And who is paying Ginny Thomas’ salary this time?

The tea party’s B-team mad hatters are back in the news after a few months of wallowing in their election-season failures. Now back in the game, they will once again try to bury substance under a big pile of nutbaggery.

Losing Senate Candidate Joe Miller
Miller was the Alaska Senate candidate (and Palin pick) that looked to be winning until he wouldn’t answer any questions and hired thugs to intimidate a reporter who was asking them. The bodyguards turned out to be Alaska National Guardsmen who were cheating on their employer, giving the 49^th state yet another black eye.

Miller, it was revealed, had also tried to increase his influence in the Alaska Republican Party by putting a poll on his website, then secretly using his coworker’s government computers to vote on it. Then he’d lied about it, again and again. He also wanted to repeal the 17^th Amendment, eliminating the election he was running in. But it was the handcuffing of a reporter that finally killed his campaign.

Miller will now become CEO of the Sparks Nevada-based Western Representation PAC. Politico reports it is tea party affiliated. But a search of Google News reveals their sole accomplishment is the hiring of Miller.

Former Actress Victoria Jackson
Famously miscast as a funny person on Saturday Night Live, Jackson’s career was dead until she revived her singing-loudly-off-key shtick at tea party rallies. Her rally songs were mostly unintelligible and appeared entirely unrehearsed. But the crowds seemed to love her incredibly-dumb blond act.

She’s known for such idiotisms as “Obama bears traits that resemble the anti- Christ,” and, “I said he [Obama] was a Communist, and I got a lot of hate mail, but I got some that said I was a prescient, which means ‘a prophet.’”

Now Jackson’s completely jumped the shark. Her latest public pronouncement is,

“Why do liberals embrace Shariah [SIC] law even though "beheading your wife" seems to go against the feminist movement's mantra? Why do liberals embrace Islam knowing it frowns on homosexuality? Because they have the same goals. Progressives, communists, liberals, globalists and Muslims want to destroy America. When that goal is reached, they will fight for top billing. It will be bloody.”

Count the leaps of logic; I counted at least seven. She also thinks gay men who kiss are “disgusting.” And she’s still not funny.

Losing Senate Candidate Sharron Angle
Angle started her Nevada Senate race with a big mouth, spouting nutty-ism after nutty-ism. The most famous of these was her call for “second amendment remedies” if people like herself weren’t elected. After national players took an interest in her campaign (and professional handlers arrived) she didn’t answer a single other question. There is funny video of her fleeing out the garage door three minutes into what was billed as her “press conference.”

Then she lost. Oddly, Angle didn’t shoot anyone. It turns out she was just another blowhard pretending that gun-waving is a sign of bravery rather than an act of cowardice.

Now thanks to the retirement of John Ensign – Nevada’s screw-your-friend’s-wife Senator – Angle has another chance. Let’s hope the Gabby Giffords shooting serves as a wakeup call to anyone who was seduced by her gunpowder politics.

Deposed Liberty Central Founder Virginia Thomas
One could forgive you for thinking Ginny Thomas exists merely to funnel conservative influence into Clarence Thomas’ bank account. As far as we know, she’s never done much of value, she’s never successfully led anything, and her speeches at tea party rallies were mostly infomercials for the foam Statue of Liberty hats she sells.

Yet that didn’t stop her from getting a paycheck from the Heritage Foundation, where she wrote (or co-wrote) seven intelligent sounding documents, all totaling about 20 pages. For that, she was paid $686,589 –nearly $100,000 each. Later she founded Liberty Central, which never had a real address or a real office but was given a $500,000 startup donation (that smelled like Koch money). That’s not simply idle conjecture. When I and others started looking into Liberty Central, two operatives with Koch Brothers ties were quickly brought in to sideline Thomas. Then she started a lobbying firm, Liberty Consulting, but never registered as a lobbyist.

And now she’s a “journalist,” hired by Tucker Carlson to interview for The Daily Caller? Given that this town stinks of out-of-work journos with actual credentials, the hire seems awfully suspicious. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if The Daily Caller also got a new equity investment from some familiar dirty-industry capitalists. The Caller was started with $3 million from a guy named Foster Friess who attended at least one Koch Cabal meeting along with Justice Thomas. The notion that The Caller’s newest hire was bought and paid for is pure speculation at this point. But given the players, well, it already walks like a duck.

I can’t wait to hear what Christine O’Donnell is up to.

_{Art courtesy of Mario Piperni, who creates has the best political art on the web. See more at http://mariopiperni.com}