Michele Bachmann thinks Hillary Clinton’s aide’s dead father’s supporter’s NGO that was tied to the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe circa 1970-1990 is evidence that the US government has been infiltrated by radical Islamists.
For the love of god, Minnesota’s Sixth Congressional District: You have the opportunity to give this braying ninny the hook every two years, and you keep returning her to Congress. Why do you hate America?
[X-posted at Rumproast]
MattF
Well, Bachmann represents a Congressional district in the same state as Keith Ellison does, so she’s practically a you-know-what herself.
PeakVT
Why do you hate America?
Because Bachmann pisses off liberals. They hate liberals more than they love America.
NotMax
Ah, Bachmann’s hallucination of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Plants.
Why keep her in office? Would you want her living full-time in your neighborhood? ;)
As one of the tags is Republican Stupidity — swear I just heard this while channel surfing and passing by CNBC.
Trump was on the phone and said that Obama’s tax returns show zero contributions to charity.
Pants, shirt, socks, jacket, tie and briefs on fire.
c u n d gulag
If she had a reality show, it might be funny to watch.
But to think this blithering moron is a Congressperson, someone who actually sits on the “Intelligence Committee,” is tragedy bordering on farce.
But then, is she any more of a blither moron than Steve King, or Gohmert, Allen West, or Rand Paul, or any of the rest of the Conservative recently released from Bedlam, who are now serving in Congress?
The problem is, that Congressional deck of cards has too many Jokers, too few aces, and WAAAAAAAAAAAY too many asses.*
*And a few closeted Queen’s.
Randy P
@NotMax: Easy enough to check here where they’ve posted 12 years of Obama’s and Biden’s returns. Pulled up the first one, Obama’s 2011 return, and it shows $172K to charity.
Sure, let the trolls start putting that one out there.
Another Halocene Human
@c u n d gulag: Okay, though reluctantly, that comment is a WIN.
NotMax
@RandyP
Not to mention the entirety of the Nobel money being split amongst charities earlier on.
However, nuts will be nuts, and adhere like glue to the “Facts? We don’t need no ess-stinking facts” stance.
Another Halocene Human
@Randy P: I don’t see any contributions to Focus on the Family, Invisible Children, or the Republican Party.
Tithes to his pagan muslim soshalist brotherhood are not any charity the Donald is burdened to respect.
Joseph Nobles
This just in: Mitt Romney’s surprise VP candidate is… TOM CRUISE!! He was retroactively made a Mormon for the past 35 years.
I’m just kidding, it’s gonna be Pawlenty.
JPL
@Joseph Nobles: TPM says it has narrowed down to the bridge guy, the bush guy, and the voucher guy. I’m hoping for the voucher guy so he can be mocked about giving state money to schools that won’t teach evolution.
salacious crumb
well what’s else is she supposed to do? She failed the Lord by not securing the Presidency by proxy, and her husband more likely than not prefers spending time in the Minneapolis airport bathroom stalls than with her. The rest of Congress is just as loony as she is, so she needs to spend time doing some sort of witch hunt..plus Americans are always looking for a new Hitler anyways..so who better than her?
debit
@Joseph Nobles: Why would Timmeh even want it? Despite his demonstration of almost complete incompetence, I still think he’s smart enough to know this can only end badly.
ETA: Also, too, on behalf of my state, I am sorry for the lady with the crazy eyes. How she keeps being elected? Her supporters are incredibly stupid. I live near the U of M, and was in line to vote the first year she ran. Some young girl aggressively bounced in, and announced she was ONLY here to vote for Michele. She didn’t understand, for a very long time, that she wasn’t going to be able to because this was NOT Michele’s district. Seriously, stupid.
Calouste
@JPL:
You can just feel the Southern enthousiasm about their Mormon Yankee pairing up with another Northerner or a brown Catholic.
JPL
@debit: Does he have anything else? It might end up as a gig on FOX TV and that’s pretty lucrative.
bemused
@Joseph Nobles:
I rarely listen to Ed Schultz radio show but did yesterday. Ex Gov Arne Carlson (R), was on saying Pawlenty would be a bad pick for VP. He listed Pawlenty’s rotten decisions as governor, borrowed billions to balance budget, raised real estate taxes as a result of gutting local aid, poor job “creation”, etc. On Republican planet today, those are considered assets.
NotMax
@JPL
And schools that won’t teach anything.
There have been reports (too logy to go look them up at this moment) of some of those ‘schools’ being naught but a room where they plunk the kiddies down in front of a TV to watch religious videos all day.
El Cid
The Egyptian government and US foreign policy machinations (“Cold War”) frequently relied upon groups like and including the Muslim Brotherhood to undermine local leftist and Communist secular movements.
Betty Cracker
@Joseph Nobles: I lean toward thinking it’ll be Pawlenty too. He seems sufficiently servile (absolute requirement for Mittens), and Pawlenty probably reckons he’ll be in line for 2016 if the SS Mittens cracks up on the rocks.
JPL
@Betty Cracker: Pawlenty would be damaged goods in 2016…
JPL
If Josh is right, which of the three has foreign policy experience. Romney’s is limited to various tax shelters and China and India. The Romney campaign keeps leaking possible picks just to take the heat off the tax problem.
S. cerevisiae
TPAW! The White Bread/Miracle Whip ticket!
Sales of sleeping pills will plummet.
PeakVT
Romney is in a cycle of making bad decisions, so whoever he picks for Veep might look reasonable at the beginning but will start to drag in a few weeks.
danno
Her district is heavily gerrymandered, drawn–quite deliberately in 2001 when the GOP had the House and the Governor’s mansion–to catch every single Republican voter on the north side of the Twin Cities. Her district is about 25 miles wide and about 100 miles long and runs in an arc from one end of the metro to the other.
This effectively means she’s kept in office by a strange combination of wealthy voters on the east side who don’t want to pay taxes, the ‘Minnesota Bible Belt” of Evangelical churches on the north side who genuinely agree with everything that comes out of Bachmann’s mouth, and the Catholic–thus pro-life–farming communities on the west side.
It’s a strange group of supporters, and outside of the Evangelicals, most of her constituents also think she’s a bit nuts–but they also would never vote for a Democrat. She gets enough national press–and can draw in enough big out-of-state donors–that no Republican has ever been able to mount a credible primary challenge to her. (It doesn’t help that the Minnesota GOP–formerly the last hold-out of Moderate Republicans–has gone off the Talk Radio deep end in the last five years.) At the same time, the state Democratic party is such a mess with a very real lack of high-profile ‘talent’ (for lack of a better word), so it simply doesn’t have anyone it can put up against her who has a chance of winning.
NotMax
@Betty Cracker
Never have grokked sitting vice presidents’ self-assurance of successfully running for the presidency. That has happened exactly 4 times:
John Adams, 1796
Thomas Jefferson, 1800
Martin Van Buren, 1836
George H. W. Bush, 1988.
rikyrah
that bitch is batshyt crazy. period.
bemused
I think many Minnesotans thought Pawlenty cutting off his beloved mullet was a sign he had ambitions to run for a higher office.
Betty Cracker
@JPL: Maybe, but I’m not sure Republicans think that way, or at least they haven’t traditionally. It seems to be an “It’s my turn!” thing, hence Dole, McCain and Mittens.
Of course, if Mittens loses to the Kenyan Usurper, the GOP will lose its shit, so maybe all bets are off the table. In that scenario, they may conclude that Mittens was not sufficiently radical and turn the crazy up to 11 for 2016, which would leave Pawlenty out.
Betty Cracker
@NotMax: I’m saying if Obama wins in 2012 and Pawlenty was Mittens’ failed running mate, he could be considered next in line. Maybe not, though…
Cermet
I do feel sorry for all the demo-rats that live in that loonie-tunes district. Can’t blame them but the thugs voting – it is those thugs that are just as crazy – all of them that vote for that brainless crimnally crazy pile of shit
NotMax
@Betty Cracker
Ah.
My bad.
If such comes to pass, may he fare as well as Dan Quayle did in 2000.
aretino
Radical centrism, baby; radical centrism. There’s always a candidate running from the useless local tut-tutting, hand-wringing, tote-bagging so-called Independence Party. For ten percent of the electorate, it’s more important to vote for that candidate in order to tweak liberals than it is to actually get rid of Bachmann. So Bachmann can get elected with less than half of the vote. A Democrat would have beaten her for sure 4 years ago without our totebagging vote-splitters.
rlrr
@NotMax:
Al Gore, 2000
Betty Cracker
@Cermet: It’s sort of like the predicament of all of us who live in Florida having to put up with (p)Rick Scott for four years. Less than half of us voted for the bastard, but he’s our governor until 2014 nonetheless. I blame the hand-sitters more than the lunatics and teabaggers who actually voted for the bastard.
Gus
The sixth district will vote for whoever is anti-abortion and pro-Jebus. It’s full of the kind of Republicans who are destroying this country in order to save it.
S. cerevisiae
@aretino: Yup. That’s what got T-Paw elected as well. He made Jesse Ventura look good.
NotMax
@rlrr
Cute. Allow me to retroactively amend “successfully running” to “being inaugurated.”
horatius
From what I counted, that’s 5 degrees of separation, add one more and you will be connected to every human that ever lived.
lamh35
anyone read this from Dick Halperin today? Status of Bain and Romney’s Tax Returns
hmm, the hack Halperin sounds nervous for hs BFF doesn’t he. dude is a hack but still…
redshirt
@S. cerevisiae: Funny, but is TPAW really Miracle Whip? MW’s got a bit of a zing. Have you seen their latest ad campaign?
TPAW’s not Miracle Whip. How about instead some nice, plain Helmans?
General Stuck
@lamh35:
Yep, when they start mimicking the wingnuts using the “k” word for Obama campaigning by hitting a stream of big fat softballs from Romney, and also invoking the ‘Chicago thug” meme, they are nervous. Probly a whisker away from chicken little grade all out panic.
bemused
@lamh35:
Hmm, has Halperin had knowledge of some potentially lethal Romney info that he himself has been sitting on?
aretino
Surely the goddess isn’t kind enough to give us T-Paw as Slick Willard’s veep pick. I mean, Willard must know that T-Paw has that not-responsible-for-all-that-bad-and-illegal-stuff-I-was-paid-more-than-50K-a-year-to-oversee director gig in his background. (Just google Pawlenty and NexTel for more on the story.) That’s just too much like Willard’s relationship with Bain, methinks, for him to go there.
JPL
Portman explained on FOX that since the top twenty percent paid more of the income taxes, that means Bush’s tax cuts were more progressive. No mention on how the top twenty percent have eighty percent of the wealth.
schrodinger's cat
@NotMax: Well the President can always kick the bucket and the VP can become the President, I can think of Lyndon Johnson, Herbert Hoover and Lincoln’s VP (sorry don’t remember the name). So the probability that a VP would become President is not quite as low as you put it.
ETA: Also Ford after Nixon resigned.
lamh35
on the vp shortlit, personally I think it’s gonna be none of the guys on da VP list. that Thune guy & guv McDonnell aren’t on it but I still think it could be one of them
redshirt
Damn, I made myself hungry thinking about Miracle Whip. :(
jibeaux
@lamh35: Sweet jeebus do I loathe the implication that Obama is some sort of modern-day Al Capone/Michael Corleone. Like all the wingnut scare tactics, it’s a very poor fucking fit so give it to charity already.
Donut
@MattF:
African American?
Middle-aged guy?
Wayne State alum?
Married to a math teacher?
What?
General Stuck
Lord Darth making an appearance on Capital Hill today. All the mirrors have been removed, and a team assembled to carry his massive testicles so they don’t break any thing.
Shorter Cheney – WAR is truth, and good for bidness.
edit – All of it with the sweet irony, that it was the republicans that came up with the bright idea for a trigger to cutting defense spending, that would have forced Obama and dems to gut SS instead.
Mr Stagger Lee
@schrodinger’s cat: It was Andrew Johnson, who basically was a Confederate Plant who gave the South back to the rebels until he was nearly impeached.
Betty Cracker
@redshirt: You must be unaware of Miracle Whip’s secret ingredient, which is Satan’s ball-sweat…
redshirt
@Betty Cracker: Hell no! That’s what gives it the ZING!
Villago Delenda Est
There is an empty padded cell somewhere with this bint’s name on it, sitting vacant.
It’s time to end the vacancy.
maya
@c u n d gulag:
The key operative phrase there is “sits on…intelligence.”
Villago Delenda Est
@JPL:
Perfect!
The guy is as daft and greedy as Rmoney himself.
Portman for VP!
Schlemizel
I know we tend to make fun of the South and their boarder states for being gullible, ignorant wingnuts but many states have areas of mass stupidity. Minnesota has a particularly virulent region of wingnut-itude in its 6th CD. The best chance to beat ol batshit bachmann was in 08 but the DFL had infighting and ultimately a weak candidate. She probably has the seat as long as she wants it.
I cannot believe the Rmoney people would be stupid enough to pick little Timmy Pawlenty as VP. In addition to the bad government baggage he carries (google I-35 bridge disaster) he is a lifeless, colorless, empty suit with no benefit to Willard.
Sly
@NotMax:
And Nixon, though he failed at his first attempt.
@schrodinger’s cat:
Andrew Johnson was Lincoln’s VP during his second term. Herbert Hoover was never Vice President, but he was Secretary of Commerce under Harding and Coolidge. You may be thinking of Coolidge, who was the VP under Harding when the latter died in office.
General Stuck
Nothing but FAIL
JGabriel
Betty Cracker @ Top:
Spite. They keep returning Bachmann to Congress because they think elitists think they’re stupid.
Somehow it never to them that electing Bachmann reinforces the perception.
.
JGabriel
Betty Cracker @ Top:
Spite. They keep returning Bachmann to Congress because they think liberals think they’re stupid.
Somehow it never occurs to them that electing Bachmann reinforces the perception.
.
Sly
@Mr Stagger Lee:
Andrew Johnson was a terrible President, but he was no Confederate.
schrodinger's cat
@Sly: Ah yes you are right! History FAIL.
Roger Moore
@schrodinger’s cat:
The complete list of VPs who succeeded when the previous President died or resigned is:
John Tyler
Millard Filmore
Andrew Johnson
Chester Arthur
Theodore Roosevelt
Calvin Coolidge
Harry Truman
Lyndon Johnson
Gerald Ford
Roger Moore
@General Stuck:
When they send back letters saying “I haven’t attended any such event”, Issa will hold them in contempt for failing to provide the information he wants.
MattF
@Donut: Moo- Mooo- Moooo- Moooooslim!
schrodinger's cat
9 VPs have become President when the previous President died or resigned.
10 if you add Nixon who was Eisenhower’s VP
and add the other four who became Presidents after their bosses completed their terms
makes it 14. According to Wikipedia there have been 46 Vice Presidents (I am excluding the current one). So the probability that a VP will become President is 14/46 or about 30%.
The Moar You Know
@Schlemizel: I’ll put inland California’s wingnuts up against anybody’s. The coast thankfully holds those crazy fuckers in check but there’s lots of this state that is indistinguishable from the reddest parts of the Deep South.
Jay C
@Mr Stagger Lee:
I think you’re being moderately unfair to Andrew Johnson here in terming him a “Confederate plant”: Johnson was a Democrat, and the pro-Union Governor of Tennessee during the war (a rare pro-Union, anti-Confederate Tennessee politico): Lincoln put him on the ticket in 1864 on a sort of “National Unity” ticket. Which failed of course, since when he became President, Republicans considered him an outsider, Democrats considered him a traitor, and his own lack of talent (by all accounts Andy Johnson was a assholish mediocrity, a drunk, and a blinkered racist who couldn’t – and wouldn’t – ever be able to see black people as human beings.) did him in.
IOW, he’d fit in perfectly with today’s Republican Party: but “Confederate plant”? Naaaah….
porlob
Good lord. I’m pretty certain I can connect myself to the Muslim Brotherhood in fewer steps than that. And I grew up Mormon in Salt Lake City with an unremarkable European ancestry.
NotMax
@schrodinger’s cat
@Sly
Not what the post was about at all.
Many Veeps became president after a death occurred or else after leaving the office of vice president.
I very specifically referred to sitting vice presidents who became president via election.
S. cerevisiae
I think the wingnuts assume putting T-Paw on the ticket will give MN to Rmoney. They are really delusional because Obama will win MN by 10 points no matter who the pick for VP. I just hope enough sensible people vote in order to block the gay marriage ban and voter ID amendments that our wingnut legislature put on the ballot because they had to get around Dayton’s veto.
jwb
@bemused: It sure sounds like Halperin either has more info on Rmoney or has heard through the press grapevine that someone else in the business has more info and is about to drop it.
Roger Moore
@porlob:
I know I can. When I was in Junior High, I went to a summer program at the University of Northern Colorado. That’s where Sayyid Qutb, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, became radicalized against the West. See how close the connection is!
General Stuck
Jennifer Rubin has a sad all over again.
She wants the media and the rest of us to note the success of republicans the past two years, for crapping the economic recovery in order to defeat Obama.
Shorter Rubin – They aren’t following the script what with democrats being ruthless in attacking republicans is just, just so depressing that I want to cut myself.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Joseph Nobles:
That will be a game changer. It will be the bland leading the bland.
Yutsano
@General Stuck: Shall we get her a couch? For teh fainting, mind you.
Roger Moore
@NotMax:
Sure, but that’s not the only, or the most common way for a VP to become President. I can imagine somebody who doesn’t like his chances of winning a nomination and election for President deciding that his best chance was to go for VP and hope to be one of the roughly 20% of VPs who succeeded the President on his death or resignation. The back door is still a door.
General Stuck
@Yutsano:
She does need to pace her self a bit, as the beatings will not stop till morale improves.
NotMax
@Roger Moore
Love it.
Also, too, with absolutely no offense or derision intended or implied, one cannot spell Moore without Moor.
Uncle Cosmo
@redshirt:
If he’s gonna play to the what-a-BFF-we-have-in-Jeebus crowd, better make that Heckmann’s…
GregB
Bachmann’s favorite game is Six Degrees to Sharia Nation.
Yutsano
@General Stuck: I just read the whole thing. Wow. She based a whole column on one economist’s report. Therefore Obama should be doomed. And then she dismisses Bain as irrelevant. Oh Jen. Fighting the good fight while Willard slowly implodes.
NotMax
Roger Moore
No argument.
I misread or misinterpreted Betty’s comment as being about T-paw running while being a sitting veep, and responded in kind.
And admitted error when the misinterpretation was correctly pointed out.
It was never meant to be a general treatise on every occasion or method by which any v.p. has either run for or become president.
AndoChronic
Even though I’m in the 5th District (Ellison) I apologize for the 6th District. Trust me, they are an embarrassment to the state.
Redshift
@General Stuck:
Yes, if, as the cherry-picked report says, we’re headed for zero percent growth, clearly the only answer is to elect the guy who wants to bring back the personnel and policies that brought us massively negative growth!
(Shorter Jennifer Rubin: Shut up! The only thing you’re allowed to talk about is that the economy is terrible and Mitt can fix it because he knew how to make himself rich, and also shut up about how!)
(I clearly need to work on this “shorter” thing…)
catclub
@GregB: I am not sure she can count to six. Usually it is: Obama is President, there you are at sharia.
ruemara
@redshirt: No one is ever made hungry thinking about Miracle Whip. No one.
gbear
@bemused:
Arne is my favorite MN republican. He absolutely hates what the republicans have done to MN. Hates what Norm Coleman and Tim Pawlenty stand for and calls them out whenever he gets the chance.
MN did some redistricting this year and Bachmann has lost the western portion of her district (it’s now part of Betty McCollum’s district). From what I recall, her district picked up some less insane territory, so her campaign could be interesting to watch this year. She may lose.
Todd Dugdale
Bachmann is facing a very tough re-election campaign right now. The Democratic candidate is Jim Graves, a wealthy hotel/restaurant owner who can self-fund. Polling shows Bachmann to be more than little vulnerable.
Few people realise that it took Bachmann three tries to win a simple majority in a R +6 district, and it took an exceptionally strong Republican year for her to achieve that. The Independence Party has run a candidate the last three elections, and split the vote. It’s currently looking as if this year it will be two-way race, which is bad for Bachmann.
Bachmann was elected to piss off the urban “libs” in the Twin Cities (Mpls/St. Paul), not to actually do any legislating. She was supposed to “blow the minds” of the liberals with “the Truth”. It’s now clear that she is nothing more than a punchline to the “libs”, so the enthusiasm of her supporters is waning.
redshirt
@ruemara: I was! Sincerely. But I just had lunch and all is right with the world now. Miracle Whip be gone!
cmorenc
In North Carolina, the 5th Congressional District has the dubious distinction of having a female congresswoman (Virginia Foxx) who is even more obnoxiously, toxically insane than Michelle Bachmann. By comparison, Bachmann is a RINO too politely chummy and willing to compromise with the “democrat party”.
daverave
@The Moar You Know:
Yup, there’s a reason why there’s a whole wing of country music that originated in the central valley… I’m looking at you Bakersfield.
JustAnotherBob
I think the statistic wanted here is the number of elected presidents who first ran as VP on an unsuccessful ticket vs. the number who took their unsuccessful VP turn and failed subsequent presidential bids.
Probably limited to the last hundred years.
That would give some indication of how much the additional name recognition counts.