Florida Dist. 13 Rep. Jennifer Carroll

The long list of people to turn down a chance to be Scott’s Lieutenant Governor include state Sen. Paula Dockery, former Lt. Gov. (under Jeb Bush) Toni Jennings, University of North Florida Pres. John Delaney, and state Reps. Mike Weinstein and Juan Zapata. It got to the point earlier in the week that Florida politicos were tweeting in jest, “Deeply honored but must turn down Scott running mate offer. Would take too much time from family.”

As Scott finds the field of Number Twos narrowing, persistent rumors point to his selection of state Rep. Jennifer Carroll (R-Orange Park). Like Scott, Carroll has had more than her share of ethics questions during her years of pubic service.

She has trouble stating her net worth on financial disclosures, an issue which first came to light when Carroll sought to qualify for contracts awarded to small and emerging minority and female-owned businesses. According to Jacksonville’s Folio Weekly:

Carroll’s explanations…of her true net worth only add confusion to a story about Carroll’s finances [and] the financial disclosure forms that Carroll filed with the Florida Commission on Ethics between 2002-2005. During that period, Carroll’s net worth jumped all over the place, from $23 million in 2004 to $202 million in 2005. Carroll explained to Folio Weekly then that she had made an error in 2005, and she did amend her state report for 2005, to reflect a net worth of $2.02 million.

Despite that correction, Carroll’s 2006 answers about her fluctuations in fortune and her actual net worth don’t correspond with what she reported to the city that same year as she sought [the special] certification.

Whether Carroll used “representative’s privilege” to get out of a traffic ticket is also a persistent question. But no matter. Ethics, after all, are not Scott’s concern. The billionaire tea bagger spent a reported $50 million of his own money to beat McCollum with an ad campaign that saturated Florida airwaves. Scott was also a main funder of the ugly “astroturf” resistance to health care reform, exemplified during the summer of 2009 at town hall meetings where red-faced, white-haired white people waved signs printed by Scott’s Conservatives for Patient Rights, and shouted slogans dreamed up by Dick Armey about socialism in the faces of their elected representatives.

So Carroll, whose lackluster record as a representative includes no major legislation and a 100 percent voting rating from the pro-growth, anti-environment Florida Chamber of Commerce, seems like a perfect pick. She was the first Republican African American woman elected to the Florida legislature, is a former Navy jet mechanic, a rightwing abstinence-only Christian, and will offset Scott’s lily-mortician-whiteness. Stay tuned for an announcement soon.

Disgraced HCA Columbia Healthcare CEO Rick Scott (who was forced to resign rather than face criminal charges in the nation’s largest Medicaid fraud case, resulting in a $1.7 billion fine) sums up all the Republican lies about the Islamic Center in New York in one TV spot, going FOX News one better by tying construction of the facility to health care reform. Why Scott, who is running for governor of Florida — a state which will have little if any say in the issue — would chose this as a campaign platform is unclear.

DNC Press Secretary Hari Sevugan, commenting on Sarah Palin’s statement that Pres. Obama is not up to the task of being president, despite 18 months of proof to the contrary. Even as Pres. Obama has pulled the country back from the brink of Republican-induced economic collapse, succeeded where the last eight presidents failed at starting genuine health care reform, reversed Bush policies on torture, murder, mutilation, and humiliation of individuals in the custody of officers or agents of the federal government, and signed a strategic arms treaty with Russia that reduces both of our nuclear arsenals by one-third (without even being able to see the Russian shore), Palin said, “Some of this though is a result of he not having much experience and then a complicit media and maybe some voters who chose to not to allow him to be vetted very closely.”

Once again, Keith Olbermann speaks for the 80 percent of Americans who are able to think for themselves — this time about the growing threat presented by the 20 percent who can’t, and who have been brainwashed by Republicans and other agents of corporatism.

Here’s the money shot:

OLBERMANN: This nation can survive a president being disrespected by some nickel-dime congressman from Beaufort; the shame falls onto the shouter and not the one shouted at.

But this nation cannot survive the continued acceptance, the continued endorsement, the continued encouragement, the continued institutionalization… of stupidity I think if Mr. Lincoln were alive he might re-cast his most famous imagery in the light of the truest of our present crises:

A house divided against itself cannot stand.

I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half smart, and half… stupid.

Complete Transcript:

And finally, as promised, a Special Comment about the shout of “You Lie” during the presidential address to the joint session of Congress last night on the matter of health care reform.

The 43rd president of the United States lied the nation into the war, lied 4,343 of his fellow citizens to death in that war, lied about upholding the constitution, and lied about Weapons of Mass Destruction.

He lied about how he reacted to Al-Qaeda before 9/11 and he lied about how he reacted to Al-Qaeda after 9/11.

He lied about getting Bin Laden, and he lied about not getting Bin Laden.

He lied about nation-building in Iraq, lied about the appearance of new buildings **in** the nation **of** Iraq, and lied about embassy buildings in nations like Iraq.

He lied about trailers with mobile weapons labs in them, and he lied about trailers with Cuban prostitutes in them.

He and his administration lied — by the counting of one non-profit group — 532 times about links between Al-Qaeda and Iraq. Only 28 of those were by that President, but he made up for that by lying 231 times about W-M-D.

And yet not once did an elected Democratic official shout out during one of George W. Bush’s speeches and call him a “liar.”

Even when the president was George W. Bush, even when he was assailed from sidelines like mine, even when the lies came down so thick the nation needed a hat… he was still the President and if he didn’t earn any respect, the office he held demanded respect.

More over, that President and his Congressional tools like Congressman Addison Graves “Joe” Wilson of South Carolina insisted not just unquestioned respect for the office; they wanted unanimous lock-step compliance with the man.

And when the blasphemy of mere respectful criticism somehow came anyway — say by, or built on that by, the real Joe Wilson — lord help he who might have made the slightest factual error in that criticism.

Congressman Wilson and his masters and the flying monkeys of right-wing media would pursue the erroneous critic to the ends of their careers, firing hot accusations of moral or intellectual confusion and incompetence at the unbelievers.

And that is the line Congressman Wilson crossed last night when he shouted “you lie” at this President of the United States.

Not the respect line.

The stupid line.

Hey, Mr. Wilson!

“This evening I let my emotions get the best of me when listening to the President’s remarks regarding the coverage of illegal immigrants in the health care bill,” you hurriedly said last night as a nation caved in on you, and your own party’s leadership coerced you into saying something. “While I disagree with the President’s statements, my comments were inappropriate and regrettable. I extend sincere apologies to the President for this lack of civility.”

For the lack of civility, Congressman?

Is that what you think this is about?

Of course your comments were inappropriate and regrettable — you are a Republican trying to de-legitimize the elected president of the United States — that’s all you do, and that’s all you’ve got.

Of course you let your emotions get the best of you. At a figure of $435,296 in campaign donations from the Health Sector, of course your emotions would take over when your gravy train was threatened.

It isn’t about “inappropriate and regrettable,” Sir!

Your comments were inappropriate and regrettable and…. **wrong**!

You got up in front of the world, embarrassed your district, embarrassed your state, embarrassed your party, embarrassed your nation, shouted at the President like he was a referee at a ballgame and you were a drunk in the stands, and you were wrong.

House Bill 3200 specifically says, Sir, in language made precise and binding — in section 246 — under the heading, quote:

“NO FEDERAL PAYMENT FOR UNDOCUMENTED ALIENS”

Look, Congressman!

All capital letters!

For the benefit of the factually-challenged!

“Nothing in this subtitle shall allow Federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States.”

You got it wrong!

There is no ambiguity, Sir. There is no disagreement!

The bill says those here illegally will not be covered; yet whether through stupidity or a willful attempt to mislead the gullible, you decided to spend whatever credibility remained to you, on a position in which you are utterly, inarguably, and — in a manner obvious to newborns and the more sophisticated of farm animals — wrong!

You apologize for your lack of civility?

When are you going to apologize for your lack of… being right?

Wrong-Way Wilson.

Whatever it is, it’s congenital.

Wrong-Way Wilson just wrote an op-ed, on August 27th for the Columbia, South Carolina newspaper “The State,” about the non-existent death panels that he and Mrs. Palin saw in their dreams — or something:

“Those who have stood up and shown up to have their voices heard have already made a difference in this debate.”

Perhaps henceforth Mr. Wilson should soft-pedal the “have their voices heard” part.

“…citizens have discovered and brought to light numerous aspects of the health care overhaul (H.R. 3200) that are deeply troubling. These include the end of life counseling program, which has been correctly highlighted by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as a program which could lead to seniors being encouraged to seek less care in order to protect the government’s bottom line.”

Perhaps henceforth Mr. Wilson should soft-pedal the Palin Paranoia, since **he** caught enough of it that last night, he made himself look like an uninformed eight-year old screaming at an adult.

“Americans… want and deserve this honest debate.”

Perhaps henceforth Mr. Wilson should remember that the word “honest” is as important as the word “debate.”

The latter without the former is better known as Political Tourette’s Syndrome.

The evidence that Wrong-Way Wilson and reality are strangers goes back much further than last night.

When Congressman Rob Filner said the U-S had helped Saddam Hussein’s chemical and biological weapons, Wilson went nuts.

Worse, he accused Filner of a quote “hatred of America,” and insisted “you shouldn’t say that” and “you should retract it” and “you know it is not true.”

It was true.

It had been confirmed by the Commerce Department… in 1994.

Wrong-Way Wilson was… wrong.

A year later, when it was asserted that Senator Strom Thurmond from Wrong-Way’s home state had fathered a daughter with a black woman, Mr. Wilson called the assertion a quote “smear on the image” of Senator Thurmond.

This was after Senator Thurmond’s family had acknowledged not just paternity, but the fact that the Senator had maintained a secret relationship with his daughter, and provided her money, for decades.

**After** this was admitted, Congressman Wilson considered references to it a “smear” and said Thurmond’s daughter should have kept it to herself.

Coincidence, of course, Wrong-Way, that it would be **you** who would consider the confirmed, acknowledged bi-racial child of Strom Thurmond as a “smear”…

And then it would again be you who — in the middle of a festival of blind racial rage dressed up as a health care debate — would shout out, “you lie” at a bi-racial President of the United States as he addressed Congress.

And just a coincidence that you’re a member of a radicalized, insurrection-glorifying group, accused of harboring white supremacists, called “Sons Of Confederate Veterans.”

–

Back to **this** incident. You have swallowed some of the Kool-Aid you mix up for those damn fools who believe you, Congressman.

You sounded as pathetic as one of those poor souls, stampeded by corporate funding from the insurance and health care industries, who shout out nonsense at those demonstrations of willful stupidity that have been mislabeled “Town Halls”… these places where a citizen’s life is reduced to acting out that ridiculous maxim, if you’re going to be wrong, be wrong at the top of your voice.

But Congressman — you’re not supposed to be a Town Hall panicker, you’re not supposed to be a Rube defending the efficacy of the Snake Oil, you are a Congressman — and still you were wrong at the top of your voice!

Town Halls, Death Panels, Oligarhys, a multi-racial president who is accused of hating half his own ancestry, neuroses about communist artwork, the idea that fascism and socialism aren’t mutually exclusive, grass-roots protests bought and paid for by lobbyists and corporations, scared seniors terrified enough to turn to insurance companies for protection against reformers who want to increase their coverage and cut their rates, Birchers, Birthers, Deathers, the voices in Michele Bachmann’s head, the Republican rebuttal to the President of the United States given by a guy who thought he could become “Lord Boustany” by paying a couple of English con men…

And now to top off this pile of stupidity: Congressman Wrong-Way Wilson, who — when a President publicly, and ostentatiously, gave credit for part of his health care reform proposal to the very Republican he swamped in the election last year — Wrong-Way Wilson… followed that bi-partisan gesture, by shouting “you lie” as soon as he heard the truth.

It is… this week, evident… that the greatest threat to the nation… is not terrorism… nor the economy… nor H1/N1… nor even bad health care.

It is rank, willful stupidity.

When did we come to extol stupidity ahead of information, and rely on voo-doo, superstition, and prejudice ahead of education?

How many Republicans believe in Death Panels… and Brownies and Elves?

When did we start to listen to — to elect — the impregnably dense?
I was almost too fearful of using the word “impregnably” because of the prospect that Governor Palin would go after me the way she went after Letterman.

–

The time has come to rise up and take this country back, to again make it safe… for people who actually completed the seventh grade.
The crime of Wrong-Way Wilson was not reflected in his emotions, nor his disagreement, nor his inappropriate conduct, nor in his incivility. It was in his prideful wrong-ness.

There are many vague portions of this bill, but section 246 says it plain: “NO FEDERAL PAYMENT FOR UNDOCUMENTED ALIENS.”

I defend Congressman Wilson’s right to incivility. A little incivility six years ago might have stopped the Iraq war. He can shout anything he wants, at anybody he wants, in any circumstances he wants.

Providing that he is willing to suffer the consequences of his actions, I am willing to suffer him.

This nation can survive a president being disrespected by some nickel-dime congressman from Beaufort; the shame falls onto the shouter and not the one shouted at.

But this nation cannot survive the continued acceptance, the continued endorsement, the continued encouragement, the continued institutionalization… of stupidity I think if Mr. Lincoln were alive he might re-cast his most famous imagery in the light of the truest of our present crises:

A house divided against itself cannot stand.

I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half smart, and half… stupid.

Section 246 is written expressly: there will be no health care funding for those who are here illegally; that there will be no mechanism created to establish such funding.

I fear Section 247 will have to be rewritten expressly: so that there will be a mechanism created to establish… Stupid Panels.

“You lie,” Wilson yelled after Obama asserted that reform proposals do not include covering non-citizens.

Could be that Wilson was in a celebratory mood. Earlier today, his son Alan announced he is running for attorney general of South Carolina.

As he returned from his August vacation, Wilson told the State newspaper that he received standing ovations at town hall meetings when he stated his opposition to health-insurance reform:

U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson, a Republican who lives in Springdale, also spoke to the biggest crowds of his political career in town hall meetings dominated by health care — 1,700 people at Keenan High School in Columbia, 1,500 at Lexington High School, 1,200 at Hilton Head High School.

“Ninety-five percent of the people supported my position of promoting health insurance reform, but not a government takeover,” Wilson said. “I received standing ovations when (the meetings) concluded.”

Wilson, Rep. Gresham Barrett, a Republican from the Upstate, and Rep. Henry Brown of Charleston are among 28 co-sponsors of the Empowering Patients First Act, one of the main GOP alternatives to the House Democratic plan.

Among its reforms, the bill makes individuals’ premiums tax deductible, gives states incentives to create high-risk insurance pools, allows people to shop across state lines and establishes administrative “health courts” in states to hear medical malpractice claims.

From Wilson’s Wikipedia page:

In September 2002, during a debate on the possibility of going to war in Iraq, Wilson called Congressman Bob Filner “viscerally anti-American” and claimed that he had a “hatred of America” after Filner suggested the United States supplied chemical and biological weapons to Saddam Hussein. Wilson said later that he didn’t intend to insult Filner.

Wilson is a staunch advocate of a federal prohibition of online poker.

Joe Wilson represents South Carolina’s 2nd District, which ranges from Columbia in the center of the state to Hilton Head Island on the coast.

UPDATE: As of this morning (Sept. 10), Democratic fundraising group ActBlue has raised $69,000 on behalf of Wilson’s opponent, Rob Miller. Within the first two hours of Obama’s speech last night outraged voters had contributed $25,000 to ActBlue.

Over and over, during the 2008 election cycle, I saw Barack Obama win the long game and I learned to trust him to pretty much always come out on top. This video shows the Barack Obama I knew could get the job done.

Bring it, you paranoid, racist, uneducated mo-fos who don’t have health insurance and aren’t bright enough to recognize when you’re being helped. We’re ready for your dim-witted asses.

Question 2: In any health care proposal, how important do you feel it is to give people a choice of both a public plan administered by the federal government and a private plan for their health insurance–extremely important, quite important, not that important, or not at all important?

Results:
58 percent: Extremely important
19 percent: Quite important
 7 percent: Not that important
15 percent: Not at all important
 1 percent: Not sure

What this means is that, while the GOP disinformation campaign is playing front and center on cable news, the lies at its foundation are not fooling normal Americans.

Tea Baggers, Birthers, Deathers and Fox News viewers can’t seem to grasp what is obvious to everyone else: Just like we have public and private universities and public and private hospitals in this country, we will have public and private health insurance in the future– and we will be no more or less a “socialist” country then than we are now.

The key point about health-insurance reform that has been drowned out by the Republican/health-insurance lobby propaganda is the fact that the private insurance industry has failed. Private industry has failed to create programs that cover everyone. It has failed to contain costs. And it has failed to self-regulate on the issues of portability and preexisting conditions.

As we have learned in the wake of the Bush Recession, when industries fail, the government has to step in and protect the well-being and productivity of the nation.

Even FactCheck.org has had it with the level of inanity coming from opponents to health care reform. The normally dispassionate site is addressing a ridiculous email (which so far, I haven’t gotten, praise Allah!) written by a rightwing blogger who posts the famous “Joker” picture of Obama on his home page.

It’s clear from the tone of FactCheck’s response that even they consider these lies over the top.

Our inbox has been overrun with messages asking us to weigh in on a mammoth list of claims about the House health care bill. The chain e-mail purports to give “a few highlights” from the first half of the bill, but the list of 48 assertions is filled with falsehoods, exaggerations and misinterpretations. We examined each of the e-mail’s claims, finding 26 of them to be false and 18 to be misleading, only partly true or half true. Only four are accurate…

This chain e-mail claims to give a run-down of what’s in the House health care bill, H.R. 3200. Instead, it shows evidence of a reading comprehension problem on the part of the author.

Ouch, FactCheck! But right on. We also like what they had to say about the ridiculous nod-nod-wink-wink campaign against ACORN. ACORN is an advocacy group for the poor that mainly deals with such issues as predatory lending but was portrayed as something else entirely during the last election. The misrepresentation evidently continues in the notorious email.

It claims that a section about “Community-based Home Medical Services” means “more payoffs for ACORN.” ACORN does not provide medical home services. The e-mail interprets any reference to the word “community” to be some kind of payoff for ACORN. That’s nonsense.

If you got the email, get over to FactCheck.org. Hit the “Share” icon at the top of the page and send the assessment to whoever sent you that piece of rubbish, and everyone else on their address list as well.

Nearly 8 in 10 Americans support a federal health insurance plan for those who can’t afford or can’t get private insurance, but only 37 percent define “public option” correctly, a new national poll found.

The majority of people polled — 86 percent — say insurance should be available to everyone regardless of health history.

And:

…79 percent say they believe a federal government health insurance option should be available for people to buy.

*  Update: To be clear, the survey was paid for by AARP but the survey group of 1,000 Democratic, Republican and independent voters was not limited to AARP members. According to this pdf, the age range of those polled was 61 percent 49 years old and younger, and 39 percent 50 years old and older.

On the downside, the poll, which was sponsored by the AARP and endorsed by Charlie Cook, whose reputation for non-partisanship is unchallenged — read: he leans to the right — found that about a quarter of people confuse the “public option” with single-payer national health plans like those offered by every leading democracy but the United States.

It is likely that most of those who are confused about reform plans are Fox News watchers. A poll released last week found that about three-quarters of Fox watchers believed Republican disinformation and lies about health-insurance reform — including 72 percent who believed illegal aliens would be covered, 79 percent who were convinced that reforms are a government takeover, 69 percent who were sure abortions were covered and a whopping 75 percent who believe in fictitious “death panels” that would order the euthanizing of the elderly and infirm.

Other findings in the AARP poll include:

• More than half of those polled want health insurance reform, but 64 percent don’t want to pay more taxes to expand health coverage to the uninsured.

• Among those with health insurance, 74 percent say they are not willing to pay higher premiums.

• Almost three-quarters of people polled believe employers who don’t provide health insurance should be required to make a contribution to a fund to help uninsured employees purchase their own plan.

• Almost 70 percent of those polled believe in looking for savings in Medicare to pay for health care reform.

In the bigger picture, these poll results illustrate that the Republicans and their masters in the health-insurance lobby have played their hands masterfully — albeit dangerously, in that they have allowed and even encouraged violence to charge the atmosphere of the debate.

There is, of course, a bizarre aspect to the GOP strategy. They have ginned up the anger in their base to the point that extremists are ready to go to war — to soak the roots of the tree of liberty with the blood of government officials and themselves — in order to preserve trillions of dollars in profits for health plans.

Democrats still have a short window of time after the recess to reframe the debate, and while these results are encouraging, time is not on the side of reform.

During the public comment period of a town hall in Iowa this week led by Republican Sen. Charles Grassley, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, an elderly veteran took the microphone and called for violence against the president and the United States government:

“The president of the United States, that’s who you should be concerned about. Because he’s acting like a little Hitler,” said Tom Eisenhower, a World War II veteran. “I’d take a gun to Washington if enough of you would go with me.”

Grassley — whose oath of office includes swearing fealty to the Constitution and thus the government, and who lives in Washington — pointedly did not disassociate himself from Eisenhower’s call to arms against the government. Instead, the senator responded with faint praise of Pres. Obama followed by a long, rambling spin through RNC talking points that included a laundry list of wrongs the president has perpetrated on the country in the scant seven months he’s been in office.

Among these complaints, a good many were actually perpetrated by Obama’s predecessor. In particular, it is rich that Grassley decried the “Federal Reserve dropping money out of airplanes,” when it was the Bush Administration that, in 2003, shrink-wrapped $100 bills in bundles and then flew 281 million notes weighing 363 tons — $12 billion — into Iraq, where it disappeared forever.

Sen. Grassley was the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee at the time, and never lifted a finger to investigate what is likely the biggest single-shot intra-government heist in world history.

But Grassley’s failure to distance himself from a call for destruction of the government is practically statesmanlike compared to the praise Rep. Wally Herger (R-Calif.) heaped upon a man at a town hall meeting last week who described himself as a “right-wing terrorist.”

“God bless you,” Herger responded. “There goes a great American.” Through a spokesperson, Herger has refused to apologize for endorsing terrorism.

These and other Republican pols are playing with fire. Their silence in response to calls of violence by extremists in their base is de facto assent to the threats — and their assent is now in the public record.