You would think that a Congressman who signs his letters "I work for you" would be happy that constituents were interested in sharing their perspective about an issue, especially one he was grandstanding about. But sadly, Thaddeus McCotter was indignant that MoveOn.org organized citizens to deliver a petition to his office about energy policy.

Before anyone even arrived he sent out an official email, using your tax dollars by the way.

When you read between the lines, he wanted a counter-protest. Someone also called the police while we were assembling in the parking lot. Yes, that's right. Livonia's finest just happened to show up at 11:58 and follow us to his office.

Come with me to see what these "extremists," who weren't protesting anything by the way, but merely delivering a petition, looked like and get the details.

Used to be an ironclad rule of American politics that partisanship ended at our shores. Even in the depths of the Cold War, few of Washington's commie-baiters dared to trash the political opposition while abroad. But for Republicans, 9/11 changed everything. This year we're getting used to seeing Bush, McCain & Co. taking partisan pot shots at Barack Obama before foreign audiences. Addressing the Israeli Knesset in May, Bush likened Obama's policies to Nazi appeasement. Several weeks ago McCain used a trip to Colombia and Mexico as an occasion to attack Obama's trade policies. All that came immediately after McCain had promised to forego partisan sniping while abroad; classic McCain double-talk, that.

Now real bottom-feeding surrogates are getting into the act. Yesterday while Obama visited Germany the country's newspaper of record, Die Welt, published a crude op-ed by GOP Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (MI) deriding him. It caused enough of a stir that the AP report quoted it. McCotter hasn't had the guts to put the English version up on his Congressional website, but he did post it at The Hill blog and Redstate. Here's a taste of what a Republican member of Congress thinks is the appropriate use of partisanship overseas.

Senator Obama has yet to show any understanding of the fundamental truths that have linked the Transatlantic Alliance through time and tribulations...

Maybe, while listening to JFK’s "Ich Bin Ein Berliner" speech on his I-pod beneath his safety helmet as he pedals past the Reichstag, Senator Obama will recall how, throughout the Cold War, the leaders of the Transatlantic Alliance resisted the siren song of popular pragmatism...

It explains why so many Americans, Europeans, other free peoples, and those yet to be free, are so dismayed at the prospect of Senator Obama’s potential elevation to the Leader of the Free World during a trans-national war against terrorism.

Thus in Berlin no one knows which Obama will show. Will it be the ideological left-wing Democratic primary candidate who vowed to "end" the war rather than win it, or the Democratic nominee who dismisses the progressing coalition victory as a "distraction"? Will it be the American populist who has told supporters in the United States that he will demand more from our allies in Europe and get it, or the liberal internationalist hell-bent on being liked in Europe’s salons?

You get the idea: a semi-coherent rant dripping with sarcasm, the kind favored by wingnuts. Bad enough that Americans should be exposed to this offal. But why do Republicans believe that foreigners need to be drafted as extras into their partisan spectacles?

Dear Michigan readers:

Do you know that a Republican named Thaddeus McCotter is representing you in the House? Do you know what he's doing there?

I just learned from Wonkette that Thaddeus McCotter (R-Michigan) represents your 11th District.  Any 11th District voters here?

So this asswipe actually got up in the House and made a speech about what Democrats "really mean" when they talk. Yes, you guessed it, we are closet socialists who speak in code that only true tough-guy Republicans can translate.

Some of the highlights from this hilarious comedy act:

"We're going to learn how to speak Democrat today."

Oh yeah, it gets better.

Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI) just got up in the House and with a snotty tone and card signs gave everyone instructions on how to speak Democrat:

Crossposted at Blogging For Michigan

Thaddeus McCotter (MI-11), aka Thinskinned McCrybaby, is head of the House Republicon Policy Committee.  His entire job revolves around telling his Republicon cohorts how to vote and which issues to support.

A few days ago McCotter gave a speech on the House floor in the hopes that his party will save itself by doing everything it did in 2006, save the earmarks for corporations.

Most of the speech was about what McCotter called "The Cashocracy" (along with a lot of Reagan worship), the idea that the GOP sold out in the name of corporate interests, and did so at the expense of the middle class.

More below the fold

Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich) described advocacy organization Catholics United as the "devil", and committing "sin" in a recent article in the National Review Online. The article was in response to a series of radio ads Catholics United ran in McCotter's district criticizing his vote against the State Children's Health Insurance Plan, or S-CHIP.  Invoking Pope Benedict XVI, both as Pope and Cardinal, McCotter uses quasi-ecclesial language to distort what Catholics United had to say.

Well, not all of his fellow Catholics, but certainly those who believe "a culture of life must include support for women and children", and who therefore support providing health insurance to more American children:

Catholics United is running deceitful ads against pro-life members of Congress who opposed the vetoed S-CHIP bill, but otherwise supported health care for underprivileged kids. Why? Because Catholics United, which demurs from airing similar ads against pro-abortion members of Congress, is not a Catholic Church sanctioned organization; it is a Leftist political front group. No one should be fooled when this devil cites Scripture for his own purpose...

[I]n light of the modern media’s ability to engender a "dictatorship of opinion," the pope warns all Christians:

The fact is that under the pretext of goodness, people neglect conscience. They place acceptance, the avoidance of problems, the comfortable pursuit of their existence, the good opinion of others and good-naturedness above truth in the scale of values.

Through their duplicitous partisan S-CHIP attacks, this is (charitably) the sin which Catholics United has committed; and the sin with which Catholics United is coercively trying to tempt pro-life members of Congress.

Apparently for Thaddeus McCotter—who, by the way, went on in his article to cite scripture and Papal pronouncements for his own purpose—listening to your constituents is a sin.  Americans overwhelmingly support the expansion of SCHIP, and since the political beliefs of American Catholics are essentially the same as the overall electorate, there’s little reason to think the Catholics in McCotter’s suburban Detroit district will be swayed to side with him just because he hides behind some sayings of the Pope.    

McCotter failed to mention that he was one of the ten members of Congress targeted by Catholics United.  As James at Swing State Project points out, one of the most Democratic districts represented by someone who voted against SCHIP is McCotter’s.  If a decent candidate comes forth to run against McCotter, he could be in trouble.  

McCotter has consistently voted the wrong way for his district.  He remains steadfast in protecting George W. Bush instead of supporting a responsible withdrawal of American troops from Iraq.  And he is also, according to Stuart Rothenberg, who wrote about McCotter in March 2002 for subscription-only Roll Call, an insufferable jerk:

I've interviewed hundreds of candidates for office, and most of the lost causes and serious contenders stand out immediately. But sometimes it's not so easy to separate the winners from the losers.

As evidence, I present Republican Thaddeus McCotter...

A former Wayne County commissioner who was elected to the Michigan state Senate in 1998, McCotter, 36, will win the August Republican primary in Michigan's newly created 11th district. That will make him a prohibitive favorite for November, since President Bush carried the district two years ago and the Democrats haven't recruited a credible nominee.

But if I've interviewed a candidate who was less communicative, more arrogant and more difficult to like, I can't think of one. And I've tried.

I thought my assessment of McCotter might be unique until I asked others. I found I had plenty of company, both in Michigan and Washington, among both reporters and Republican politicos.

How does someone as humorless as McCotter succeed? First, it doesn't hurt that his mother, Joan, was president of the Livonia City Council and now serves as the city clerk. That's how Thaddeus made it to the county council and then the state Senate.

But why would GOP state legislators agree to do a favor for someone so disagreeable by drawing a Congressional district for him? It's a lesson in politics. McCotter was picked for the committee that drew the lines and had a say in the final shape of the district because he volunteered to take a bullet for the state Senate Republicans by agreeing to chair a committee that expelled controversial GOP state Sen. David Jaye from that body.

Since McCotter was first elected, his district has trended Democratic.  It would be great to see this district elect a Democrat who would listen to her constituents and support, for instance, the expansion of SCHIP.  And McCotter will be fine if he’s defeated for reelection, as he’ll have as good an example as any for why the voters kicked him out of office: they succumbed to the temptations of such horrible sins as choosing to provide health insurance for children.  

The video was taken from a camera phone so the quality is less than great, but it shows Rep. McCotter of Michigan's 11th Congressional District running away from Iraq War Protestors:

McCotter has always been a slippery guy.  He's almost never in his district, he never returns phone calls or letters, and now when being confronted, he moves like a bat out of hell.  Enjoy the show!

As we Kossacks know, the cost of the Iraq war has gone through the roof - in terms of dollars, American and Iraqi lives lost, and wounded servicemembers, among many other statistics. Furthermore, with the money that has gone to fight this catastrophic war,  millions of children could have been insured, or thousands of schools could have been built.

The National Priorities Project has released a two-page PDF document detailing the cost of the war to the state of Michigan as a whole as well as to each Congressional District.

We've got a month to prepare ourselves for the 110th Congress.  I'm certainly not expecting much bi-partisanship and cooperation from those about to be investigated into reality, but let's have a look at one of the new Republican leaders.
 
Thaddeus McCotter, a Republican from Michigan's 11th district, was elected as Chairman of the Republican House Policy Committee.  He's little known, yet this is the fourth highest leadership position in the Republican House Caucus.  As the Policy Committee Chairman, he'll be responsible for pulling Republicans together on issues, as if they had experienced a problem with lockstep legislating so far.

But McCotter is billing himself as a disgruntled backbencher recently promoted by the all-new, no longer corrupt Republican Party out to save the day.  

"We have nowhere to go but up," said McCotter.

It's crunch time.

If you live in the area please get out your walking shoes.  The  campaign wants to get an additional 25,000 pieces of literature out this weekend.  It's just a lit drop - no knocking, no canvassing.

This race is close and 25,000 extra homes can very well be the difference.

We are getting down to the wire here, and thought an update on the fundraising for Blue America PAC was in order.

Howie Klein of DownWithTyranny has commissioned a terrific TV advertisement, and firedoglake has assumed the mission of getting this ad on the air in Michigan-11 for Tony Trupiano.  McCotter, a real Rubber Stamp, has donated a lot of his warchest to other GOPers this cycle, and probably isn't expecting a targetted ad buy in the last week of the race.  You can change that.

Tony Trupiano's campaign (MI-11) is getting a huge boost. He needs your help to give it a bigger one. Howie Klien and the folks at Blue America have got a TV ad they want to help Tony run. The whole story is here at the Huffington Post.

They had an ad ready to run for Webb in Virginia titled Rubber Stamp. Long story short, Webb's not using it and they've decided to modify it for Tony. Go watch. I'll wait.

As Howie tells the story...

We got Markos to go over all the races with us and figure out which race would be most likely to benefit from this particular ad and where our limited budget would actually do enough... not just enough to send a message, but enough to swing a few points and win an election. In the end the four of us all came to the same conclusion: Tony Trupiano.

Think about that for a minute, the Second Amendment--you know, the right to bear arms.  They must have been a smash hit because 60% of Iraqis recently polled agree with the right to bear arms against your oppressor.

His last trip to Iraq was in July 2006.  Aside from the photo, you would never have known he was there.  He's one of Boehner's boys, quiet, steady, often in the background.

But very, very scary.  This is  diary of pulling at a thread all day, and what I found.  It is long, but it needs to be.  Read, recommend, but please also go listen to Tony Trupiano tonight on Laura Flanders talk about why we need to raise money and get Thad McCotter out of office.

I am as appalled as anyone else about Representative Mark Foley's (R-FL) sexual predation on teenage boys in the Congressional Page program. But somebody once said that "all politics is local," and I guess he was right, because what really outrages me is the thought that maybe our Republican Representative, Thaddeus McCotter, knew about it and looked the other way. Reports in the news keep saying that "the Republican leaders knew" but they don't say what they mean by that. McCotter touts himself as part of the "leadership" (his website says he's an "Assistant Majority Whip" whatever that means). Was he one of those "Republican leaders" who knew?

What about it, Mr. McCotter? Did you know about this sexual predator stalking teenage boys and do nothing? Did you help cover it up? To coin a cliche, what did you know, and when did you know it? To which I would add, if you knew, what did you do (or not do) about it?

MI-11 is a swing district, Bush took it with 53%, his numbers now are just at 30%.  McCotter isn't even scheduling public events because they just seem to get him in trouble.  His photos from previous events are from 2003 and 2004.  He's got a lot of money though.  

Tony Trupiano does not.  But he's got game, an outstanding ground-game, so your donations can be put to good use.  His record justifies broad-based, progressive support from anyone who wants to put their money where their mouth is.

More after the flip.

The DNC recently called out Rep. Thaddeus McCotter for going to a fundraiser for Sen. Allen.  

"Congressman McCotter should be condemning the Senator's offensive and derogatory comments and behavior..."