Thune

The only ‘Confusion’ that exists comes from Ironic Johnny Thune-Bag’s misleading statements

l3wis October 14, 2010 12Comments

Senator Thule thinks a 15% blend will work in your hot rod just fine.

Oh, golly gee, imagine that, presidential wannabe Ironic Johnny is against (Obama’s) EPA. But I am sure if it was (Bush’s) EPA he would be all for it;

Sen. John Thune isn’t satisfied with the Environmental Protection Agency’s approval of a higher concentration of ethanol in gasoline for newer cars.

The South Dakota Republican says numerous tests have demonstrated that mixtures with up to 15 percent of the corn-based fuel also are suitable for older on-road vehicles.

The current maximum blend is 10 percent. The EPA announced Wednesday that the higher blend will be approved for vehicles manufactured since 2007.

Thune says limiting the approval to only vehicles made since 2007 will have little effect on the production and use of E15 and will lead to consumer confusion at the gas pump.

So we should have just kept it at 10%? John, you are making no sense at all. While I agree that ‘some’ older vehicles can use a 15% blend safely, some cannot. And by just having a blanket endorsement that ALL vehicles that are older then 2007 can use the product safely is bogus. I wonder what kind of performance Rocco would get from using a 15% blend in his RT?

Why is Thune-Bag taking money from this clown, oh, that’s right, because he is part of the same circus. (H/T – Helga)

l3wis October 6, 2010 2Comments

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), one of the most conservative members of the U.S. Senate, has made a name for himself by supporting tea party insurgents against establishment Republican candidates in this year’s hotly-contested primaries. For instance, he supported Rand Paul over Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) preferred candidate and endorsed Joe Miller over his own Senate colleague Lisa Murkowski in Alaska. Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) called this behavior “a new and shocking development.” Some new and revealing comments DeMint made over the weekend are likely to cause even more division among Republicans, while also providing yet further evidence of the tea party’s hostile takeover of the GOP.

Speaking to the “Greater Freedom Rally” on Saturday at a church in Spartanburg, SC, DeMint actually advocated for fewer basic freedoms for gays and unmarried women. According the Spartanburg Herald-Journal, DeMint “said if someone is openly homosexual, they shouldn’t be teaching in the classroom and he holds the same position on an unmarried woman who’s sleeping with her boyfriend — she shouldn’t be in the classroom.” These comments come just days after DeMint and Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) successfully blocked approval of a National Women’s History Museum, on the grounds that it unnecessarily duplicated existing local museums honoring quilters and cowgirls, and other sites such as a lilac garden in Washington state.

While DeMint’s extreme statements and tea party endorsements have grabbed headlines, less well-known is the fact that two political action committees controlled by DeMint — MINT PAC and the Senate Conservatives Fund — are spending millions of dollars to elect GOP candidates from coast-to-coast. According to OpenSecrets.org and a ThinkProgress review of the most independent expenditure reports filed with the Federal Election Commission, DeMint’s PACs have lavished nearly $2 million on fifteen GOP candidates whose success or failure at the ballot box will determine which party controls the Senate in the 112th Congress. The beneficiaries of his largesse include:

– Florida Senate candidate Marco Rubio: $406,250

– Colorado Senate candidate Ken Buck, who famously implored GOP primary voters to choose him over his rival Jane Norton because he “[doesn]’t wear high heels”: $359,654

– Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle, herself a former teacher: $337,903

– Utah Senate candidate Mike Lee: $251,945

– Alaska Senate candidate Joe Miller: $180,067

– Delaware Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell: $130,326

– Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul: $79,421

– Pennsylvania Senate candidate Pat Toomey: $68,796

– Wisconsin Senate candidate Ron Johnson: $51,858

– Washington Senate candidate Dino Rossi: $37,000

– South Dakota Senate candidate John Thune: $7,500

– North Carolina’s Richard Burr, Georgia’s Johnny Isakson, Ohio’s Rob Portman, and Indiana’s Dan Coats have each received $5,000.

The Hill reported last Friday that DeMint plans to spend hundreds of thousands more on another round of television ads targeting his Democratic Senate colleagues Harry Reid (NV), Michael Bennet (CO), and Russ Feingold (WI) in order to further aid challengers Angle, Buck, and Johnson. One wonders whether these and other GOP candidates, including rumored 2012 hopeful Sen. John Thune (R-SD), will continue to accept money and support from their putative leader or whether they will disavow DeMint’s hateful and extreme attack on unmarried women and gays by returning his money and refusing any further support.

Thune Tries To Wiggle Out Of His TARP Vote As The Program Comes To An End, Possibly Earning Profits (H/T – Helga)

l3wis October 2, 2010 5Comments

http://thinkprogress.org/2010/10/01/thune-tarp/

On Sunday, the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), enacted late in the Bush administration to prop up the financial system, will expire, having cost taxpayers a fraction of its original $700 billion. The program is now projected to cost less than $50 billion, and could even end up earning a profit as the government sells off assets.

Regardless of its successes, the TARP is extremely unpopular, especially among conservatives and tea party activists. But despite their opposition to the program today, several leading Republicans, including House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), voted for the “reviled mother of all” bailouts. Indeed, “yea” votes helped bring down incumbent Republicans like Sens. Lisa Murkowski (AK) and Bob Bennett (UT) in primaries against tea party-backed right wingers.

One person who might especially wish he could change his vote on TARP is Sen. John Thune (R-SD). Thune is openly considering a White House bid in 2012, and will likely be the only GOP candidate to have voted for TARP — a serious liability when courting conservative primary voters. Recognizing this danger, Thune has tried to wriggle his way out of the vote. In an interview that will air Sunday on C-Span, Thune claims the Bush administration misled him, and accuses the Obama administration of turning the program into a “political slush fund“:

“Pronouncements were made [by the Bush administration] about how it was going to be used. It wasn’t used that way. The Obama administration expanded it and turned it into more of what I would characterize as a political slush fund in terms of the many uses of it.” […]

“It was wrong philosophically,” Thune said. “How it was used and, in my view, misused is what I take issue with. ”

At the time, Thune said, the arguments for TARP were economically “compelling.”

“But in retrospect, it might be a different view.”

Of course, Thune offers no evidence to support his claim that the program has become a “slush fund,” because there is none. His claim that Obama “expanded” the program is equally false. When Obama took office, the program was estimated to cost taxpayers $350 billion. That amount has steadily declined since, and is now projected to cost far less, if it ends up costing anything at all. And the philosophy behind the TARP hasn’t changed, so if it’s “wrong philosophically” today, why wasn’t it then?

As for being misled, Thune sang a different tune as recently as May of this year. In an interview with Slate’s Dave Weigel, Thune gave an enthusiastic defense of TARP, calling it “necessary” and noting that it had “tremendous, broad support”:

There was a tremendous, broad support in South Dakota among the small business community, the financial community, the South Dakota pension funds, the governor — there was a tremendous amount of support at the time for taking the steps that we took. I think a lot of people would dispute or take issue with how it was used. But people felt like, even though many disagreed with it, we took the steps necessary to prevent the economy from a complete meltdown.

While there are certainly legitimate concerns about TARP, Thune’s isn’t one of them. As Matt Yglesias notes, the TARP “looks set to go down in history as one of the most unfairly maligned policy initiatives of all time.” A recent study by two leading economists concluded that without the program, the economy would have 8.5 million fewer jobs than there are now, and that the unemployment rate would exceed 15 percent. But apparently Thune is more interested in appeasing the rabid right-wing base than defending his own vote.

Update Erick Erickson, editor of the tea party friendly blog Red State, came out swinging against Thune today, calling his potential 2012 bid “toast.” “Let’s be honest…the only reason people talk about him for President is because he’s a good looking guy,” Erickson wrote, but “other than that his greatest accomplishments are doing nothing.” Erickson slammed Thune for not backing tea party Senate candidates, and called the hype surrounding his candidacy a product of the “vapid nature of inside the beltway punditry.”

Ironic Johnny Thool to run for president? Please do. Would love to watch him fall on his face. (H/T – Helga)

l3wis September 26, 2010 10Comments

“John Thune is likely to run for president in 2012. If he wins the nomination, it will be because he is an exceptionally skilled retail politician who can communicate a kind of midwestern, common sense conservatism that is ascendant in reaction to liberal profligacy… It also helps that he’s cultivated the nationwide donor base that gave him $14.5 million to defeat Tom Daschle in 2004. And that South Dakota borders Iowa. And that he’s good on television. And that he’s a devout Christian who can quote Scripture without seeming to proselytize.”

“But there are many obstacles. He has virtually no national profile. He worked briefly as a lobbyist. He voted for TARP. He is a defender of earmarks. He would be running against Washington from Washington.”

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the “Daschle slayer” who beat the Senate Democratic leader in 2004, is ramping up plans for a presidential run in 2012, associates say.

Ironic Johnny’s proud membership to the ‘Frat House for Jesus’ (H/T- Helga)

l3wis September 9, 2010 11Comments

Come to the ‘C’ Street house, you will make a nice sandwich for our hookers.

Has Thune ever disclosed to the public that he ‘lived’ there up until 2009;

Largent, Coburn, Wamp, and Doyle were the first to move in, and they were soon joined by Bart Stupak. (Senators Over the years, the roster of residents included Republican  Sam Brownback, John Thune, and Jim DeMint, and Kansas Representative Jerry Moran, as well as John Ensign.) Prospective housemates were usually recruited from the prayer groups. Until the recent scandals, wives of the C Street residents were generally enthusiastic supporters of the living arrangement. “My wife doesn’t live here in Washington, she lives at home, and she loves the fact that I’m surrounded by a group of men that know her,” Coburn says. “She knows that if I start wandering, Marty or Mike Doyle or Bart Stupak or Heath, they’re gonna say, ‘Hey, what’s the deal?’ ”

Soon after the Pickering story broke, an exodus from the C Street house began. John Thune, the Republican from South Dakota, who is said to have Presidential aspirations, was the first to leave, in July of 2009.

This spring, a group of core associates gathered at the Cedars and debated whether the time had come to alter the Fellowship’s rigid policy of secretiveness. Some in the group had long argued for greater transparency and accountability, if for no other reason than to counter the darker conjectures about the movement. By most accounts, this view prevailed, despite Coe’s reservations. Change will almost certainly be minor, and come slowly. A Web site has been designed, and is scheduled to be launched this month.

In the meantime, when Congress is in session the Tuesday-night gatherings continue, still attended by members who no longer live in the house. During the supper accountability session, according to Tom Coburn, “a question that’ll be asked about every four weeks is, Is anybody here having an affair?”

(from Helga) John Thune’s name comes up and it says he lived there.  Now that is the first time someone said he lived in that house and it says he left in 2009. So Thune needs to tell the story of what he was doing there besides it cost $900.00 a month. I thought Thune said he never lived there, but he won’t answer any questions either. Time for him to step forward and explain what he was doing in that house since we know his wife lived/lives in Sioux Falls even when he was in the House and when he was a lobbyist.