Batshit Bachmann - Dismiss her at your own peril..

At least according to Matt Taibbi, our favorite wingtard should be taken seriously as a Presidential nominee, at least for those yahoo's that reside in rightwing nutterville. From his RS piece entitled Michele Bachmann's Holy War:

Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and, as you consider the career and future presidential prospects of an incredible American phenomenon named Michele Bachmann, do one more thing. Don't laugh.

It may be the hardest thing you ever do, for Michele Bachmann is almost certainly the funniest thing that has ever happened to American presidential politics. Fans of obscure 1970s television may remember a short-lived children's show called Far Out Space Nuts, in which a pair of dimwitted NASA repairmen, one of whom is played by Bob (Gilligan) Denver, accidentally send themselves into space by pressing "launch" instead of "lunch" inside a capsule they were fixing at Cape Canaveral. This plot device roughly approximates the political and cultural mechanism that is sending Michele Bachmann hurtling in the direction of the Oval Office.

Bachmann is a religious zealot whose brain is a raging electrical storm of divine visions and paranoid delusions. She believes that the Chinese are plotting to replace the dollar bill, that light bulbs are killing our dogs and cats, and that God personally chose her to become both an IRS attorney who would spend years hounding taxpayers and a raging anti-tax Tea Party crusader against big government. She kicked off her unofficial presidential campaign in New Hampshire, by mistakenly declaring it the birthplace of the American Revolution. "It's your state that fired the shot that was heard around the world!" she gushed. "You are the state of Lexington and Concord, you started the battle for liberty right here in your backyard."

I said lunch, not launch! But don't laugh. Don't do it. And don't look her in the eyes; don't let her smile at you. Michele Bachmann, when she turns her head toward the cameras and brandishes her pearls and her ageless, unblemished neckline and her perfect suburban orthodontics in an attempt to reassure the unbeliever of her non-threateningness, is one of the scariest sights in the entire American cultural tableau. She's trying to look like June Cleaver, but she actually looks like the T2 skeleton posing for a passport photo. You will want to laugh, but don't, because the secret of Bachmann's success is that every time you laugh at her, she gets stronger.

A holy war is something terrorists wage isn't it? I thought so...

I also believe, like Taibbi, that Batshit Bachmann needs to be taken seriously..give the cunt a lot of press and cable airtime...oh please...let her spew her shit about the lunatic left and our mission to destroy America. That way, all the normal folks get a real taste of this permanent resident of nutterville.

Taibbi gives us the history of our favorite nitwit, telling us how she grew up, where, the schools she went to..its a history lesson we all need to familiarize ourselves with.

Because this woman isn't going away anytime soon. Oh hell no she ain't. So read up m'dear folks..there will be a test later. ;>P

UPDATE: Today we learn Batshit is getting most of her funding in the form of small donations. To me, this says volumes as Obama did the very same thing in his run for the Presidency.

UPDATE#2: VideoCafe has the video of Taibbi's visit to KO's new digs, wherein he discusses our Queen of the Teabaggers:

WI Rethugs ram through another winner. Voter ID bill.

Thanks to the wonderful folks at Crooks and Liars, specifically David, we have video of this fuckery below..but first..my bitchfest on the subject.

This crap passed on a 19-5 vote. The five were of course Democrats, many of the other Dem's refused to vote for this bullshit bill that jackass extraordinaire Gov. Scott Walker says will prevent voter fraud...like they really have any cases of individuals using other individuals names to vote, because in the entire history of WI They. Do. Not. From the WI State Journal:

Amid chants of “Shame!” and “Recall!” from the gallery, the state Senate on Thursday gave final approval to a controversial bill requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls. The measure now heads to Gov. Scott Walker, who said he plans to sign it next Wednesday.

“Requiring photo identification to vote will go a long way to eliminate the threat of voter fraud,” Walker said. “If you need an ID to buy cold medicine, it’s reasonable to require it to vote.”

Republicans in the state Assembly passed the bill in a late-night session last week. Debate in the GOP-controlled Senate began Tuesday, running until after 1 a.m. Wednesday, when Democrats used a procedural move to delay final passage.

On Thursday, Senate GOP leaders limited floor debate to one hour. Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, defended the time limit saying the topic “has received a lot of debate,” and Democrats had had plenty of chances to speak on the floor.

These Wisconsin rightwing nutters really are disgusting fucks. And you know they are trying to prevent certain types of people from voting..its a no brainer, fer christs sake.

When do those recall votes start up? Come WI. residents..get a move on and toss these fuckwads out!

From our Dept of WTF?

I expect a lot of batshit crazy out of the R's elected last year, but this fuckery really, seriously blows my little mind:

Maine Governor Paul LePage has ordered state workers to remove from the state labor department a 36-foot mural depicting the state’s labor history. Among other things the mural illustrates the 1937 shoe mill strike in Auburn and Lewiston. It also features the iconic “Rosie the Riveter,” who in real life worked at the Bath Iron Works. One panel shows my predecessor at the U.S. Department of Labor, Frances Perkins, who was buried in Newcastle, Maine. 

The LePage Administration is also renaming conference rooms that had carried the names of historic leaders of American labor, as well as former Secretary Perkins. 

The Governor’s spokesman explains that the mural and the conference-room names were “not in keeping with the department’s pro-business goals.”

Ok, its the department of labor jackass, not the department of corporations. Does this dipshit think he was elected by thousands of rich CEO's?

Methinks Governor Paul LePage has hit the motherlode of all rightwing nuttery. He also wants to be able to hold secret meetings with business leaders. He wants to hold these meetings so bad, he actually created an executive order establishing a business counsel who's gatherings would be behind locked doors and was exempt from Maine's public disclosure laws.

This is the candidate that told Obama to go to hell and the NAACP to kiss his ass.

Christ, what a douchenozzle. Workers mean little to this bag o' batshit evidently and I hope to hell the voters of Maine are already suffering from buyers remorse.

Koch Bros Convention draws plenty of protesters

From LAT

The rich folks in Rancho Mirage were not amused by protesters that showed up to voice their distaste with the Koch Brothers Billionaire Caucus this weekend. To which I say: Too effin bad mutha fuckas! From Dave Dayden’s piece over at FDL:

Twenty-five protesters were arrested in Rancho Mirage, California today, at a protest in front of the Rancho Las Palmas resort, site of the “Billionaire’s Caucus,” an annual meeting put on by the Koch Brothers and other corporate entities and conservative movement operators.

Riverside Sheriff’s deputy Melissa Nieburger said that the sheriff’s department did have contacts with protest organizers, which included the California Courage Campaign, CREDO, MoveOn.org, 350.org, the California Nurses Association, United Domestic Workers of America and the main sponsor, the good-government group Common Cause, prior to the event, and that they were aware that some protesters would seek to be arrested for trespassing. She would not guarantee that all 25 who were arrested were part of that coordinated operation. The police, who wore riot gear, batons and helmets, did put the arrested into plastic handcuffs. Nieburger described them as “passive restraints.” They were being processed at press time, and Nieburger would not say whether they would be released or would spend the night at the jail in Indio.

Nieburger estimated between 800 and 1,000 activists at the “Uncloak the Kochs” event. Event organizers chartered buses from several locations around Southern California and claimed 1,500 people signed up for those buses, on top of any local activists who attended. It appeared from the ground that well over 1,000 protesters were there.

While the sheriff’s deputy claimed no knowledge of who called out the Riverside County sheriffs and the Palm Springs police department to the proceedings, Common Cause was contacted by the sheriff to see what they were planning and coordinate appropriate resources. The city of Rancho Mirage contracts with the Riverside County sheriff’s department for their law enforcement needs.
Van Jones, the former green jobs deputy in the Obama Administration and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, described the anti-Koch rally as “the beginning of our fight back.” The leadership of Common Cause, generally a far more congenial organization, was a bit unusual, part of a new aggressiveness and penchant for direct action from the group. “I think you’re going to see a new Common Cause.”

The Koch Brothers, billionaires who have generously funded conservative and libertarian causes for over a generation – including the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, and tea party groups like Americans for Prosperity – put together an annual meeting, typically held in the California desert, with fellow corporate CEOs and conservative operatives, to plan the year ahead. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and 2012 Republican Presidential candidate Herman Cain were reputed to attend the gathering at the sprawling Rancho Las Palmas resort. The Kochs bought out the entire resort for Saturday and Sunday. Some activists who stayed at the resort Friday night and booked dinners at their restaurants on Saturday had their reservations canceled by the resort, and were given $150 each for their trouble.

Common Cause organized the protest weeks ago, and set up a stage in the parking lot across the street from the Rancho Las Palmas resort. But from the beginning, activists were far more interested in the resort site, and they massed themselves across the street and then eventually in the driveway of the resort. The police, in their riot gear, came out very early to guard the resort, only letting in authorized personnel. Hotel guests, presumably attendees to the Koch Brothers meeting, looked on, holding smart phone cameras and taking pictures of the display. In addition, conservative provocateur Andrew Breitbart, resplendent in shorts and roller skates, mulled around the crowd with a couple lackeys and a small video camera, talking to (and arguing with) attendees. I asked Breitbart exactly who necessitated the riot police, the lady with the papier-maché puppet or the Code Pink lady’s umbrella, and he claimed to have seen unspecified “internal emails” proving the potential for violence and the need for security. Surely that will come out in the next few days. I didn’t want to keep him from his workout, so I wrapped up the interview.

Violence..come on..there was no violence. Breitbart was smoking crack if he alluded to any violence on the left’s side at this event. This time around there was plenty of press of the left’s protest of these heathen bastards. From an LAT writeup:

Protest organizers said they hoped to raise awareness about the Koch brothers and what activists portray as their shadowy attempts to weaken environmental protection laws and undercut campaign contribution limits.

The brothers control Koch Industries, the nation’s second-largest privately held company. They have funded groups pushing a limited-government, libertarian agenda, helped organize “tea party”groups and contributed $1 million to a failed ballot initiative to suspend California’s law to curb greenhouse gases.

At least the LA Times gets it right that the Koch Bros have funded measures to circumvent laws that help save the environment, and that they organized the astroturf group known as the Tea Party.
No one single person or group has worked harder to bring America back into the dark ages than the Koch Brothers.  These guys would spend their last dime to drag us backwards and put The Corporatocracy into control.

William Rivers Pitt gets it.

Mitch, the rightwingers Bitch

Mr. Pitt has written an open letter to the extremists on the right at TruthOut.org. Bear in mind, he does not paint all Conservatives with his brush, only those that make their living lying, spinning and power-grabbing. I have had several email conversations over the years with Mr. Pitt, as he is quite accessible. I would like to share part of his open letter to the extremists and those culpable media types with you now:

The "mainstream" media is already working overtime playing up the "Disturbed loner" angle with all their might. There is no doubt, from the available evidence, of Mr. Loughner's transformation into a disturbed individual. But here's the funny part: all the crazy crap he spewed, about the gold standard (a favorite of Glenn Beck, the master of Fox "News" fearmongering...so he can sell his gold scam to suckers) and government mind control and everything else before going on his rampage, is straight out of the Right-Wing Insanity Handbook. His personal YouTube ramblings were a mishmash of right-wing anti-government nonsense...the kind that attracts sick minds like Loughner, the kind that only reinforces their paranoia, the kind that finally pushes them over the brink and into the frenzy of violence that took place on Saturday.  The kind that the likes of you have been happily spreading by the day.  

He did not act alone. You were right there with him. You helped.

I'm talking to you, "mainstream" media people, who created this atmosphere of desperate rage and total paranoia out of whole cloth because of your unstoppable adoration for spectacle, and ratings, and because the companies that own your sorry asses agree with the deranged cretins you helped make so famous and powerful. It was sickeningly amusing on Sunday to watch Wolf Blitzer bluster and bluff on CNN about how the media owns no responsibility for this disaster. It was like watching a ten-year-old try to explain how a lamp got broken while he was running through the living room, but no, it wasn't him. It was, in reality, a pathetic display...but that is what you generally get whenever Wolf is on your screen.

"Mainstream" news personalities like David Gergen and John King bent over backwards warning people not to blame Sarah Palin and her ilk for this calamity.  It was a sick man who did this, they said. Bollocks to that.  I hate to break this to the "mainstream" media know-betters, but words matter.  When people like Palin spray the airwaves with calls to violence and incantations of imminent doom, people like Loughner are listening, and prepared to act. The "mainstream" media lets it fly without any questions or rebuttal, because it's good for ratings, and here we are. Words matter. Play Russian Roulette long enough, and someone inevitably winds up dead.

Words matter. Words have consequences. Yet the extreme right and their friends in the corporate media feel no guilt when they issue their declarations of lies that they spin as truth. They know they are lying. It's all politics all the time for them. It's about winning at any cost for them, its about power and control.

What it's not about is governing or putting forth ideas and programs that will help mainstreet americans crawl out of this recession that Wall Street's greed created. That large portions of the corporate media readily goes along for the ride by reporting their bs as truth makes them part of the problem as well.

As Mr Pitt notes, this isn't a new phenomena.  Since the time of Nixon, the extreme right has been polishing and honing their skills of obfuscation. One need only read the sickening but memorable quotes Mr. Pitt includes in his letter to see how long these extremists have been hawking their wares, like a grifter trying to suck in his next victim:

"I tell people don't kill all the liberals. Leave enough so we can have two on every campus - living fossils - so we will never forget what these people stood for."- Rush Limbaugh, Denver Post, 12-29-95

"Get rid of the guy. Impeach him, censure him, assassinate him."- Rep. James Hansen (R-UT), talking about President Clinton

"We're going to keep building the party until we're hunting Democrats with dogs."- Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX), Mother Jones, 08-95

"My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building."- Ann Coulter, New York Observer, 08-26-02

"We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors."- Ann Coulter, at the Conservative Political Action Conference, 02-26-02

"Chelsea is a Clinton. She bears the taint; and though not prosecutable in law, in custom and nature the taint cannot be ignored. All the great despotisms of the past - I'm not arguing for despotism as a principle, but they sure knew how to deal with potential trouble - recognized that the families of objectionable citizens were a continuing threat. In Stalin's penal code it was a crime to be the wife or child of an 'enemy of the people.' The Nazis used the same principle, which they called Sippenhaft, 'clan liability.' In Imperial China, enemies of the state were punished 'to the ninth degree': that is, everyone in the offender's own generation would be killed and everyone related via four generations up, to the great-great-grandparents, and four generations down, to the great-great-grandchildren, would also be killed."- John Derbyshire, National Review, 02-15-01

"Two things made this country great: White men & Christianity. The degree these two have diminished is in direct proportion to the corruption and fall of the nation. Every problem that has arisen (sic) can be directly traced back to our departure from God's Law and the disenfranchisement of White men."- State Rep. Don Davis (R-NC), emailed to every member of the North Carolina House and Senate, reported by the Fayetteville Observer, 08-22-01

May your God have mercy on all your twisted souls, because I can not show you any mercy, not now, not ever.

Rep Steve King wants to rewrite the 14th Amendment.

From Jurist:

US Rep. Steve King (R-IA) on Wednesday introduced legislation [HR 104 materials] designed to restrict the automatic grant of citizenship to children born on US soil. The bill, designated the "Birthright Citizenship Act of 2011," seeks to deter illegal immigration by amending the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) to limit citizenship only to those children with at least one parent that is a citizen, legal resident or an alien member of the US military. King stated that the bill is necessary to reduce the financial incentives for illegal immigration and curtail the 'birth tourism' industry. The American Civil Liberties Union described the measure as an attempt to undermine the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution, which states that, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States...are citizens of the United States." The bill currently bears 26 co-sponsorships, though further action has not yet been scheduled.

As a Nutter U alum, King  is constantly mouthing off about immigrants, immigration and his personal favorite, all Muslims are probably terrorists. Steve King is now the vice chairman of the House Subcommittee on Immigration. Thankfully, the GOP refused to put King in charge of the subcommittee, fearing his diatribes would alienate Latinos and Hispanics.