Capitol Hill’s Most Unhinged Republicans

Fools on the Hill: A scorecard.

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Read the quotes behind the chart here. See a list of the 111th Congress’ dumbest bills here.

MEMBERS OF
CONGRESS

Health Care Obama Hysteria Flirting with Birthers Red Baiting Nazi Baiting Climate Cluelessness Writing Dumb Bills

IN HIS/HER OWN WORDS

Rep. John Shimkus
(Illinois)

X         X  

“If we decrease the use of carbon dioxide, are we not taking away plant food from the atmosphere?…All our good intentions could be for vain.”

Rep. Joe Barton
(Texas)

X         X X

“Wouldn’t it be ironic if in the interest of global warming we mandated massive switches to [wind] energy, which is a finite resource, which slows the winds down, which causes the temperature to go up?…It’s just something to think about.”

Rep. Bill Posey
(Florida)

    X     X X

“I could easily fill up a page listing all the activities an American needs to show their ID for…everything from playing youth soccer to getting a driver’s license, buying cigarettes and alcohol, to opening bank accounts and even playing Little League.”

Sen. Chuck Grassley
(Iowa)

X     X      

“You have every right to fear…We should not have a government program that determines if you’re going to pull the plug on Grandma.”

Rep. Trent Franks
(Arizona)

X X X X  
 

“Barack Obama could solve this problem and make the birthers, you know, back off by simply showing us his long-form birth certificate…There’s some other issue, I don’t know what it is, that he doesn’t want people to see the birth certificate on.”

Sen. James Inhofe
(Oklahoma)

X X X     X  

“President Obama is obsessed with turning terrorists loose in America…Those of you who think like I do hope this country can hang on another 16 months.”

Rep. Louie Gohmert
(Texas)

X X X X X X X

“I would hate to think that among five women, one of ’em is gonna die because we go to socialized care.”

Rep. Paul Broun
(Georgia)

X X   X X X X

“You have to remember that Adolf Hitler was elected in a democratic Germany. I’m not comparing [Obama] to Adolf Hitler. What I’m saying is there is the potential of going down that road.”

Rep. Michele Bachmann
(Minnesota)

X X X X
X X

“What we have to do today is make a covenant, to slit our wrists, be blood brothers on this thing [health care]…We are looking at reaching down the throat and ripping the guts out of freedom. And we may never be able to restore it if we don’t man up.”

Rep. Steve King
(Iowa)

X X X X X X X

“American patriotism is not imprinted on [Obama’s] mind or in his heart, because he wasn’t raised as an American.”

 

 

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

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