysicist at the Pacific Tsunami Center. Officials also said there were reports of people trapped in elevators in Oahu.

In Waikiki, one of the state’s primary tourism areas, worried visitors began lining up outside convenience stores to purchase food, water and other supplies. Managers were letting tourists into the darkened stores one at a time.

Karie and Bryan Croes waited an hour to buy bottles of water, chips and bread. “It’s quite a honeymoon story,” said Karie as she and her husband sat in lounge chairs surrounded by their grocery bags beside a pool at ResortQuest Waikiki Beach Hotel.

Kona Community Hospital on the western side of Big Island was being evacuated after ceilings collapsed and power was cut off, according to a hospital spokeswoman.

At least 10 acute care patients were being evacuated across the island to a medical center in Hilo, said Terry Lewis, spokeswoman for the hospital. About 30 nursing care patients were being moved temporarily to a nearby conference center, she said.

“We were very lucky that no one got hurt,” said Lewis.

Power was back up in the hospital, and its emergency room was accepting patients, hospital officials said. One operating room that sustained minimal damage was available for use if necessary.

The quake affected travel plans for many visitors, though the state was in its low period of the tourism season. Airports were functioning despite the power outages, though travel was difficult and some flights were being canceled, officials said.

Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Les Dorr said planes were arriving at Honolulu International Airport, but there were few departures. Dorr said the Transportation Security Administration security checkpoints were without power, so screeners were screening passengers and baggage manually.

Resorts in Kona were being asked to keep people close to hotels, Big Island Mayor Harry Kim told television station KITV. Cruise ships were asked to keep tourists on board, and ships that were due to dock with tourists were asked to move on to their next location, he said.

“We are dealing with a lot of scared people,” he said.

Hotels throughout the islands reported scattered injuries and disruptions. Many hotel managers broadcast warnings over public-address systems that echoed through corridors.

Earthquakes in the 6.0 magnitude range are rare in the region, though they have happened before. The region more commonly sees temblors in the 3- and 4-magnitude range caused by volcanic activity.

“We think this is a buildup from many volcanic earthquakes that they’ve had on the island,” Waverly Person, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Earthquake Information Center.

The last Hawaiian earthquake this strong struck more than 20 years ago. The magnitude 6.7 caused heavy property damage on Hawaii Island and collapsed trails into a volcano in Hawaiian Volcanoes National Park on Nov. 16, 1983. A 6.1-magnitude quake also hit in 1989, according to the Earthquake Information Center.

The largest recorded Hawaiian earthquake struck the Ka’u District on Hawaii Island in 1868, causing 77 deaths. Its magnitude was estimated at 7.9.

A 9.5-magnitude earthquake, the largest in the world, struck Chile on May 22, 1960, and a tsunami traveled to Hawaii where 61 people died.