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Change in the GOP’s unfavorability ratings, according to a new CNN poll in which 59% of respondents said they have an unfavorable opinion of the Republican party, while 35% were still favorable. The numbers were more even for Democrats, with 52% of those polled saying they view the party favorably and 43% seeing it unfavorably. The response to the tea party movement was, as would be expected, the strangest, with 37% seeing it favorably, 45% unfavorably, an astounding 7% reporting that they never heard of it, and 11% withholding any opinion.

There is good news about the economy — the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has reported that the federal budget deficit is reducing even more quickly than had been projected– so, naturally, it is being spun by Fox News as bad news: Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade reacted to a new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) [...]

It seemed to come as a great shock when it was recently revealed that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) examines some taxpayers more closely than others. Really? Because no one has ever objected to the IRS targeting some tax returns for audit. Among them: Millionaires (in fiscal 2011, the IRS audited 12.5% of them) People [...]

You don’t want the IRS ever being perceived to be biased and anything less than neutral in terms of how they operate. I’ve got no patience with it, I will not tolerate it and we will make sure we find out exactly what happened on this.

— President Obama, at a news conference.

CBS News headline: “Recharged tea party demands justice in IRS targeting scandal” In public, tea party activists and pundits and the lobbyists who fund them may be expressing outrage over the admission by the IRS that it has targeted tea party groups over their claims of nonprofit status, but away from the cameras and microphones, [...]

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), the founding chair of the Tea Party Caucus in Congress, is facing investigations into multiple charges of corruption related to what the Daily Beast called her “faceplant” presidential run in 2012. Nonetheless, Bachmann chose to prove this week that she is not a pariah among her extreme right-wing colleagues by relaunching [...]

Just four months after Florida’s experiment in Jim Crow style voter suppression failed — the restrictive new laws actually drove up turnout rather than depressing it, which helped deliver the state to Pres. Obama in a 0.88 percentage point squeaker — North Carolina Republicans who now control all branches of government have proposed a slate [...]

PR’s own Buck nominated Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (GOP/Tea) for the “Really Trying Way Too Hard” Hall of Fame after Rubio told the gossip site TMZ that his favorite songs of all-time are NWA’s “Straight Outta Compton,” Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” and Tupac’s “Killuminati.” The likely 2016 Republican presidential candidate, recently dubbed by Time Magazine the [...]

$11,000

Annual income for a family of three that tea party Gov. Rick Scott of Florida considers too high to receive Medicaid assistance. In addition, single people of any income level are automatically excluded.

In the 2010 tea party wave election, Republicans took over both houses of the North Carolina legislature for the first time in 140 years. Last November, the tea party completed its takeover with the election of Republican Pat McCrory as governor. Since then, Democrats and progressive independents have watched in muted horror as the Tar [...]