Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) said that he supports a Georgia plan of making people, who are receiving unemployment benefits (which they paid into while employed), to work for free.

(Source: RawStory.com and Fox News)

During a campaign stop in southern California yesterday, Rep. Michele Bachmann parroted Newt Gingrich and falsely claimed that Wall Street Reform was killing the banking industry: “And not only repealing Obamacare, also repealing Dodd-Frank, which is killing the banking industry. I’ve got the bill to repeal both of them.”

In reality, bank profits rose substantially in the first quarter of the year, with banks showing the biggest profits since before the recession. Things were sunny in the second quarter as well:

• Profits at JPMorgan Chase, the nation’s second largest bank, were up 13 percent.
• Third-largest Citigroup’s profits soared 23 percent.
• Fourth-largest Wells Fargo’s profits shot up 29 percent.
• Fifth-largest Goldman Sachs, meanwhile, “disappointed investors” when it merely “more than doubled its profits.”
• Sixth-largest Morgan Stanley’s profits were up an impressive 17 percent.

(Source:ThinkProgress.org)

Tea Partiers are famous for embracing tentherism, the belief that everything from Social Security to Medicare to child labor laws to the Affordable Care Act violates the Constitution. Here is a montage of prominent Republicans and Tea Partiers wanting to end numerous programs.

(Source: ThinkProgress.org)

Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley said Thursday that Republicans were opposed to any plan proposed by President Barack Obama that could lead to job creation.

“I firmly believe that Republicans in Congress, driven by a concerted group, have decided that it is not in their party’s political interest to have the president succeed at creating any jobs,” he said at a breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor. “And I believe therefore they will do their very best to deny him any victories that could lead to job creation or a speedier recovery.”

“I don’t think there is another rational explanation for much of their opposition,” O’Malley added.

(Source: ThinkProgress.org)

Congresswoman Jackie Speier (D-CA) on the House floor Wednesday called on Congress to do something about the pervasive problem of sexual harassment and rape that in the U.S. military.

“I rise today, as I have done virtually every week, to tell a story of a man or woman in the military who has been raped,” she said. “Nineteen thousand are raped every year in the military, only 13 percent report the rapes, because there has been such an ineffective addressing of this issue.”

“It is time for us to act, we have known of this problem for over sixteen years. We have had eighteen years of reporting on this issue and yet nothing changes.”

(Source: RawStory.com

Ron Paul was booed at the CNN/Tea Party Republican debate after correctly saying that al Qaeda did not attack the United States because “we’re free,” but because of U.S. military operations in the Middle East, occupation in Saudi Arabia and the nation’s “unfair” treatment of Palestinians. Fox News reported this in 2004: Admitting for the first time that he ordered the Sept. 11 attacks, bin Laden said he did so because of injustices against the Lebanese and Palestinians by Israel and the United States.

“Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda have been explicit, and they wrote and said that we attacked because you had bases on our holy lands in Saudi Arabia, you do not give Palestinians a fair treatment,” Paul said before being interrupted by more boos. “I didn’t say that, I’m just trying to get you to understand what the motive was behind the bombings.”

(Source: RawStory.com)

Former Democratic Senator Bob Graham on Monday called on the U.S. government to reopen its investigation into 9/11 after a report found that links between Saudi Arabia and the hijackers were never disclosed by the FBI to the 2002 joint Congressional intelligence committee investigating the attacks.

“I believe these are questions for which there are definitive answers, but the American people and largely their elected representatives have been denied that information.”

(Source; MSNBC and RawStory.com)

Speaking to reporters after touring a Boeing plant in South Carolina Monday, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney pledged to block unions from contributing dues to political campaigns (but supports corporations giving money to Republican candidates).

The candidate added that he had “no problem with unions.”

(Source: RawStory.com)

Charles Kurzman, a University of North Carolina professor of sociology, is the author of a new book titled The Missing Martyrs: Why There Are So Few Muslim Terrorists. in a recent interview, he stated that “Muslim American terrorist plots have killed since 9/11 — since the 3,000 killed on 9/11 — have killed 33 individuals in the United States since that time.”

“Over that same period of time, there have been more than 150,000 murders in the United States, or 14 or 15,000 murders every year. Muslim American terrorism, then, has been a very small, very low percentage of the overall violence in the United States.”

(Source: ThinkProgress.org)

Gov. Nikki Haley (R) told the Lexington Rotary Club Thursday that she wants South Carolinians to undergo drug screenings before they can receive unemployment benefits. “I so want drug testing,” she said. “I so want it.” Gov. Haley offered no proof that unemployed people use drugs more than employed people.