Over at Daily Kos, Jesse “Ministry of Truth” LaGreca is infuriated that RedState’s Erick Erickson would proclaim on the radio that “watching that hippy protester get tazed [at Occupy DC]  just made my day.”

He wrote, “Eric [sic] Erickson gleefully illustrated yesterday that the only thing that truly makes conservatives happy is watching someone else suffer. Since Conservative policies are causing 99% of us to suffer, they have a lot to be happy about these days. Dear CNN, do you find police brutality in America 'Hilarious'? If you don't, why would you employ Erick Erickson?"

Naturally, Jesse thinks MSNBC is much, much more dignified in its rhetoric than CNN or Fox News. (Don't hurt yourself as you fall down laughing.) He taunted Erickson, and urged the launch of a thousand hostile tweets:

You are cheering the suffering of others. Last I checked, that makes Sweet Baby Jesus cry.

This is why Republicans, despite their blather, totally suck at upholding the constitution and protecting Americans, they are too busy undermining the government so special interests can exploit Americans, but ooh, look, I have a flag lapel pin! Shiny!

Imagine if I went on MSNBC and said something truly horrible, something totally indefensible, maybe something about enjoying the suffering of my fellow countrymen. I don't think they would ever invite me on again. Well at CNN they give you a paycheck for that. And at Fox News they run you for President. (Italics his)

The thing I take away from watching GOP debates is that the only thing conservatives can cheer for in America anymore is for the things that conservatives like, and a boot stamping on the face of the people they hate. A banker stamping on your fingers as you try to climb the economic ladder, that's the modern conservative movement. (Bolding mine.)

Republicans cheer the death penalty. They cheer for torture. That creeps me out. Now it is getting obvious that Republicans don't just cheer cruelty, they get off on it.

So here's a New Rule: If your first reaction to any human suffering is to cheer, you don't get to complain about Hitler ever again.

His twitter handle is @ewerickson. Dear Anonymous, do your worst.

If only the Democrats had decided to socialize the food industry or housing, Romneycare would probably still be viewed as a massive triumph for conservative free-market principles — as it was at the time.

It's not as if we had a beautifully functioning free market in health care until Gov. Mitt Romney came along and wrecked it by requiring that Massachusetts residents purchase their own health insurance. In 2007, when Romneycare became law, the federal government alone was already picking up the tab for 45.4 percent of all health care expenditures in the country.

Until Obamacare, mandatory private health insurance was considered the free-market alternative to the Democrats' piecemeal socialization of the entire medical industry.

In November 2004, for example, libertarian Ronald Bailey praised mandated private health insurance in Reason magazine, saying that it "could preserve and extend the advantages of a free market with a minimal amount of coercion."

A leading conservative think tank, The Heritage Foundation, helped design Romneycare, and its health care analyst, Bob Moffit, flew to Boston for the bill signing.

 Romneycare was also supported by Regina Herzlinger, Harvard Business School professor and health policy analyst for the conservative Manhattan Institute. Herzlinger praised Romneycare for making consumers, not business or government, the primary purchasers of health care.

 The bill passed by 154-2 in the Massachusetts House and unanimously, 37-0, in the Massachusetts Senate — including the vote of Sen. Scott Brown, who won Teddy Kennedy's seat in the U.S. Senate in January 2010 by pledging to be the "41st vote against Obamacare."

 But because both Obamacare and Romneycare concern the same general topic area — health care — and can be nicknamed (politician's name plus "care"), Romney's health care bill is suddenly perceived as virtually the same thing as the widely detested Obamacare. (How about "Romneycare-gate"?)

 As The New York Times put it, "Mr. Romney's bellicose opposition to 'Obamacare' is an almost comical contradiction to his support for the same idea in Massachusetts when he was governor there." This is like saying state school-choice plans are "the same idea" as the Department of Education.

 One difference between the health care bills is that Romneycare is constitutional and Obamacare is not. True, Obamacare's unconstitutional provisions are the least of its horrors, but the Constitution still matters to some Americans. (Oh, to be there when someone at the Times discovers this document called "the Constitution"!)

 As Rick Santorum has pointed out, states can enact all sorts of laws — including laws banning contraception — without violating the Constitution. That document places strict limits on what Congress can do, not what the states can do. Romney, incidentally, has always said his plan would be a bad idea nationally.

 The only reason the "individual mandate" has become a malediction is because the legal argument against Obamacare is that Congress has no constitutional authority to force citizens to buy a particular product.

 The legal briefs opposing Obamacare argue that someone sitting at home, minding his own business, is not engaged in "commerce … among the several states," and, therefore, Congress has no authority under the Commerce Clause to force people to buy insurance.

 No one is claiming that the Constitution gives each person an unalienable right not to buy insurance.

States have been forcing people to do things from the beginning of the republic: drilling for the militia, taking blood tests before marriage, paying for public schools, registering property titles and waiting in line for six hours at the Department of Motor Vehicles in order to drive.

 There's no obvious constitutional difference between a state forcing militia-age males to equip themselves with guns and a state forcing adults in today's world to equip themselves with health insurance.

 The hyperventilating over government-mandated health insurance confuses a legal argument with a policy objection.

 If Obamacare were a one-page bill that did nothing but mandate that every American buy health insurance, it would still be unconstitutional, but it wouldn't be the godawful train wreck that it is. It wouldn't even be the godawful train wreck that high-speed rail is.

 It would not be a 2,000-page, trillion-dollar federal program micromanaging every aspect of health care in America with enormous, unresponsive federal bureaucracies manned by no-show public-sector union members enforcing a mountain of regulations that will bankrupt the country and destroy medical care, as liberals scratch their heads and wonder why Obamacare is costing 20 times more than they expected and doctors are leaving the profession in droves for more lucrative careers, such as video store clerk.

 Nothing good has ever come of a 2,000-page bill.

 There's not much governors can do about the collectivist mess Congress has made of health care in this country. They are mere functionaries in the federal government's health care Leviathan.

 A governor can't repeal or expand the federal tax break given to companies that pay their employees' health insurance premiums — a tax break denied the self-employed and self-insured.

 A governor can't order the IRS to start recognizing tax deductions for individual health savings accounts.

 A governor can't repeal the 1946 federal law essentially requiring hospitals to provide free medical services to all comers, thus dumping a free-rider problem on the states.

 It was precisely this free-rider problem that Romneycare was designed to address in the only way a governor can. In addition to mandating that everyone purchase health insurance, Romneycare used the $1.2 billion that the state was already spending on medical care for the uninsured to subsidize the purchase of private health insurance for those who couldn't afford it.

 What went wrong with Romneycare wasn't a problem in the bill, but a problem in Massachusetts: Democrats.

 First, the overwhelmingly Democratic legislature set the threshold for receiving a subsidy so that it included people making just below the median income in the United States, a policy known as "redistribution of income." For more on this policy, see "Marx, Karl."

 Then, liberals destroyed the group-rate, "no frills" private insurance plans allowed under Romneycare (i.e. the only kind of health insurance a normal person would want to buy, but which is banned in most states) by adding dozens of state mandates, including requiring insurers to cover chiropractors and in vitro fertilization — a policy known as "pandering to lobbyists."

 For more on "pandering" and "lobbyists," see "Gingrich, Newt." (Yes, that's an actual person's name.)
 Romney's critics, such as Rick Santorum, charge that the governor should have known that Democrats would wreck whatever reforms he attempted.

 They have, but no more than they would have wrecked health care in Massachusetts without Romneycare. Democrats could use a sunny day as an excuse to destroy the free market, redistribute income and pander to lobbyists. Does that mean Republicans should never try to reform anything and start denouncing sunny days?

 Santorum has boasted of his role in passing welfare reform in the 1990s. You know what the Democrats' 2009 stimulus bill dismantled? That's right: the welfare reform that passed in the 1990s.

 The problem isn't health insurance mandates. The problem isn't Romneycare. The problem isn't welfare reform. The problem is Democrats.

Oh joy.

Today at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, in response to the Congressional Budget Office's release today of an awful 10-year baseline outlook, Andrew Taylor made sure that his first paragraph was only about the projected "dip" in the fiscal 2012 deficit, and dedicated his second paragraph to the bad things that will happen if "the Bush tax cuts" are extended and Congress fails to live within "tight" spending "caps" (when did those happen?). Towards the end he spoke of the deficit-cutting wonders ending "the Bush tax cuts" might bring about. What follows are the first two paragraphs of Taylor's report, followed by the "Bush tax cut" passage:

---

Federal budget deficit to dip to $1.1T, CBO says

The government will run a $1.1 trillion deficit in the fiscal year that ends in September, a slight dip from last year but still very high by any measure, according to a budget report released Tuesday.

The Congressional Budget Office report also says that annual deficits will remain in the $1 trillion range for the next several years if Bush-era tax cuts slated to expire in December are extended, as commonly assumed – and if Congress is unable to live within the tight "caps" the lawmakers themselves placed on agency budgets last year.

… The CBO report shows that the deficit dilemma would largely be solved if the tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 – and renewed in 2010 through the end of this year – were allowed to lapse. Under that scenario, the deficit would drop to $585 billion in 2013 and to $220 billion in 2017.

But expiration of those tax cuts would slam the economy, CBO said, bringing growth down to a paltry 1.1 percent next year. However, the economy would quickly rebound in 2014 and beyond.

Really? Taylor does not explain exactly why that would happen, especially given the track record of how tax increases (which is what ending "the Bush tax cuts" really amounts to) fail to bring in the anticipated extra tax collections static analysis (which is primarily what CBO does, assuming no behavior change as a result of higher rates) would predict. The reason they don't is that growth (i.e., the "rebound") ends up being less than what was expected.

Taylor conveys far more certainty about the outcome than is warranted in the circumstances.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.

New York magazine political reporter John Heilemann proclaimed the obvious as he discussed media bias: "No person with eyes in his head in 2008 could have failed to see the way that soft coverage helped to propel Obama first to the Democratic nomination and then into the White House. But in the course of the past three years, reporters, as is their wont, have arrived at a more measured (and even jaundiced) view of him. Let’s hope that means that in this fall’s horse race, both ponies get ridden equally hard."

Heilemann thinks that "the press may help keep Gingrich on life support into the spring," because he knows how to play the press game and be interesting. Mitt Romney, by contrast, is already in trouble with the journalists:

Most plainly, there is the media’s antipathy to the kind of disciplined, unspontaneous, inaccessible campaign that Romney is running. Also to the fact that, hey, let’s face it, he’s not exactly a Roman candle of a candidate. Then there is the temperamental gorge that separates him from most journalists. “Reporters are the kids in the back of the classroom, throwing spitballs,” says Lewis. “McCain would be sitting back there, too, saying, ‘I’m not listening to this B.S.,’ and so would Gingrich. Romney is the guy sitting up in front, raising his hand to every question. Reporters listen to Arcade Fire; Romney listens to the Carpenters and Donny and Marie.”

Honk if you find it unlikely that old political hands like Dan Balz of The Washington Post are jamming to the Arcade Fire on their i-Pod (or that Gingrich does). While it's true that Romney very safely listed the Beatles as his i-Pod favorite to NBC's Jamie Gangel, Heilemann's trying to imply Romney is stale and kitschy. He failed to notice how that back-of-the-bus-buddy routine ultimately worked out for McCain! He continued:

The suspicion of Romney is even deeper than that, however. Ever since his run in 2008, when his contortions on various issues earned him his reputation as an inveterate flip-flopper, the members of the ­media—and his rivals, then and ­today—have regarded him as a phony, his candidacy based on, as Smith puts it, “some ­really brittle half-truths about his consistency.” But now there is a creeping sense that he may be something worse; that on a range of issues, notably his finances, Romney is making claims that may be less than fully truthful. This perception may or may not be fair, but trust me, it is ­growing—and problematic. Much as the press enjoys poking at phoniness, it absolutely relishes demolishing a liar.

Fox News's Ed Henry challenged White House Press Secretary Jay Carney during a Tuesday briefing over the growing controversy surrounding the Obama administration's move on January 20 to force most employers to cover sterilization, abortion-inducing drugs, and contraceptives in their health care policies without co-pay. This new federal mandate would force Catholic institutions, like hospitals and schools, to decide whether to obey it or follow the Church's teachings against contraception.

Anchor Megyn Kelly trumpeted that "this is turning into a big deal, and the White House… [is] saying they believe they have struck the appropriate balance…the Catholic Church…saying, how is it the appropriate balance to delay…the time at which we'd have to violate our consciences?"  [video clip below the jump] The Big Three networks, on the other hand, have all but ignored the issue during the past 11 days. Only CBS This Morning on Tuesday briefly mentioned the growing controversy.

CBS anchor Charlie Rose noted  "a headline in USA Today says Catholics blast federal birth control mandate….The Obama administration says large religious institutions will have to include birth control in their employees' health care plans."

Just before the bottom of the 2 pm Eastern hour of Fox News's America Live, Kelley spotlighted how "priests during Mass this past Sunday read letters aloud from the pulpit, talking about how this [the new HHS mandate] infringes on religious freedom." The anchor continued by playing a clip from the exchange between White House correspondent Ed Henry and Carney. Henry raised the issue with a strongly-worded question [for video of the full exchange between Henry and Carney and expanded coverage of the controversy, read this article by Fred Lucas of CNSNews.com, a division of the Media Research Center]:

HENRY: …[M]y question would be, how does the administration justify having the federal government institute a law that basically forces people to violate their religious beliefs?

CARNEY: That misrepresents actually-
 
HENRY: How so?
 
CARNEY: What the decision about the implementation of the Affordable Care Act-
 
HENRY: How does that misrepresent-
 
CARNEY:  Well, let me answer. The decision was made, as we have said in the past- and Secretary Sebelius has said- after very careful consideration, and the administration believes that this proposal strikes the appropriate balance between respecting religious beliefs and increasing access to important preventive services. We will continue to work closely with religious groups during this transitional period to discuss their concerns.

It's important- to go to your point- that this approach does not signal any change at all in the administration's policy on conscience protections. The President and this administration have previously expressed strong support for existing conscience protections, including those relating to health care providers. That support continues. I also would just note that our robust partnerships with the Catholic Church and other communities of faith will continue. The administration has provided over $2 billion to Catholic organizations over the past three years, in addition to numerous nonfinancial partnerships that promote healthy communities and serve the common good.

Kelly then remarked that Carney's remarks were "clearly a written response that [he] was reading and had prepared. I mean, this is turning into a big deal, and the White House apparently knows it….So you can see the White House responding, saying they believe they have struck the appropriate balance…the Catholic Church had already spoken to that last week, saying, how is it the appropriate balance to delay, by eight months to a year, the time at which we'd have to violate our consciences?"

Even with the statement from Carney, and his exchange with Henry, the Big Three networks ignored the story completely on their evening news broadcasts on Tuesday. However, on CBS Evening News, Scott Pelley found time for a news brief on a recent recall of oral contraceptives by the drug maker Pfizer.

On Tuesday morning, Mollie Hemingway of GetReligion.org blog documented how the controversy was "surprisingly undercovered on Sunday and Monday" by the wider media. Hemingway ripped ABC News's online coverage of the issue, but complimented the "great piece" by CNN. She also made the following conclusion about the paltry coverage so far:

Obviously there are people in the Obama administration and elsewhere who believe in birth control, sterilization and abortifacient insurance coverage mandates and, further, that religious exemptions to these mandates are wrong. That's an important part of the story and one that has been fairy well covered. But underplaying how seriously the Catholic Church, its leaders and other religious groups are taking this is a disservice to readers of all persuasions.

Did the New York Times learn nothing about rushing to judgement and presumption of innocence from its Duke lacrosse “rape” hoax debacle?

More than any other media outlet, in 2006 the Times trumpeted black stripper's Crystal Mangum's rape accusations against three white Duke lacrosse players, accusations that quickly fell apart in a mass of contradictions and shifting stories.

Yet even as the case fell apart and other liberal media outlets backed away, the Times issued a now-notorious, error-riddled 5,000-word lead story by Duff Wilson, concluding that there was enough evidence against the players for Michael Nifong, the soon-to-be-disgraced-and-jailed local prosecutor, to bring the case to trial.

Perhaps most atrocious was former columnist Selena Roberts, who continued to smear the innocent Duke lacrosse players even after they had been all but formally cleared of assault.

Now, the Times has another college sports expose from another bastion of privilege, Yale University. Richard Perez-Pena’s Friday bombshell, based on anonymous sources speaking on confidential complaints, involves an informal campus accusation of sexual assault against Yale quarterback Patrick Witt, who made good-news headlines last fall for turning down the chance to becoming a Rhodes scholar to play against Yale’s arch-rival Harvard in "The Game."

On Nov. 13, Patrick J. Witt, Yale University’s star quarterback, announced that he had withdrawn his Rhodes scholarship application and would instead play against Harvard six days later, at the very time of the required Rhodes interview. His apparent choice of team fealty over individual honor capped weeks of admiring national attention on this accomplished student and his quandary.

But Witt was no longer a contender for the Rhodes, a rare honor reserved for those who excel in academics, activities and character. Several days earlier, according to people involved on both sides of the process, the Rhodes Trust had learned through unofficial channels that a fellow student had accused Witt of sexual assault. The Rhodes Trust informed Yale and Witt that his candidacy was suspended unless the university decided to re-endorse it.

Witt’s accuser has not gone to the police, nor filed what Yale considers a formal complaint. The New York Times has not spoken with her and does not know her name.

After waiting (as WP columnist Kathleen Parker notes) until paragraph 11 to note the accusations are anonymous, and paragraph 14 to admit “Many aspects of the situation remain unknown,” Perez-Pena used Witt’s membership in a controversial frat as part of the character assassination: “Last year, Yale overhauled its systems for handling such complaints and imposed a five-year ban on campus activities by a fraternity, Delta Kappa Epsilon, whose members and pledges had engaged in highly publicized episodes of sexual harassment. Witt was a member of that fraternity and lived in its off-campus house.”

As part of the smear Perez-Pena even added “two minor arrests” on Witt’s record, one for creating a public disturbance and the other for entering a residence hall without permission, nightly occurrences in college towns. (In similar fashion, the Times slimed the entire Duke lacrosse team for such chilling crimes as public urination and violating noise ordinances.)

Brooklyn College history professor K.C. Johnson, who led the charge in spotlighting the Times’s disgraceful treatment of the innocent Duke University lacrosse, has condemned Perez-Pena’s reporting, which he calls character assassination, in a series of articles at Minding the Campus. Johnson wrote: “In an ideal world, Richard Perez-Pena and the New York Times would have been subjected to widespread condemnation, even shame, for the character-assassination frame the paper gave to the Patrick Witt story.”

An earlier Johnson post revealed what he considered the story’s smear strategy.

Will the paper ever get around to giving former Yale quarterback Patrick Witt an apology? With a few days perspective, it's become clear that the Times' mishandling of the Witt story was, in two specific ways, even worse than originally believed.

First, Times reporter Richard Pérez-Peña strongly implied (though he carefully avoided ever coming out and saying so specifically) that Witt had withdrawn from Yale. In fact, according to a statement issued by a representative of the student, Witt has finished all academic requirements except for his senior thesis, and is off-campus this semester training for the NFL draft, as are many talented college football seniors.

Second, in what could only be deemed a deliberate attempt to smear Witt's character, Pérez-Peña devoted more than eight percent of his article (163 of 1956 words) to discussing what he termed "two minor arrests" in Witt's past. But the paper didn't even attempt to claim that these matters had any bearing on the article's ostensible topic–the suspension of Witt's Rhodes application. Negative insinuations, it seems, were all the news that was fit to print.
 

Witt’s camp responded via email the day the story appeared denying a connection between his Rhodes scholarship withdrawal and the assault accusation. 

Sad thing is, Ed Schultz thinks he's being clever.

Schultz repeatedly mispronounced the last name of Fox News' Steve Doocy on "The Ed Show" last night, saying it as "douch-y" instead of "DO-see" through indifference to accuracy or a sense of humor stuck in his high school locker room. (video after page break)

In what passes for Schultz digging deep, the MSNBC host was criticizing Doocy for citing new research that describes Fox News as most balanced network in its coverage of the 2012 presidential campaign –

SCHULTZ: And in "Psycho Talk" tonight, Steve Doocy insists Fox News is the most unbiased network around. As proof, Doocy proudly pointed to a study from the Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University on press coverage of the 2012 presidential race.

DOOCY (from "Fox & Friends"): Interestingly enough, the most negative press comes from NBC. They have 73 percent negative to 27 percent positive stories about the race. Meanwhile, the most balanced coverage? Fox, 52 percent positive, 48 percent negative. So, fair and balanced not only a slogan, we actually live by it.

SCHULTZ (guffawing): I've shown you over and over again how fair and unbalanced Fox is.

This from a man who threatened to "torch this f***ing place" in a fit of pique after MSNBC gave him insufficiently reverent placement in a network promo. More aptly-dubbed psycho talk from the master –

SCHULTZ: Like when Eric Bolling accused "The Muppets" movie of trying to brainwash kids with an anti-capitalistic, liberal agenda.

The same Eric Bolling who bought Schultz a drink last summer at a Manhattan steakhouse, followed by Schultz thanking him and talking with Bolling for 15 minutes, followed months later by Schultz vehemently denying he had ever spoken to Bolling.

Continuing his ridicule of Doocy and Fox, Schultz then cited an "expert" who "weighed in on Bolling's accusation" — Miss Piggy. Fox News cites George Mason University, Schultz cites the Muppets, each keenly aware of their respective audience –

MISS PIGGY (at mock press conference): It's almost as laughable as accusing Fox News of, you know, being news.

SCHULTZ: I mean, even Miss Piggy is talking about how biased Fox News is, so obviously there's something fishy going on with this study that Doocy's talking about.

Or as Schultz actually said it, "something fishy going on with this study that Douchy's talking about."

Imagine, if you will, Schultz's openly gay MSNBC colleague Rachel Maddow marrying a woman who shares Doocy's last name and Maddow deciding to take Doocy as her last name. And imagine the uproar among liberals and feminists if a prominent media conservative denigrated Rachel "Douchy" for promoting her "fishy" agenda. The fire from those effigies would truly light the world.

MSNBC booted Schultz for a week last spring after he maligned Laura Ingraham as a "right-wing slut" and "talk slut." It's worth remembering that MSNBC did this after Schultz make his hateful remarks on his radio show — not on MSNBC.

Having paid for his misogyny in the past, Schultz now tries to fly under the radar with it. 

On Tuesday, for the second time in two weeks, CNN's Soledad O'Brien insisted that President Bush, not President Obama, is the "food stamp president" – even though data show her argument is ridiculous.

On January 19, O'Brien had opened up that "it was George Bush who was the food stamp president." Then on Tuesday, she stated that Bush oversaw a greater percent increase of food stamp recipients than Obama has, and thus was more deserving of the title "food stamp president."

However, the number of Americans on food stamps reached an all time high in September of 2011 – during President Obama's tenure – as almost 46.3 million Americans, or 14.83 percent of the estimated U.S. population, received food stamps, according to data from the Census Bureau and the Department of Agriculture (USDA).

And while the number of Americans on food stamps increased until the end of Bush's term, that number did not decrease or remain static under Obama. Rather, both the number of food stamp recipients and the percentage of the U.S. population on food stamps ballooned during Obama's time in office, as the graph below demonstrates.

The percentage of Americans on food stamps hovered around nine percent from 2005-2008, but then increased every year from 2009 through 2011. Between the fiscal years 2009 and 2010, the number jumped from 10.9 percent to 13 percent.

And according to data as late as October, the percentage of Americans on food stamps stood at 14.8 percent – an increase of over 4 percentage points from the January, 2009 amount.

In contrast, that number grew about the same amount during eight years of President Bush – over double the number of years Obama has held office. Around 6 percent of Americans benefitted from SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) at the outset of Bush's term, and that number climbed over eight years to 10.4 percent in January of 2009.

The number of Americans on food stamps also increased by a similar amount between the two presidents, as about 14.7 million Americans were added to SNAP under eight years of President Bush while 14.2 million were added in less than half that time under President Obama.

Almost 32 million Americans were on food stamps in January of 2009, but that number jumped to over 46.2 million in September of 2011.

"[Y]ou have said also that he [Obama] has increased food stamps 41 percent," O'Brien lectured Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) on Tuesday. "And I know that you know that actually the bigger increase was under President Bush, right? This is under President Obama. But it went up 65 percent under President Bush," she stated.

"So explain to me why the food stamp president thing is a strategy when really the percentagewise is bigger increase – no one calls President Bush the food stamp president, right?" she challenged West.  

West retorted that it is "very apropo" to report an increase in food stamps under President Obama, and attacked his jobs record.

"The state of Florida is 9.9 percent foreclosures. The amount of storefronts, our small businesses that are closing up. So it is very, I think, very apropo, to say that we have seen an increase in the food stamp recipients. We've seen an increase of 16 to 17 percent increase of poverty roles as well," he maintained.

A transcript of the segment, which aired on January 31 at 7:07 a.m. EST, is as follows:

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Let me ask you another question. Newt Gingrich, as you know – and we spoke about this the last time we were in person, called President Obama the food stamp president. And then you have said also that he has increased food stamps 41 percent. And I know that you know that actually the bigger increase was under President Bush, right? This is under President Obama. But it went up 65 percent under President Bush. So explain to me why the food stamp president thing is a strategy when really the percentagewise is bigger increase — no one calls President Bush the food stamp president, right?

Rep. ALLEN WEST (R-Fla.): Well, no one called him the food stamp president, but I do remember people throwing eggs at his inaugural car and they called him many other different names. Look, let's be very honest. Down here in south Florida we have a high level of unemployment. The state of Florida is 9.9 percent foreclosures. The amount of storefronts, our small businesses that are closing up. So it is very, I think, very apropo, to say that we have seen an increase in the food stamp recipients. We've seen an increase of 16 to 17 percent increase of poverty roles as well.

We're not going in the right direction, Soledad. We have had an increase of our debt under President Obama more than from President George Washington to right up to President Bill Clinton, almost $5 trillion. But yet we're not hearing any plan of how we're going to reduce this debt or deficit. You didn't even hear it mentioned during the State of the Union address. The health care law is destroying our businesses. I sit on the Small Business Committee. I talk to these business owners down here. That's exactly what they're saying. So I want to see a different vision for this country.
 

A shocking YouTube video (uploaded by someone not friendly to the Tea Party) shows Memphis talk radio host Thaddeus Matthews insulting and humiliating Republican congressional candidate Charlotte Bergmann on air.

 [Video embedded after page break]