Ignoring Trump at Our Peril

Never in my lifetime have I felt so much animosity toward or fear of a president of the United States, and that includes Richard Nixon and George W. Bush.  The latter two certainly had their psychological issues but despite policy disagreements and active dislike of them, I never viewed them as insane.  That cannot be said for Der Fuhrer who increasingly displays a deeply disturbed personality more akin to Hitler or Stalin than John Kennedy or Lyndon Johnson.  Yet disturbingly, far too many Americans continue to act like sleep walkers ignoring the clear and present danger Trump poses to not only America but the world at large.  We are at risk perhaps more so than ever in our history.  A column in the Washington Post argues that we are at great peril.  Here are highlights:

Where to begin? That’s the daily question for anyone trying to follow the words and deeds of the new administration, which is like drinking from two fire hoses — one gushing policy, the other spewing insanity.

Neither stream can be ignored. I wish I could agree with those who say we should pay little attention to President Trump’s verbal eruptions and focus only on concrete actions, but I can’t. It matters that the most powerful man in the world insists on “facts” that are nothing but self-aggrandizing fantasy. It matters that the president of the United States seems incapable of publicly admitting any error. It matters that Trump’s need for adulation appears to be insatiable.

The president’s most acute obsession is with the false notion that he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton only because of widespread election fraud committed by “millions” of people.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan(R-Wis.) is among the many officials who have acknowledged there is zero evidence of the kind of fraud Trump alleges. It simply did not happen.

At a meeting with congressional leaders on Monday, Trump cited a different piece of purported proof, according to the New York Times: He told a story about how professional golfer Bernhard Langer tried to vote in Florida on Election Day but was not allowed to do so, while suspicious-looking voters ahead of and behind him, possibly Latin American immigrants, were permitted to cast provisional ballots.

[T]his simply did not happen. Langer indeed lives in Florida but is a German citizen. He has never voted in this country.

Why is any of this important? Because Trump, relying on a misinterpreted study and a garbled anecdote, has called for a “major investigation” of all this nonexistent voter fraud. He now has the vast resources of the Justice Department at his disposal, which means that if he wants a big investigation, he can have one. 

Trump’s fixation on his own popularity, or lack thereof, dovetails with the Republican Party’s long-standing political interest in minimizing the electoral weight of Democratic “urban” strongholds — meaning cities with large populations of minorities and liberals. We should prepare for a GOP attempt to channel Trump’s delusion into the rational, but nefarious, purpose of voter suppression.

Another example is Trump’s insistence on the value of torture in the fight against terrorism. Trump pledged during the campaign to bring back waterboarding and “much worse.”  . . . . How can allies fully share intelligence with the United States if they believe captured suspects may be tortured?

Trump’s off-the-wall statements and Twitter rants cannot be dismissed as mere attempts to distract. We have a president who is obsessed with his public standing, given to outlandish statements, eager to believe in conspiracy theories and unwilling to admit when he is wrong. To our peril, his character and moods will shape his policies.

Will White House Leaks Defeat Trump?

Despite his full blown assault on the free press, Der Fuhrer has one problem that may yet sink him and open the way for his removal from office: leaks flowing in a torrent from White House staffers and others. The picture that is emerging should surprise no one other than the most brainwashed or bigotry filled Trump supporters:  the occupant of the Oval Office is a thin skinned narcissist who cannot stand anything that does not further inflate his overweening ego and who will lash out at anything not in keeping with his alternate universe.  One can only hope that with time even the worse political whores in the Republican Party will wake up to the fact that Trump needs to go for the good of everyone in America.  I loath Mike Pence, but at least he isn't clinically insane and might be controlled by tradition and the ability to grasp some semblance of objective reality.  A piece in Talking Points Memo looks at the ongoing leaks flowing from the White House.  Here are highlights:

 We now have a story from The Washington Post ("The first days inside Trump’s White House: Fury, tumult and a reboot") to match yesterday's from The Times ("Rocky First Weekend for Trump Troubles Even His Top Aides"). They are each a classic type for a major newspaper.

But there is an underlying, not-made-explicit message to both which is perhaps the most important. We are three days into the administration and the Trump White House leaks not so much like a sieve as a bucket with no bottom.

The Trump White House not only leaks like crazy. It casually leaks the most intimate and humiliating details about the President - hurt feelings, ego injury, childlike behavior, self-destructive rages over tweets, media failure to credit his own grandiosity. We have simply never seen this level of leaking, with this little respect for the President's dignity or reputation, this early.

From The Post ...

Trump has been resentful, even furious, at what he views as the media’s failure to reflect the magnitude of his achievements, and he feels demoralized that the public’s perception of his presidency so far does not necessarily align with his own sense of accomplishment.

From Politico ...

One person who frequently talks to Trump said aides have to push back privately against his worst impulses in the White House, like the news conference idea, and have to control information that may infuriate him. He gets bored and likes to watch TV, this person said, so it is important to minimize that.

There is, to put it mildly, a rather clearly recurring theme: a torqued up man-child, alternatively rageful and fragile, both grandiose and profoundly insecure.

It is a bracing picture, chilling and hilarious. But don't lose the point: no White House leaks like this, leaks this much or leaks this casually about the President's emotional weakness. 

Again, no one should be surprised if they have even casually followed Trump over the years.  That said, it is frightening that we have someone mentally disturbed in the office of the presidency.  Trump needs to go and the sooner the better.  He is a clear and present danger to America and the world.

Bachmann: LGBT Movement Has A Pro-Pedophilia Agenda

Some are thrilled that the extremely delusional Michele Bachmann has said that she may consider another presidential run in 2016.  Few - other than perhaps Ted Cruz and Rick Santorum - could help  keep the lunacy and extremism of today's GOPin open view more than Bachmann.  Among Bachmann's opening salvos are her claims that "child rape is the result of gay rights" and that the LGBT movement is trying to “abolish age of consent laws.”  Bachmann is truly a foul and nasty piece of work who belongs in a mental ward as opposed to running for any public office of any kind.  Think Progress looks at Bachmann's batshitery.  Here are highlights:

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-MN) has a long history of disparaging the LGBT community, and it seems she is not done. In a radio interview this week, Bachmann claimed that the LGBT movement is trying to “abolish age of consent laws.”

Bachmann told Faith & Liberty Host Dave Garrison that there is an effort underway to “do away with statutory rape laws,” so that “adults would be able to freely prey on little children sexually. That’s the deviance that we’re seeing embraced in our culture today.”

The only concerns that have been raised about statutory rape laws is that they unfairly discriminate against same-sex couples. Many states have a “Romeo and Juliet” exception that protects young people who engage in a sexual relationship with someone under the age of consent but who is still close in age, such that a 17-year-old would not be convicted of statutory rape for having sex with a 15-year-old, even though the 15-year-old would not be allowed to legally consent. But many of these state laws only apply to different-sex couples, so a same-sex couple that is similar in age would be more vulnerable to prosecution, jail, and sex-offender status, just because of their sexual orientation.

Quote of the Day: Sarah Palin and the Swamp Fever of the GOP

Few individuals can so thoroughly sum up what is wrong with today's GOP by their mere presence than Sarah Palin.  The woman, in view, belongs in a mental ward, and as long as individuals like Palin are not only welcome but held in high esteem by the Republican party base, the GOP will remain a party that rational, decent people should want to avoid like the plague.  I suspect that for many, Palin's rise in the GOP has been the straw that broke the camel's back and made exiting the GOP appear to be the only sane approach.  Palin and much of the base of today's GOP base are extremely dangerous because they are too stupid to recognize their own idiocy. A column in Esquire by Charles Pierce looks at Palin's lunacy and the sickness of the GOP.  Here are excerpts:

By now, and by god, it should have settled permanently in the consciousness of the nation what a huge and untoward gamble with the country John McCain and his campaign took in 2008 when they elevated Sarah Palin from her rightful place on the tundra to the political celebrity she currently enjoys. McCain should pay a heavy price for unleashing this ignorant, two-wheeled bilewagon on the country's politics. If you think she's a legitimate political leader, you're an idiot and a sucker and I feel sorry for you.

Yesterday she gave a wildly received speech to ring down the curtain at CPAC. The applause, as far as I know, may still be going on. It was as singularly embarrassing a public address as any allegedly sentient primate ever has delivered. It was a disgrace to politics, to rhetoric, to the English language, and to seventh-grade slam books everywhere.

[W]ith Palin, and watching the hysterical reception her puerile screed received, there is something more serious going on. She is the living representation of the infantilization of American politics, a poisonous Grimm Sister telling toxic fairy tales to audiences drunk on fear, and hate and nonsense. She respects no standards but her own. She is in perpetual tantrum, railing against her betters, which is practically everyone, and volunteering for the job of avatar to the country's reckless vandal of a political Id. It was the address of a malignant child delivered to an audience of malignant children. If you applauded, you're an idiot and I feel sorry for you.

More Insanity in the Kansas GOP

I often say that to be a Republican nowadays one option is to be insane.  It seems that this well describes the Tea Party candidate for U.S. Senate in Kansas.  Indeed, conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin opens her latest column stating: 

It is hard to decide who is nuttier – Dr. Milton Wolf, the radiologist-turned-tea-party-Senate-candidate in Kansas, or the right-wingers who still back him.

Between posting a collection of gruesome X-ray images of gunshot fatalities and medical injuries to his Facebook page and a deranged written statement, Wolf seems to fully fit the description of being crazy.  Yet, the Tea Party continues to embrace him as does the the Senate Conservatives Fund (SCF).  One is left wondering when the swamp fever that has overtaken the GOP base will either break or the patient will simply die.  Here are more highlights from Rubin's column:

The National Republican Senatorial Committee’s communications director, Brad Dayspring, released a statement via e-mail: “Once again, it is clear that there are a few select groups and organizations  that refuse to properly research candidates or do the necessary work prior to endorsing them, which maximizes risk and hurts the conservative cause. Time and again, it has been proven that the failure to research and vet candidates results in handing winnable seats to Democrats. “

You’d think Wolf would be asked to get out of the race. But one of his biggest backers, the Senate Conservatives Fund (SCF), didn’t bat an eye. The group tweeted: “The NRSC  can’t compete on the issues so they have to attack the character of conservatives.” Pretty weak spin, even for this gang.

In a subsequent interview Wolf defended his behavior, saying, “It’s an educational thing for people. I take my charge of being a doctor very seriously.” Umm, a variety of medical professionals condemned the behavior. Sunday evening Dayspring reiterated, “Milton Wolf’s strange explanation meanders between irrational and outright absurd.  . . . If his posts and subsequent jokes were truly educational and appropriate, then why didn’t he continue posting them?  It doesn’t add up.  Milton Wolf’s ghoulish behavior raises serious questions about his character, judgement, honesty and stability.” He further chided the SCF: “The fact that any group would rush to defend behavior that medical ethics professionals so quickly condemned raises questions about their legitimacy, structure, and future.”

Well, the way to stop Wolf, others equally unfit for office and the SCF  is to not support or give money to them. And really, you can’t take seriously groups that think the shutdown was a great strategy and that Wolf is a great candidate. SCF, like many other right-wing groups, so prizes ideological rigidity that its leaders fail to use common sense in picking strategy or candidates. Wolf is certainly an embarrassment for the group, but no more so than other candidates it has seized upon or the shutdown gambit it backed. It’s long past the time sober conservatives stop giving them money or listen to what they say.

Among today's Christofascist/Tea Party controlled GOP base, outright insanity and the embrace of ignorance are deemed among the highest attributes.  I really do not know how to kill this Frankenstein Party other than by killing the GOP itself.
 

GOP Establishment Avoids "Bishop" E. W. Jackson

Many in the reality free GOP base always whine that if the Republican Party would just nominate sufficiently conservative candidates, the GOP would roll on to unprecedented victory.   Well, these folks got their wish when the Virginia GOP - well, actually a coven of extremists orchestrated by the Christofascists at The Family Foundation - nominated Ken "Kookinelli" Cuccinelli, "Bishop" E. W. Jackson, and Mark "Mr. Miscarriage Law" Obenshain for the party's statewide ticket.   And the polls are showing this "dream ticket" significantly down in the polls.  Faring worse of all is "Bishop" Jackson who the few sane Republicans in Virginia view as radioactive with good reason.  For his part Jackson views those not qualified for a forced commitment in a mental institution with equal disdain.  Here are highlights from a Washington Post article on the latest on "Bishop" Jackson:

Virginia Republicans have been keeping their distance from E.W. Jackson ever since the fiery minister, who has compared Planned Parenthood to the Klan and linked yoga to Satan, won the GOP nomination for lieutenant governor.  Turns out the feeling was mutual.

The Chesapeake pastor has rebuffed the party’s suggestion that he tone down his rhetoric and steer clear of hot-button issues — much to the delight of his grassroots supporters, the frustration of some GOP loyalists and the surprise of almost no one.

More unexpectedly, Jackson has refused the party’s nuts-and-bolts logistical help, choosing not to tap into resources that include the GOP’s trove of voter data and more than 40 field offices around the state, according to four Republican operatives.

While the top of the ticket mostly talks jobs, Jackson has pushed his “liberty agenda,” which calls for limiting the federal government’s reach, promoting gun rights, and resisting “Obamacare.” And as he rejects the party’s messaging and logistical aid, some Republicans fear that he could not only handicap his own prospects but hurt the GOP nominee for governor . . . . 


Jackson’s continued outspokenness — last month he called the Democratic Party the “anti-God party” for supporting abortion rights and gay marriage — could reflect on the whole Republican ticket and turn swing voters away, the GOP strategists said.

At the same time, Jackson’s decision to pass up basic ground-game help could discourage the Republicans’ tea party wing . . . . If the party base sees Jackson struggling and concludes the GOP establishment snubbed him rather than the other way around, it might not turn out in droves for Cuccinelli, . . . 

Said another strategist: “There’s a very strong anti-establishment vein in this. They are laying the groundwork actively to blame somebody else — the establishment — for losing.”

Some of Jackson’s grassroots supporters applaud his decision to resist the party’s attempt to shape his messaging — or muzzle him, as they see it. “This election, November 2013, is Armageddon for social conservatives in Virginia. If we don’t win . . . we could become the next California on marriage,” said Steve Waters, a Richmond-based political consultant who has done work for Jackson. “And I think E.W. will talk to that, and has talked to that.

“Instead of working with the party and doing a little bit of trust-and-verify, they’re going their own way.”

One can only hope that "Bishop" Jackson - I use quotation marks on bishop since Jackson set up his own small church and gave himself the title - goes down to a truly historic defeat.  The man is crazy.  And the GOP can thank The Family Foundation for the fact that he's the Lt. Governor nominee. 

Bachmann's Retirement May Improve GOP Chances.

I will admit that I cannot stand Michele Bachmann.  She typifies what's wrong with today's GOP and she also shows what's wrong with allowing Christofascist nutcases in taking over a major political party.    The irony is that while she viewed herself as a GOP/Christianist champion, some believe that her exodus may actually help the GOP.  The Party certainly doesn't need a high profile idiot advertising just how insane the GOP has become.  A piece in Politico looks at Bachmann's decision not to seek re-election and how it helps the GOP:

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) — the tea-party firebrand facing investigations and a daunting reelection race — abruptly announced on Wednesday morning that she will not seek reelection to a fifth term.

Her move marked a spectacular fall for a congresswoman with a bull’s eye on her back every congressional cycle: Less than two years ago, she won the Iowa straw poll and was briefly regarded as a serious contender for the GOP presidential nomination.

With Bachmann’s departure, the tea party’s voice in Congress will dim. She is the movement’s third big-name figure in recent months to leave Congress — Jim DeMint of South Carolina resigned from the Senate in January to take over the Heritage Foundation. And in November, Florida Rep. Allen West, another conservative bomb thrower, lost reelection.

Ironically, the retirement may improve Republicans’ chances of holding Minnesota’s conservative 6th Congressional District, which broke for Mitt Romney by nearly 15 percentage points in 2012. Democrats had Bachmann at the top of their target list after she barely survived reelection last year. The Democrat who came close to defeating her, Jim Graves, was gearing up for a rematch.

In Graves, she was up against an opponent who came within 5,000 votes — or 1.2 percent points — of unseating her last November. Graves, a wealthy hotel company executive who poured $250,000 of his own funds into the 2012 contest, released a poll last week showing him with a narrow lead over the congresswoman.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which provided Graves with little help in 2012, had indicated that it planned to get behind the challenger aggressively in Round Two. Though Bachmann would have had an enormous war chest, the defeat of West — another tea party hero with a national following and big money — showed that such figures are not invincible.

The congresswoman’s decision comes as a shock to Republican officials, many of whom thought she was taking serious steps to running for reelection. Early this month, Bachmann began airing TV ads highlighting her role in sponsoring legislation to repeal President Barack Obama’s health care law – an especially early point in the election season for a House member to begin running commercials.

 Bachmann’s outsized success with the conservative grassroots was not matched with equal prowess inside the Beltway. In the Capitol, the Minnesota Republican never proved herself a savvy legislative operator, or even a real factor in the rough and tumble of Congressional brawling. She drew her strength from her ability to grab headlines opposing President Barack Obama’s legislative agenda.

I say good riddance.  Bachmann embraced bigotry, ignorance and with her husband has peddled "ex-gay" lies in order to enrich herself and her Nellie husband..  

Michele "Crazy Eyes" Bachmann Will Not Run for Re-Election

While claiming that her decision isn't based on the likelihood that her district may finally waking up and be about to toss her out in 2014, the certifiably insane Michele Bachmann has announced that she will not run for re-election in 2014.  Whatever the real reason, it's a case of good riddance.   The woman has been an embarrassment to the nation and to Congress.  Once she leaves office, perhaps she will join her seemingly closet case husband in providing fraudulent "ex-gay" therapy at the "Christian counseling center" they own together.  Here are story highlights from the Virginian Pilot:

Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, a conservative firebrand and a favorite of tea party Republicans, said Wednesday she will not run for another term in the U.S. House.

Bachmann, who ran for the Republican presidential nomination last year, announced her decision in a video on her website.

"My decision was not influenced by any concerns about my being re-elected," Bachmann said. She narrowly won a fourth term in 2012 over Democrat Jim Graves, a hotel chain founder who is running again in 2014.

Bachmann also said, "This decision was not impacted in any way by the recent inquiries into the activities of my former presidential campaign." In January, a former Bachmann aide filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, claiming Bachmann made improper payments to an Iowa state senator who was the state chairman of her 2012 presidential run. The aide, Peter Waldron, also accused Bachmann of other FEC violations.

A vocal opponent of the health care overhaul and other policies of President Barack Obama, Bachmann promised her supporters, "I will continue to work overtime for the next 18 months in Congress defending the same Constitutional Conservative values we have worked so hard on together."

The woman is unfit to be dog catcher much less a member of Congress.  That she was ever supported by anyone in the GOP in her delusional presidential nomination run speaks volumes about the decline of the GOP.  

 

The Trouble With Ted Cruz

In my view, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas personifies much of what wrong with today's Republican Party.  Like Ken "Kookinelli" Cuccinelli here in Virginia, Cruz isn't stupid.  Rather he's just plain crazy - and arrogant and abrasive as well while he spouts his batshitery.  Also, like Cuccinelli, he seems to be having a mad passionate love affair with himself.  It's all about him.  Of course, the fact that he bears an frightening resemblance to the infamous Joe McCarthy doesn't help matters either.  While the most insane elements of the far right love him, Cruz seems to rub even some of the Kool-Aid crowd the wrong way.  Perhaps they haven't drunk enough Kool-Aid.  David Frum take Cruz apart in a column in The Daily Beast.  Here are highlights:

Ted Cruz is brilliantly positioning himself to run in 2016 as the true leader of the party's conservative wing: a Spanish-surnamed Princeton grad and Harvard lawyer who checks all the ideological boxes, who stood apart from the Gang of Eight immigration deal and by the general weirdness of the Paul family's conspiracy-mongering.

Yet … there is something about him that even the hardest-liners just cannot accept. First Jennifer Rubin in the Washington Post and now today Kimberley Strassel in the Wall Street Journal have each thrown their full weight at the Texas senator.

Strassel:

[D]isagree with Mr. Cruz on his filibuster strategy, and you are a "squish." Take a different line from the Club for Growth on pre-existing conditions (or any of its poorly vetted Senate candidates), and you are "the establishment." Think slightly different than Jim DeMint—now at Heritage, serving as maestro of the rebel orchestra—and you are not "conservative." These terms are used with great calculation. Take our orders, or we will brand you a RINO in a primary.

These days, the squishes apparently include groups like Americans for Tax Reform and FreedomWorks, which supported the pre-existing conditions bill. They include rock-ribbed conservatives like Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, who did not join the gun filibuster threat—issued before the bill was written. "I've done more filibusters than Rand Paul is old," said Mr. Coburn at the time—adding that his rule is to first read what he's filibustering.

Yet seriously there cannot be any doubt about Ted Cruz's "smarts." He's just smart for different ends - his own ends. It's this that rubs so many conservatives the wrong way, and that may yet prove Cruz's undoing. A little while ago I asked a Texas conservative I know to unpack the antipathy aroused by Cruz. He recently returned from a Cruz fundraiser to fire off the below e-mail:

Ted Cruz was just a lawyer until 20 minutes ago, and a nerdy one at that. He was a high school debater, and essentially still is. He has no military, business, or government experience. And now he's being feted as Cicero even though his speeches are mostly banal broadsides against Barry, Janet Napolitano, and Big Government. He has no legislative accomplishments, but "bold leadership" now is bragging to your friends that you called all of your Senate GOP colleagues "squishes" to their faces. He made an ass out of himself by trying to cross-examine Diane Feinstein, trying to trap her into saying that the Bill of Rights only applies to some people, but she ate his lunch. Still, he's Cicero.

But more than anything, he's of the Jim DeMint/Mark Sanford mold of "movement conservatives" strangely uninterested in actually legislating. They like to think that they're speaking truth to power in government, when in reality they are just pundits who rail against the feds while they and their staffs are receiving nice government paychecks. Say what you will about Rush Limbaugh, but he pays his own bills.

Perhaps there is hope for Texas yet.  I don't like Cruz.  Like Cuccinelli, he's dangerous and needs to be beat down and discredited.   The sooner the better.

Michele Bachmann Under Congressional Ethics Probe

Even if today's Proposition 8 oral arguments left something to be desired, there are things to cling to in order to perk up one's morale.  One of them is news that Michele "Crazy Eyes" Bachmann is under an ethics probe over allegations that she misused campaign funds in her failed (and delusional) presidential campaign.  There's no way of knowing the ultimate outcome, but one thing is certain: the Christofascists always think they are above the laws and rules that apply to everyone else.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at the ethics probe.  Here are excerpts:

The Hindenburg. The Titanic. Michele Bachmann.  Eighteen months ago, the Minnesota House member was considered an unlikely but undeniable Republican rising star, winning the Iowa straw poll that unofficially begins the primary season. Today, she is embroiled in a litany of legal proceedings related to her rolling disaster of a presidential campaign—including an Office of Congressional Ethics investigation into campaign improprieties that has not previously been reported.

[F]ederal investigators are now interviewing former Bachmann campaign staffers nationwide about alleged intentional campaign-finance violations. The investigators are working on behalf of the Office of Congressional Ethics, which probes reported improprieties by House members and their staffs and then can refer cases to the House Ethics Committee.

Former staffers tell The Daily Beast that investigators have allegedly asked about allegations of improper transfer of funds and under-the-table payments actions by Bachmann’s presidential campaign, specifically in relation to the campaign’s national political director, Guy Short, and Bachmann’s onetime Iowa campaign chairman, state Sen. Kent Sorenson. Questions directly about Bachmann, they said, have been primarily focused on what she knew about those men’s actions and when she knew it.

The emergence of still another investigation tied to Bachmann’s presidential misadventure is the latest hit in what’s been a slow-motion crash for an unusually irresponsible politician who’d briefly emerged as a national figure with White House ambitions.

Embarrassments have become routine whenever she’s tried to forcibly reinsert herself into the national debate, as the sort of wild claims that helped make her reputation in the first place have increasingly been swatted down, even by fellow Republicans. In the last week alone she has been called out by Fox’s Bill O’Reilly for “a trivial pursuit” after dedicating much of her CPAC speech to what she called President Obama’s “lavish” lifestyle (in fact, the costs she cited are primarily related to Secret Service protection, and some of them were simply false). She followed that up with a reality-challenged rant on the House floor, calling for the repeal of the Affordable Care Act “before it literally kills women, kills children, kills senior citizens.”

Bachmann holds the distinction of having a higher percentage of statements analyzed by PolitiFact determined to be outright lies—or “Pants on Fire”—than any other politician, according to a survey by The Daily Beast

But what critics charge is a persistent truth-telling problem is the least of Bachmann’s worries now. Bills are piling up in an Iowa court case, Heki v. Bachmann, filed by another former Bachmann staffer, Barb Heki. That suit alleges that onetime state campaign chairman and state Senator Sorenson stole from her—and then used with the candidate’s knowledge—an email list of Christian homeschool families in Iowa. Heki’s accusation has been backed by a sworn affidavit by former campaign staffer Eric Woolson, who had also been named in the suit, though charges against him were dropped after he submitted his affidavit.

“She’s always been one of the most difficult members to work for—very high maintenance, almost demeaning to a point,” says another former staffer. “And that was amplified 10 times over due to the presidential campaign. It was like she was a different person. You didn’t recognize her. All I can tell you is that it was the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen. It was by far the most bizarre campaign I’ve ever been a part of.”

There is much more, but the take away picture is that Bachmann is a lying train wreck.  The pathological lying, of course is stereotypical "godly Christian" conduct.  I for one hope the allegations are validated and that Bachmann suffers some serious consequences.

The South: Racism and Insane Gun Ownership

While I was born in New York State, the vast majority of my life has been lived in the South - Virginia, Alabama and Texas and back to Virginia in the years after high school.  Having acquired more liberal sensibilities in New York moving to and living in the South at times feels like one has moved to an insane asylum peopled by schizophrenics who can demonstrate wonderful generous traits and in the next moment exhibit frightening levels of racism and bigotry.  The phenomenon surely isn't limited to the South, but the region seems to have brought it to a higher level than other regions of the country.   Two things are stark: latent racism and an insane love of guns. And opposition to any form of rational gun control.  Kathleen Parker - who seems to have once again sworn of GOP Kool-Aid, at least for the moment - has a column in the Washington Post that looks at the troubling love of guns.  Here are highlights:

Analysts seeking insight into the gun debate need look no further than the land of cotton, where nothing is ever forgotten. In a matter of days, citizens and lawmakers on both sides of the gun issue have advanced laws to:

●Allow concealed weapons to be carried in bars and restaurants;
●Make it legal to purchase or own any weapon that could have been acquired legally at the end of 2012; and
●Strengthen background checks to identify people with mental illness.

The latter is the most serious of the batch and follows a recent near-tragedy at Ashley Hall, a private girls school in Charleston, S.C., where Barbara Bush, among other notables, was once a student. Several days ago, a woman with a long record of mental instability, including a 2005 court plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, brought a loaded semiautomatic pistol to the school and pulled the trigger several times while pointing the gun at a school administrator. 

Fortunately, the gun never fired, and Alice Boland, 28, was unable to complete her mission. What exactly that was isn’t easily discerned from her bond hearing rant, which covered a diverse collection of complaints:

The woman herself said she was crazy, yet she’s sane enough to buy a gun? More than 50 Ashley Hall parents have signed a letter sent to a dozen state and federal officials urging action to prevent people such as Boland from acquiring firearms. Boland managed to answer questions on a federal questionnaire adequately to purchase the gun. And because she has no criminal record, her name wasn’t flagged during a routine background check.

But Boland had another record that clearly should have disqualified her from gun ownership. Never mind an earlier diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. She also had faced federal charges for threatening to kill President George W. Bush and “the entire U.S. Congress.” Her plea of not guilty by reason of insanity inarguably should have placed her in a database of those ineligible to purchase firearms. But because her charges were dismissed in 2009, she had no criminal record.

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, speaking in Washington on Wednesday, labeled the Ashley Hall case Exhibit A of a “broken system” and has vowed to introduce legislation that would enhance the background check process to include “prior exposure to court and . . . mental status.”

Meanwhile, state officials back home in Columbia were busy figuring out ways to skirt any new laws that might restrict gun ownership.   Citing an 1881 “unorganized militia” state law, state Sen. Tom Corbin (R) proposed legislation guaranteeing everyone’s right to own any weapon that could be purchased legally as of Dec. 31, 2012. Corbin’s claim that federal law could not preempt South Carolina law — in addition to being incorrect; federal law trumps state law — was rather dramatically disproved during the unpleasantness of 1861-65.

In other action, a state Senate panel approved a bill to allow concealed weapons in restaurants and bars so long as the carriers don’t drink. Noting the volatility of mixing guns and alcohol, some suggested that business owners could post signs banning guns in their establishments. But one speaker called that “un-American.” Another insisted that he should be allowed to have a glass of wine with his lasagna while packing heat.

So it goes in the state that James L. Petigru, anti-secessionist and former South Carolina attorney general, long ago described as “too small to be a republic and too large to be an insane asylum.”

As I said, it's like living in an insane asylum.

Ken Cuccinelli's Frightening Manifesto

While Marco Rubio and many in the GOP may be zombies and challenged when it comes to historical reality, Ken "Kookinelli" Cuccinelli is nothing short of freaking insane in a way that reminds one of the ayatollahs in Iran.  Kookinelli is not even remotely tethered to objective reality and rational sentient people ought to be terrified that such a deranged individual can be the as yet uncrowned GOP nominee for Governor of Virginia.  An article in Slate looks at Kookinelli in general and his new book "The Last Line of Defense: The New Fight for American Liberty."The irony is that under Kookinelli's vision of liberty, most of us lose all liberty and power is vested in insane Christofascists like Kookinelli and the knuckle draggers in the GOP base.  Kookinelli is a clear and present danger to all Virginians.  Here are highlights from the Slate article:

On Jan. 30, two weeks before The Last Line of Defense hit shelves and Kindle apps, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s own book was leaked to the Washington Post. In it, Cuccinelli would “echo Romney’s 47 percent” remarks, writing that Medicare, Social Security, and “outright welfare” all “make people dependent on government,” sapping the country’s verve. “Romney’s words, captured on a hidden camera, helped sink his campaign,” pointed out the paper, helpfully. “Time will tell how the similar language plays for Cuccinelli.”

The Washington Post keeps waiting for the time when Cuccinelli will be sunk. It never comes. “He doubts the science of global warming,” wrote the paper in a 2009 editorial, endorsing his opponent in the attorney general race. “He peddles outmoded, half-baked and prejudicial theories about homosexuals.” He won by 15 points. He spooked any possible Republican rival out of this year’s gubernatorial race—they remembered 2009, when Gadsen-flag-waving Cuccinelli fans took over the state party convention—and in the most recent poll, he’s winning.

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Cuccinelli’s secret is simple: He runs when things are good for Republicans. Virginia holds state elections in odd-numbered years, so their A-team—Gov. Bob McDonnell, Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, Cuccinelli—haven’t ever fought the tide of Obama turnout. In 2009, Virginia’s electorate was 78 percent white and 40 percent “conservative”  .  . .  .

The biggest threat to a Cuccinelli governorship comes from Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, who keeps threatening to run as an independent, and warns that Cuccinelli’s new tome will give Democrats “ammunition” to destroy him. If that’s the case, then 2013 will be the year the Tea Party finally croaks. Cuccinelli is the Tea Party in one body, an underrated and likeable politician who sees it as his mission on earth to unwind government power.

The bulk of his book recounts the history of the health care lawsuit, which the attorneys general lost—and which Cuccinelli, who sued the government independently of the main AG coalition, lost even more decisively. He tells the history that became less than relevant after the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision

Why did the good guys lose? Cuccinelli decides that the game was rigged against them. The media—he mentions columnists like Richard Cohen, excerpting their calumnies—never told the truth about the law, or the mandate to buy health insurance. “Imagine how apoplectic the big-government statists would get if Congress voted to force everyone to buy a gun,” he harrumphs. In his reading, conservatives absolutely won the argument, but President Obama—the head of a “group of lawbreakers”—browbeat the court into caving. 

The people responsible are either liars or dupes. In shorter chapters about his quest to get—then, one assumes, debunk—climate change data, Cuccinelli suggests that “climate researchers may have given up the purity of science to forward a global warming agenda … simply for the research money.” 

Kookinelli lies in a fantasy world.  If he somehow is elected governor, Virginians will find themselves living in a nightmare.  The man must be defeated.

Cuccinelli Echoes Romney’s Condemnation of the "47 percent"

As noted in a previous post, the national Republican Party has a Virginia problem and no one person embodies it more that Ken "Kookinelli" Cuccinelli as he continues to make it very clear that he is an extremist of the highest order.  The man, in my opinion, needs a serious mental health intervention, but that, of course, only makes him more of a darling to cretins and Christofascists in the GOP base, especially here in Virginia where ignorance and backwardness are considered the highest of virtues.  And just in time for the build up of the 2013 gubernatorial election Kookinelli has a new book out that will no doubt delight knuckle draggers and those who be thrilled by a return of the Spanish Inquisition in Virginia.  For everyone else, the book out to be a clarion call that Kookinelli is utterly unfit to be Governor of Virginia.  Both the Washington Post and Politico have reviews of the book which among other things echo's Mitt Romney's condemnation of 47% of the American populace.  First these highlights from the Washington Post piece:

Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s new book doesn’t hit stores until Feb. 12, but a few pages of it have trickled out to The Washington Post.

Spoiler alert: The pages reveal Cuccinelli is a conservative. His campaign declined to comment Wednesday night.

On the pages sent the Post’s way, Cuccinelli uses language akin to Mitt Romney’s famous “47 percent” comment. The Republican presidential candidate had suggested that a share of the electorate was so dependent on government hand-outs that it would never vote for him.

Romney’s words, captured on a hidden camera, helped sink his campaign. Time will tell how the similar language plays for Cuccinelli, who unlike Romney has never been accused of trying to pass himself off as a moderate. In his case, he wants voters to hear it.

A few excerpts:
— “Sometimes bad politicians set out to grow government in order to increase their own power and influence. This phenomenon doesn’t just happen in Washington; it happens at all levels of government. The amazing this is that they often grow government without protest from citizens, and sometimes they even get buy-in from citizens — at least from the ones getting the goodies.

“One of their favorite ways to increase their power is by creating programs that dispense subsidized government benefits, such as Medicare, Social Security, and outright welfare (Medicaid, food stamps, subsidized housing, and the like). These programs make people dependent on government. And once people are dependent, they feel they can’t afford to have the programs taken away, no matter how inefficient, poorly run, or costly to the rest of society.”

We of course who Kookinelli means when he talks about "the ones getting the goodies": blacks, Hispanics and minorities.  Those who are part of the angry white male base of the Virginia GOP.  As for gays, Kookinelli has made his hatred of us painfully clear.  And on abortion, Kookinelli wants a total ban.  No exceptions of any kind.

Politico has some interesting excerpts as well:

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has no intention of modulating his uncompromising conservatism to get elected governor. He just needs to explain it better than others have.

That’s the unmistakable message of the Republican gubernatorial candidate’s new book — a 252-page tea party jeremiad of blistering attacks on government in general and President Barack Obama in particular that could make it difficult to broaden his appeal to the kinds of voters he needs to win in November.

“The Last Line of Defense” presents Republican state attorney generals as the last line of defense for liberty. It’s packed with dire warnings about “the big-government leviathan,” “government diktats on every sector of our economy” and “big-government statists.”

In the acknowledgements, Cooch – as the 44-year-old is commonly called – praises the tea party: “I truly appreciate their commitment to first principles.”

On prohibiting insurance companies from denying coverage because of a preexisting condition, he adds: “Although this aspect of the law was very popular, it was one of the fastest ways to put private insurance companies out of business, as the costs of treating these conditions could easily exceed the premiums companies would be allowed to charge policyholders with the conditions.”

He also pointedly attacks an alphabet soup of federal entities, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Communications Commission, the National Labor Relations Board and the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement.  He calls Obama’s administration “the biggest set of lawbreakers in America.”

Few political professionals would encourage a candidate to write this kind of book, especially one who now faces no GOP opponent for the nomination. But Cuccinelli is believed to harbor grander ambitions than the governor’s office, and he is well positioned to be a thought leader of the conservative movement even if he loses in November.

Kookinelli has delusions of grandeur and in my opinion is just as crazy as Hitler was.  He belongs in a mental ward, not the Governor's Mansion.  That he is the unopposed GOP nominee speaks volumes about how low the Virginia GOP has fallen.  He must be defeated in November.

The Insane Asylum That is Today's GOP

While it has now been many years since I resigned from the Republican Party and gave up the seat on the Virginia Beach City Committee that I had held for eight years, I continue to shake my head in dismay at what has become of a political party I was once proud to belong to and support.  I ask my self at times WTF happened?  But I know the one word answer: Christianists.  Out of short term political expediency, these folks were welcomed to the party and voted into positions on committees across the country and as their influence grew, rational moderates fled the increasing push for a theocratic agenda and attendant greed, fear and hate based policies.  Some may ask about the Tea Party's role in the now rampant insanity within the GOP, but with some 85% of the Tea Party identifying as conservative Christians, the two groups are actually one and the same.  Those who carry the Tea Party banner simply disguise their religious extremism, in my view.  With sane individuals fewer and farther between within the GOP, there now are no leaders who are brave enough or willing to take on the patients within the insane asylum the GOP has become.   A piece in BuzzFeed looks at the leadership void.  Here are excerpts:

WASHINGTON — Forget the Republican Party’s need to rebrand itself. Forget party elders' promises that they will start reaching out to minorities. And forget the supposed soul-searching that is meant to sweep over the GOP as it undergoes a serious reexamination of its future.
Right now, Republicans are having trouble even getting out of their own way.

Conservative groups are splintering. The Romney campaign has dissolved into backbiting and billing disputes. A “plan B” to avert the fiscal cliff proved to be a colossal embarrassment. A teetotaling Idaho senator has been charged with drunk driving. But the most striking symptom of the GOP’s horrible moment is the party’s inability to get done what virtually everyone here knows is in its political best interest: A hasty surrender.

It’s difficult to find a Republican operative who is willing to say on the record that going over the fiscal cliff next Tuesday is a good idea. Provoking a crisis is bad politics: Republicans are resigned to taking the blame. And it’s bad for their policy agenda: They will likely be cornered into a broader tax hike than the best deal they could get from President Barack Obama today, and with none of the spending cuts that might now be on the table.  And yet, the dominant emotion among most Republicans here is one of sheer resignation.

“It’s a shit show,” one prominent Republican told BuzzFeed of the GOP’s messaging position. “Tax rates are going to go up on everyone, and we’re going to get the blame.”

The Republican woes have many roots, but here on Capitol Hill, one of the problems is particularly clear. Without a Republican president — or even a presidential nominee — leadership has fallen to two men who are in no position to actually lead a national party anywhere: Boehner and, to a lesser degree, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

McConnell is a tactical master and one of the best politicians in the country. But he is not equipped to be the party's national face, nor is he the sort to quickly impose a firm grip on the floundering party in order to lead it out of the wilderness.

As for Boehner, since the election he’s seen his standing within the party and conservative circles crumble. Conservative news outlets are openly discussing ousting him, accusing him of ideological crimes against his party and in some cases openly mocking him and questioning his honesty.

Expect more chaos within the GOP as the insane base continues to demand policies and positions that harm the country and make the exodus on rational people accelerate.  When the base of a political party no longer is tethered to objective reality bad things are bound to happen.  Today's GOP is in essence an extreme sectarian party that is welcoming to fewer and fewer Americans.

 

More GOP Insanity: Santorum Planning 2016 Presidential Run

If nothing Republican Party is consistent: consistently insane and out of touch with both voters and objective reality.  Rick "Man on Dog" Santorum is already gearing up for another presidential run in 2016.  The irony, of course, is that in many ways Santorum personifies what is wrong with today's GOP and its growing alienation of younger voters, women and non-whites.  Yet there remain Kool-Aid drinkers who continue to support Santorum rather that strap him in a straight jacket and take him away to the mental ward.   The New Civil Rights Movement looks at Santorum's unhinged efforts to prepare for 2016 - a move that will only help Democrats and those in support of the LGBT civil rights movement.  Here are highlights: 

Rick Santorum is already planning and organizing his campaign for the Republican 2016 presidential election season. Santorum, who lost badly this year, ran on a platform of religious anti-gay and anti-immigrant hate — exactly the positions that some in the GOP are now just starting to realize hurt Mitt Romney‘s chances, however small they were, of winning the White House.

Santorum is a questionable candidate among younger voters, women, the LGBT community, the African American community, the Hispanic community, and other minorities, and his abrasive and condescending demeanor doesn’t help either. By 2016, America will be so over the Rick Santorums they’ll have to find another country to try to rule.

“A leading evangelical leader who is close to Santorum and asked not to be identified, told The Christian Post on Wednesday that Santorum is ‘organizing and making all the necessary preparations’ for another run in the 2016 Republican primary,” the Christian Post reports: “Rick’s getting ready organized and is not going to be behind the eight-ball when it comes to fundraising and building a grassroots organization,” the anonymous source said. “I think you’ll see and hear a lot from Rick in the next 12 months.” 

Last week, Santorum told CNN’s Piers Morgan that “Romney, in my opinion, didn’t do was go out and vigorously defend the beliefs that he said he espoused and didn’t go on the offense.”

“And when you’re playing defense, which is what I believe the campaign was doing and Republicans were doing generally throughout the course of this campaign you’re not going to win.”

“He didn’t make it about those two fundamentally different visions for America,” he said of Obama’s re-election campaign, “and I don’t think we did a very good job either as Republicans pointing out those fundamental differences and what type of freedom we’re talking about.”

What not a single Republican seems to understand is that Hispanics don’t have a problem with the GOP’s not having “a strong message for those folks.” The GOP has had a very strong message for the Hispanic and Latino communities: “self-deport, you illegals.”  Santorum 2016!

Democrats must be thrilled that Santorum will be out actively underscoring the extremism and racism of today's GOP.

Ken Cuccinelli and The GOP's Continued War on Virginia's Women

One can only hope that women in Virginia are paying attention to what Ken Cuccinelli and his fellow Republican theocrats are doing to women as they strive to inflict their own sex and abortion obsessed religious beliefs on all women.  The latest battle - which women lost - involved new clinic rules that were voted on by the Virginia Board of Health following Ken Cuccinelli's incessant attack against clinics providing any kind of abortion services.  The Cuccinelli/GOP effort has been to force the promulgation new rules that will in many instances cause such clinics to either close or under go expensive, unnecessary renovations.  It's all part and parcel with the GOP obsession to control every aspects of women's wombs.  What should women do?  Turn out on election day in mass and vote for Barack Obama and their local Democrat Congressional candidate to send a loud message to Cuccinelli and the GOP.  The Washington Post's main editorial looks at the batshitery being done by Cuccinelli.  Here are excerpts:

IN THREE YEARS as Virginia’s attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli II (R) has demeaned his office by using it as a blatantly partisan bully pulpit to attack Obamacare, illegal immigrants, homosexuals and climate-change scientists. Now he has managed to bully Virginia’s Board of Health into a stance — unprecedented in state history — that could force most of the commonwealth’s 20 or so abortion clinics to close.

Mr. Cuccinelli, who was a champion of the anti-abortion movement as a legislator, has clung to his current office even as he runs for governor. In doing so, he ignores the example of former Virginia attorneys general of both parties who resigned to run rather than politicize the office. In the Cuccinelli worldview, rendering dispassionate legal advice takes a back seat to agenda-pushing. 
 
[H]e threatened members of the state Board of Health last week, warning that they might have to bear the cost of their own legal defense unless they toed his line on abortion regulations. That gambit bore fruit a few days later when the board, evidently intimidated, reversed a position it had taken in June and voted to impose severe new regulations on abortion clinics, where most of Virginia’s 25,000 annual abortions take place.

The opening for Mr. Cuccinelli’s war on abortion came when Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) signed GOP-sponsored legislation last year to reclassify abortion clinics so they are treated as hospitals, which are subject to exacting standards governing the width of hallways and doorways, the size of operating rooms, numbers of parking spots — even the types of sinks and water fountains. Sponsors of the legislation — which does not apply to other outpatient clinics performing plastic surgery or oral surgery, for instance — were intent on shutting down abortion clinics, many of which would be unable to afford retrofitting. 

[I]mplementation of the new regulations is the purview of the health board, which had never elected to impose new regulations on existing venues. In June, the board voted 7 to 4 to exempt existing clinics.

That prompted Mr. Cuccinelli to resort to strong-arm tactics, first by threatening he would not certify the new regulations, then by warning that his office, which acts as the lawyer for state agencies and boards, might refuse to represent members of the board of health who were sued if they failed to heed his advice.
 
The Board of Health buckled, voting 13 to 2 last week to reverse its position. If that decision survives a public comment period and review by Mr. McDonnell, Virginia will be known for two things — the nation’s most draconian anti-abortion regulations and its most politicized attorney general’s office.

In my view, Cuccinelli is nothing short of insane.  It's also interesting that he's obsessed with women's sexual matters since I continue to receive as yet unconfirmed reports that Mr. Cuccinelli likes to suck dick - just like so many other flaming self-loathing homophobes.  Needless to say, nothing would make me happier than to confirm such reports and take this menace to Virginia down.

John McCain Bitch Slaps Michele Bachmann for Anti-Muslim Lies

There are times that I wonder why Michele Bachmann isn't in a mental institution.  The same question applies to the lunatics and apparent knuckle dragging voters in her district who continue to vote this mentally ill loon into Congress.   Michele Bachmann's latest fixation - she's apparently taking a brief break from her anti-gay jihad - is the fantasy that Muslim terrorists are infiltrating the government with a goal of imposing Sharia law, i.e., the Islamic equivalent of the Christian dictatorship that Bachmann and her fellow Christofascist nutcases want to inflict on all Americans.  Bachamnn's lunacy was so unfounded and over the top that John McCaim felt compelled to bitch lap Bachmann on the Senate floor.  First these highlights from Think Progress followed by a video clip of McCain taking Bachmann to task:

On the floor of the Senate Wednesday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) repudiated Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-MN) McCarthyesque witch-hunt to root out the alleged Muslim Brotherhood infiltration of the U.S. government. The flap started when Bachmann all but directly accused Secretary Hillary Clinton’s top aide Huma Abedin of working on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood in a letter with four colleagues to the State Department’s Inspector General demanding an investigation.

Enter McCain, who put his foot down today and chided his fellow Republicans for the accusations against Abedin. McCain brought up his personal relationship with Abedin, adding that she “represents what is best about America.” He noted Bachmann’s letter and its sourcing to a report from notorious Islamophobe Frank Gaffney‘s Center for Security Policy (CSP). He then said:

To say that the accusations made in both documents are not substantiated by the evidence they offer is to be overly polite and diplomatic about it. It is far better, and more accurate, to talk straight: These allegations about Huma Abedin, and the report from which they are drawn, are nothing less than an unwarranted and unfounded attack on an honorable citizen, a dedicated American, and a loyal public servant.

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) lead the charge against Bachmann, demanding “credible, substantial evidence” to back up her accusations. Bachmann then penned a long letter responding to Ellison, which he rightly dismissed as “16 pages worth of repeated false allegations. Just regurgitated nonsense.”

Bachmann responds in a statement on her website: “The letters my colleagues and I sent on June 13 to the Inspectors General of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice and the Department of State – and the follow up letter I wrote to Rep. Ellison on July 13 – are unfortunately being distorted.” 

  

Gary Bauer: Gays Cause Murder; Michele Bachmann Hunts Muslims

Speaking of conservative Christians driving the younger generations away from religion, two examples of the hate dripping animus that passes as religious motivated behavior, Gary Bauer - who looks like a self-loathing closet case to me (see the photo at right) - and Michele Bachmann are both on lunatic rampages that underscore the ugliness of Christianity at the hands of the far right.  First we have Bauer claiming that gays and gay marriage cause crime, especially murder in Chicago.  Right Wing Watch reports on Bauer's deranged mindset and effort to stir up violence against gay Americans.  Here are excerpts:

On Wednesday, Gary Bauer of the Campaign for Working Families attempted to tie the Obama administration’s support for gay rights…to violent crime. Bauer said that the escalating crime rate in the city of Chicago is due to children growing up in fatherless homes, which he maintained is a result of Democratic policies that have “made it comfortable for many women to not have husbands in the home” and even same-sex marriage. “Obama and the Democrats have embraced the radical idea of men marrying other men,” Bauer sneered, “How is that going to help the black family?”  

For the past fifty years, Rahm Emanuel's party, the Democratic Party, has made it comfortable for many women to not have husbands in the home. Now Obama and the Democrats have embraced the radical idea of men marrying other men! How is that going to help the black family?

When Emanuel worked in the Clinton White House, the response to gang violence, do you remember this, was midnight basketball programs. It didn't work, midnight basketball programs don't replace fathers. And, of course, it was around that time when Democrats and their media allies did their best to convince us that values really didn't matter. Even the disgusting values demonstrated in the Oval Office with a White House intern.

As if Bauer and his white supremacist leaning fellow Republicans give a rat's ass about black families!  

Meanwhile, Michele Bachmann sees a Muslim conspiracy under every bush and has embarked on more lunacy trying to ferret out Muslims infiltrating the government.   Salon has a piece that looks at Bachmann's Muslim witch hunt.  Here are highlights:

Muslim conspiracy theories have largely vanished from the political debate. But with another election looming, the tide may be rising again, and Rep. Michele Bachmann is predictably already ahead of the crowd.

The Minnesota Republican, joined by Republican Reps. Trent Franks, Louie Gohmert, Thomas Rooney and Lynn Westmoreland, sent letters to the inspectors general of five government agencies responsible for national security to demand they investigate infiltration by the Muslim Brotherhood into the highest reaches of the federal government. In particular, Bachmann singled out Huma Abedin, the wife of former congressman Anthony Weiner and a top aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Another letter targets the Department of Defense, which Bachmann et al. accuse of failing to “characterize accurately the jihadist motivations” of Maj. Nidal Hassan, the Army psychiatrist accused in the Fort Hood shooting.

A third letter went to the Department of Homeland Security, alleging the department is covering up the Muslim Brotherhood threat by developing an official lexicon that obfuscates its danger.

Yet another letter went to the Department of Justice inspector general warning that officials there had been meeting with Muslim groups that she accused of being “fronts” for the Brotherhood.

The final letter went to the Office of Director of National Intelligence, stating, “we request that your office conduct a formal investigation or evaluation into the extent to which Muslim-Brotherhood tied individuals and entities were involved 

In an interview with the American Family Association’s Sandy Rios late last month, Bachmann explained, “It appears that there has been deep penetration in the halls of our United States government by the Muslim Brotherhood.  

So what is Bachmann’s source? Every one of her letters prominently cites Frank Gaffney, a former Reagan defense official who has become one of the country’s most prominent anti-Muslim conspiracy theorists. Gaffney heads the Center for Security Policy and has for years been preaching to anyone who will listen that the Muslim Brotherhood is secretly infiltrating every aspect of American life in a grand scheme to impose Shariah law when we least expect it.

For Gaffney, everyone is an agent of the Brotherhood, including CPAC, the big annual gathering of conservatives in Washington, D.C., and Grover Norquist, the prominent anti-tax activist who is married to a Muslim woman.

Gaffney has since been ostracized from several other key conservative groups, yet Bachmann apparently feels justified demanding official investigations based on his theories.  

It would seem that the only "deep penetration" that has occurred is the level of Bachmann's insanity.  In my opinion, the woman belongs in a mental hospital.