Ed Shultz Slams Right Wing Talkers For Earning Millions From Conservative Groups

Quote Of The Day - Dick Armey

"The arrangement was simply FreedomWorks paid Glenn Beck money and Glenn Beck said nice things about FreedomWorks on the air.  I saw that a million dollars went to Beck this past year, that was the annual expenditure. I put it down now as basically as paid advertising for FreedomWorks by Beck." - Dick Armey, adding to Media Matters that the payment to Beck was a "mistake" as FreedomWorks only took in $1.3M from the deal and from a similar arrangement with Rush Limbaugh.  Armey left FreedomWorks last month with an $8M golden parachute.

Headline Of The Day

Whoa.

Dick Armey Gets $8M Golden Parachute To Leave Astroturfers FreedomWorks

As the right wing continues to eat each other alive over the 2012 elections, Dick Armey has bailed out on FreedomWorks, the Koch Brothers' astroturfing outfit that booted the Tea Party into national prominence three years ago. And what a payout he's getting to go away.

A confidential contract obtained by The Associated Press shows that Armey agreed in September to resign from his role as chairman of Washington-based FreedomWorks in exchange for $8 million in consulting fees paid in annual $400,000 installments. Dated Sept. 24, the contract specifies that Armey would resign his position at both FreedomWorks and its sister organization, the FreedomWorks Foundation, by the end of November.  According to the contract, Armey's consulting fees will be paid by Richard J. Stephenson, a prominent fundraiser and founder and chairman of the Cancer Treatment Centers of America, a national cancer treatment network. Stephenson is on the board of directors of FreedomWorks. Armey's departure comes as a new sign of acrimony in conservative and Republican ranks as the party's bruised leadership struggles with its November electoral losses and uncertainty over how to recast its principles and issues to compete with an ascendant Democratic party.

Armey helped found FreedomWorks in 2004. 

Just Out From The Koch Brothers

Koch Brothers Demand That Congress Repeal Affordable Health Care Act

Press release from the Koch Brothers' Americans For Prosperity:

"Americans for Prosperity is deeply disappointed by the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold a law that most Americans believed to be unconstitutional. As a result, unless Congress steps in and repeals this legislation, health care costs for most Americans will go up and the quality of health care goes down as Washington politicians ramp up yet another massive new bureaucracy. The Court got it wrong, and now Congress must step in. President Obama’s big-government legislation will result in higher costs, fewer choices, and centralizes health care decisions in Washington instead of with patients and families. Adding $1.15 trillion in new Washington spending, and handing over health care decisions to bureaucrats is not the way to control health care costs."

TODAY: Teabagger Rally At SCOTUS

Koch Brothers astroturf group Americans For Prosperity are sponsoring today's massive teabagger rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court, which yesterday began considering the lawsuit to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Tea Partiers plan to keep the heat up on the U.S. Supreme Court tomorrow at a 1 p.m. Capitol Hill rally as the court enters its second day of deliberations on the constitutionality of Obamacare. The #Hands Off My Health Care rally sponsored by Americans for Prosperity will be the latest in a series of Tea Party-connected rallies over the past few days aimed at pressuring the court to overturn the law. Speakers will include House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wisc.; Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn.; Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa.; Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.; and Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C.

Among the cosponsors of this rally to deprive the poor of health care are several major anti-gay hate groups.

Atlas Is Shrugging

Dick Armey's FreedomWorks ties in yesterday's movie opening with an attack on the president.

Fired Geico Announcer Hits Back At FreedomWorks And Teabaggers

Voiceover artist D.C. Douglas, who lost his gig with Geico after FreedomWorks publicized an angry voicemail he left for them, fires back with this hilarious bit. "Tweaking the nipple of hypocrites in power can be dangerous and lead to blacklisting. Please, don't drunk dial FreedomWorks!"

Dick Armey - Worst Person In The World

FreedomWorks Hits Back

Angered as being characterized as violent, racist, hate-filled teabaggers, Dick Armey's FreedomWorks has compiled the below clip of voice mails and emails sent by their opponents. Language NSFW.

GEICO Announcer Fired For Voicemail Left To Teabagger Group

Voice-over actor D.C. Douglas, best known for his "save up to 15%" tags on GEICO commercials, has been fired by the insurance giant after a voicemail he left for Dick Armey's FreedomWorks was widely circulated in the right-wing blogosphere. Douglas' home phone number was then posted on Andrew Breitbart's Big Government site.

"I called as a private citizen to make a complaint," explains Mr. Douglas. "Racism and homophobia are my Achilles heel, but unfortunately my message included inappropriate words and I am sorry for that. However, telling their members to harass my employer to get me fired is an egregiously disproportionate response to my actions." Mr. Douglas believes his connection to GEICO, a company already on FreedomWorks' boycott list for pulling their ads from Glenn Beck's show, is the main reason he was targeted so forcefully. "Even though I left the message during the week of March 23, the harassing calls didn't hit until April 14, the morning after I posted about my GEICO campaign on my Facebook page."

It's not clear if Douglas is gay, although in all press accounts of the firing, he mentions being enraged by the homophobia of the Tea Party movement. His message to FreedomWorks asked "how many retarded people" work there and whether the group would take responsibility when one of their members killed somebody. Douglas says he doesn't blame GEICO for his firing, but he's open to suing FreedomWorks.

Rachel Maddow Vs. Dick Armey

On yesterday's Meet The Press. Things get going around the 5:00 mark.

This Charming Man

Dick Armey pissed off a lot of feminists yesterday.

In a heated debate over the state of politics and the economy on Wednesday night, former House Majority Leader Dick Armey almost certainly crossed the line of acceptable banter, telling his fellow panelist Joan Walsh that he was glad she could never be his wife because of her "prattle."

Appearing on Hardball, the two guests went back and forth over the contours of the current debate on the stimulus package being passed through Congress. Towards the end, however, the conversation devolved into gender-infused insults.

"I'm so damn glad you can never be my wife because I surely wouldn't have to listen to that prattle from you every day," Armey told Walsh, editor-in-chief of Salon.com. "That's what I'm talking about -- she's making a political malarkey here."

"Boy...that makes two of us sir," Walsh replied. "That was really an outstanding comment."