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Almost six years ago, the nation watched poor, mostly African-Americans suffer and die waiting for government help in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Meanwhile, conservative pundits declared that Katrina victims only had themselves to blame.

Originally published at Capital Gains and Games..

The story is that Republicans want and need the federal budget to be a big campaign issue in the presidential election. The Republican hierarchy supposedly thinks the president is very vulnerable on the issue and that talking about the deficit and national debt will appeal to the GOP’s tea party wing.

There’s also a good deal of concern that the party’s base will decide that presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney is downplaying the importance of the federal budget if it’s not one of his big campaign issues and that it will abandon him if he does. Much like the first-term Republican House Members have done during the past two years whenever the leadership strayed from what they thought should be done on the budget, this would cause the tea partyers to be openly critical of their presidential candidate.

No one thinks they’ll vote Democratic instead of Republican. Instead, the concern is that the tea party wing won’t vote for anyone for president and will skip directly to the Congressional races on the ballot or, even worse, stay home on Election Day.

In the news, Republicans are running ads attacking Obama for "sending taxpayer dollars" out of the country in the stimulus... They depend on the news media to cover with as a "both sides do it" story, which it will, leaving voters confused and misinformed.

The Republican Charge

On Wednesday the stock market remained in the doldrums, thanks largely to the release of Federal Reserve June meeting minutes that revealed that at least some members of the Fed believed the economy needs "further policy stimulus," but the Fed nonetheless took no action to boost the economy during th

The booing of Mitt Romney at the NAACP convention is just the latest hilarious result of Republican presidents and presidential candidates straining to court the African-American vote at the annual event.

Here's a trip down Memory Lane...

And he's supposed to be one of the reasonable ones:

Rep. David Dreier (R-Calif.) said on Monday evening that he didn't believe highly expensive health care should be provided to uninsured patients with pre-existing conditions...

"While I don't think that someone who is diagnosed with a massive tumor should the next day be able to have millions and millions and millions of dollars of health care provided, I do believe there can be a structure to deal with the issue of pre-existing conditions," Dreier said.