Sen. Engler (R-Farmington) during debate on a bill which would create a gold standard in Missouri:

If you listen real carefully, you'll hear the black helicopters... They're coming to take us away.

(h/t: Virginia Young)

Today in the St. Louis Post Dispatch, a scathing editorial regarding Speaker Steve Tilley's (R-Perryville) decision to lock the public out of their own House to induct conservative blowhard Rush Limbaugh into the Hall of Famous Missourians:

On Monday, when the latest speaker of the House, Republican Steve Tilley of Perryville, closed the House chambers to the public while inducting talk-radio personality Rush Limbaugh into the same hall that contains a bust of Mr. [Mark] Twain, a quotation from Mr. Twain's autobiography came to mind:

"To lodge all power in one party and keep it there is to insure bad government and the sure and gradual deterioration of the public morals."

That Mr. Tilley would sell his soul to Mr. Limbaugh, and offer a place in the Capitol rotunda for his likeness is hardly surprising. In fact, it's oddly appropriate; history will record that under Mr. Tilley's watch, the discourse in the House has not been too different from the sort of bile that is a regular feature of Mr. Limbaugh's show. Still, no House member has yet publicly called a woman a 'slut," as Mr. Limbaugh did in March.

Closing the chamber to all but selected Republicans who were invited for what ostensibly is a public event and then asking members of the Missouri Highway Patrol to bar the public from the stately chamber that belongs to them is beyond arrogant. It's insulting.

So, too, was Mr. Limbaugh's reference, from the House dais no less, to the Democrats who were locked out of the chambers as "deranged." That classless move firmly chiseled Mr. Tilley's legacy into state history. He won't need a bust.

Mr. Tilley forever will be known as the man who turned what lawmakers like to call "The People's House" into Rush's House.

On Tuesday, Mr. Limbaugh repaid the favor, lavishing praise on Mr. Tilley to his national radio audience and replaying clips of his induction speech.

Mr. Tilley, who has turned monetizing public service into an art form, sold out the people for 15 seconds of fame.

Cha-ching.

For the entire article, click here.

Reps. Mark Parkinson (R-St. Charles) and Kurt Bahr (R-O'Fallon) are both proud sponsors of the bigoted "Don't Say Gay" legislation, HB2051. This is embrassing, though they may not realize it. Also embarassing are these pathetic messages from Parkinson in response to tidal wave of outrage that's been coming his way the past few weeks.  

The posts link to this RFT story.

Parkson actually tweeted and posted this message to his Facebook account multiple times, and Bahr endorsed it at least once.

Because it's really funny. Or something. 

Word around the Capitol is that republican senator Jane Cunningham, former chair of ALEC's Education Committee, will not be allowed to carry HB1526, the union busting, anti-education bill pushed by the billionaire funded StudentsFirst group founded by Michelle Rhee, the former chancellor of D.C. schools who has yet to explain her involvement in the cheating scandal the rocked nation's capital last year.

The issues started to come up yesterday, from Randy Turner:

It doesn't appear she has any chance to get a bill passed eliminating teacher tenure and it looks like another pet project of hers, educational vouchers, is not going to happen this session, but a bill forbidding the use of seniority as a determining factor in teacher layoffs will be heard before her General Laws Committee today.

That could end up being a problem for the legislation since some of her fellow senators have not been thrilled with the way she has hijacked education bills for her committee, rather than put them in the Education Committee where they belong.

Would Senate leadership really deny Calamity Jane the opportunity to carry one of her precious pieces of legislation in the last week of her legislative career?  Poor Cunningham, being forced onto the sidelines and not lead the charge in attacking teachers and the students and families they serve.  It must be a hard pill to swallow for Cunningham given all the effort she's put into trying to "reform" education during her legislative career from attempting to repeal child labor laws to her attempt to require teachers' salaries to be based on the test scores of the children they teach to now trying to prohibit the most experienced teachers from having their seniority considered when schools go through layoffs.

It's a pretty sad ending to a legislative career for a woman who's spent nearly all of her time in office trying to "reform" Missouri education.  From the sound of it, her less than thrilled colleagues have had enough and demanded that someone less toxic carry the water in republicans' continued attack on teachers and public education. Or maybe Michelle Rhee's last minute visit to Jefferson City today was to demand someone more competent handle the bill.

For your viewing pleasure digust. 

In case you missed it, Speaker Steve Tilley inducted conservative blowhard Rush Limbaugh into the Hall of Famous Missourians today after giving press a 20 minute heads up and all the while keeping the public out of the House Gallery.

During the ceremony, Limbaugh spoke from the House dais and referred to "our friends on the other side of the aisle" as "deranged."

Pro Tip: If you have to induct your hero into the Hall of Fame under Top Secret conditions, you probably shouldn't be inducting him in at all.

Sigh. One whole week after signatures are turned in to the MO Secretary of State's office to qualify a ballot initiative to raise Missouri's minimum wage, and the idealogues are already out pleading: Not now! Don't get me wrong - you should never raise the minimum wage - but definitely not now!

Its gonna be a loooong summer for hundreds of thousands of Missouri workers who could benefit from a minimum wage increase. They will be told repeatedly that forcing their employer to pay them more will be bad for them.

David Nicklaus, of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, doesn't think Missourians know enough about economics to make smart decisions regarding their paychecks. He wrote in his article last week:

If a minimum-wage initiative makes it on the November ballot, Missourians will have to choose between economics and emotion...

Missouri voters have a history of voting with their hearts, not their heads: They overwhelmingly approved a minimum wage increase in 2006.

Take the quarter million Missouri workers who benefited from the 2006 increase and have not seen their wages rise with the price of gas and food over the years. What do they think?

In a recent interview with Caring for KC, Lucas Case, former staffer of Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate Sarah Steelman, criticized the future speker-elect of the Missouri House Birther Tim Jones. In a discussion of the Republican sponsored “Don’t Say Gay Bill” and the Missouri legislature, Case suggested that Jones was “just too dangerous” to be the next speaker of the Missouri House.

See complete quote and other criticisms of the GOP in the audio below.

Interviewer: And I guess the cynic would say there is a distraction every session?

Lucas Case: There is a distraction ever session, I truly believe that. And who knows honestly, what’s going to happen with the new Speaker Mr. Tim Jones, from St. Louis, he is a little bit more right-wing than Speaker Tilley is and right now especially that’s, that’s just too dangerous. It’s going to be an interesting session next year as well as it was this year. So, it’s going to be interesting. So, we will just have to see what happens within the next couple years and see how much further right the legislature can get.

In President Obama's new ad, heart wrenching stories from the workers who lost their jobs at Kansas City's GST Steel plant after Mitt Romney and Bain Capital practiced their "vampire capitalism" on the company.